by Karen M Cox
He sighed and put the sketch back on the desk. It was beautiful work, and James was an artist of sorts too. He couldn’t bear to throw it away.
The doorbell rang. He turned his back on the picture, and went to answer it. Eric was jogging in place.
“Come on, big guy. Let’s pound some pavement.”
James rolled his eyes even though he returned Eric’s grin. They set off at a brisk pace, but after a while, James had trouble keeping up. His friend stole a look over at him.
“We’ll go through the park, and then we can turn back toward home. You doing okay, buddy? You seem a little sluggish today.”
“I’m just fine, Mom. I like a run in the morning,” he wheezed. “It clears my head.”
“Let’s walk a little and catch a breather.” Eric didn’t wait more than a minute before he dropped his latest bombshell.
“Laurel Elliot.”
“What about her, Eric?” James was immediately wary.
“She doesn’t have 2.3 kids, and she’s not married. Don’t know about the minivan though.”
“What?” James stopped, staring at his friend.
Eric stopped too and turned back, breathing hard from running. “She’s still in Kentucky — some place called Uppercross Hollow.”
“How do you know all this?”
“A miraculous entity called the Internet.”
“You little stalker . . . ”
“This is all according to a website from some forward-thinking craft fair in West Virginia back in the fall. They had a web page with artist bios listed on it.”
James plopped on a bench and hung his head down while he rested his elbows on his knees. “I’m not going back there. And I’ll thank you to butt out of my love life.”
Eric sat beside him. “Look, I’m not trying to tell you what to do. But I saw your face when you talked about her, man. Something’s still there, and I think you need to either face her or let her go. You’re at a standstill. You can’t make things work with any other woman — ”
James Marshall sprang off the bench, hands on his hips as he glared at his friend. “Okay, thanks for the advice, but if I need a life coach, I’ll hire one.”
“You need to come to grips with this,” Eric persisted. “You’ve conquered the world, genius, but now you’ve got some decisions to make — like what you’re going to do with the rest of your life and who you want to do it with.”
“I’ll tell you one thing I’m not going to do.” James turned and started running. “I’m not going to track down Laurel Elliot. Race you back,” he called over his shoulder.
Part 2
Chapter 11
Uppercross Hollow, Kentucky
Laurel Elliot shut down her potter’s wheel and wiped the back of her hand across her sweaty forehead. It wouldn’t be summer for another month, but it already felt like it. She loved her studio, but with three of the four walls made of floor-to-ceiling windows, it could get very hot in the afternoon. She walked into her kitchen, a room eliciting a feeling of homespun comfort with its lemon-yellow walls and French-blue accents. When she remodeled, she had splurged on a retro-looking fridge, with a guilty little modern secret hiding inside the freezer door: an automatic icemaker. That little device had saved her a ton of frustration because she was forever trying to get a stale ice cube or two out of a tray that she had forgotten to fill. She stepped to the sink, filled her glass with cool well water from the tap, and downed it in one breath. Throwing pots was thirsty work, especially without air conditioning.
Listening closely, she heard the rumble of a jeep just over the hill signaling the imminent arrival of the day’s mail. Laurel wiped her hands on her apron before removing it, and went out the front door and down the drive to the mailbox. She was expecting a letter from the craft fair people in Knoxville, and it was supposed to arrive today. I’m going to have to invest in a phone at some point. The world moved fast these days, and people complained all the time about not being able to get hold of her in a timely manner. Yet Laurel still resisted the idea. She told herself it was because she couldn’t afford to have the lines run from the road. Mostly though, she balked at the idea of being instantly accessible to people. Living alone on the hill had taught her to keep her own company, set her own schedule, and live by her own rules. A ringing phone would upset the predictable rhythm of her life, and she found it difficult to sacrifice her independence for other people’s convenience. Besides, if her parents could call her on a whim, she’d never get any work done.
Hilda, the mail carrier, was long gone by the time Laurel reached the end of her driveway. She opened the box and pulled out a small wad of envelopes: A bill for art supplies, an advertisement for the IGA, and a letter addressed to her with a large curly “P” on the return address label.
“Ginny.” She smiled to herself. Tearing open the letter, she began reading on her way back to the house.
Hey Sis,
I hope you are doing well. Dad writes that you are still up on your mountain, throwing pots and living off the grid. Mom is about the same I gather. Stuart and I are both doing well, and we have pretty incredible news on two fronts. One is that after a lot of soul searching, we’ve decided to move back to Kentucky! Old Dr. Dawes is retiring at the end of July and has agreed to sell us his practice, such as it is. It will need some updated equipment, but the location is ideal, and Stuart is happy about the move. We love a lot of things about Cincinnati, but we’ve been talking about striking out on our own, and this seems like a good time. Stuart has always loved that area around the lake. It’s a good place for a dental practice, given the recent growth in population, and it’s a quiet, family-friendly atmosphere.
And that leads me to the other good news: I’m expecting a baby! Finally! After trying for so long, we actually did it! We’re a little nervous about telling people until the first trimester is over, so keep it under your hat for now. I haven’t even told Mom and Dad yet. I’m about six weeks along, and so far, so good. I would have loved to call and tell you the news so I could hear you squeal with delight, but you don’t have a phone! Grrr . . .
Anyway, we are leaving Cincinnati on Memorial Day weekend and plan to take an extended vacation down on the lake. We’ve rented a huge vacation house for the summer so we can look for a permanent place to live and set up the practice to open the first of September. And we’ll have lots and lots of time to see you if you have time for us. If I remember right, most of your big craft fairs are in the spring and fall, right? We’re planning a nice leisurely summer, the kind we used to have when we were kids, and we’re inviting Stuart’s sisters to stay with us, sort of a ‘last hurrah’ before settling down to be boring parents who talk incessantly about their offspring.
So, how do you think you’ll like being an auntie? I’m sure you’ll be incredible at it. Well, I gotta run. Hope to see you real soon.
Love,
Ginny (& Stu)
Laurel couldn’t help the smile spreading across her face. Stuart and Virginia were going to be parents! They were moving to the lake. What a great summer she had to look forward to now instead of the hot, muggy and endless days of the last four years. She had kept busy remodeling the cabin, working and traveling around to sell her pottery, but hopefully, Virginia’s arrival would provide a welcome respite from the other task that had inadvertently fallen in her lap — de facto maternal figure of her family.
Mrs. Elliot’s emotional problems had worsened over the years. Now that she was older and had seen a little more Oprah, Laurel knew that her mother was struggling with a full-blown case of agoraphobia. She rarely left the house or yard, spending most of the day in her room with the TV on. Her physical health was deteriorating too, and she’d gotten quite heavy from lack of exercise. Her only activity was sewing beautiful clothes for Laurel to sell at the craft shows and fairs where she sold her pottery. The family had been unsuccessful at getting her to try therapy or medication, she refused to see any doctor, and Mr. Elliot was afraid to push her too
far for fear of what she might do to herself.
It was an impossible situation. Laurel knew this but felt powerless to help. Maybe now that Virginia would be around, things would change. Laurel was pleased but very surprised that her sister was coming back to their hometown. Once Virginia left for college, she had essentially never looked back. Since she and Stuart married, she came home only once or twice a year, citing a busy schedule with dental school and work.
The Elliot boys had moved out a couple of years ago. Neither of them had gone to college, electing to get an apartment and stay around their old stomping ground. Dylan was an electrician, and Crosby sold real estate. Spring would graduate high school next year. She was an incredible student, putting even Ginny to shame with her college entrance scores. Thankfully, she would probably get a full ride to college because the family business was struggling. Mr. Elliot was a nice man, but he was no businessman. A new, modern facility was going in across the lake, so the old Elliot marina desperately needed, if not a full upgrade, at least a face-lift. He said a remodel would be giving in to commercialism at its worst, but Laurel suspected the real reason was that the renovations would cost money he was unwilling to part with. Her father was stubborn enough that he wouldn’t take any advice from his children — the ones who were willing to give him any — and Laurel wasn’t sure how many more summers like the last the marina could take and still stay open.
She had learned to cope by separating her life from her parents’ for the most part, keeping her own company in the solitude of her mountain cottage. It was not ‘off the grid’ as Ginny liked to say — she did have electricity — but it was quiet there, and she could think without the distraction of everyone else’s problems. She had been squirreling away money too. As an artist, she was only a step above the poverty line, but Laurel had always lived a frugal existence, and that allowed her to be financially independent. Every week she helped her father with the payroll and made the obligatory check on her mother, but she never stayed long. On holidays, she went to her parents’ house and cooked family meals to give her brothers and sister some semblance of a normal family life. At those times, her mom often stayed in her room because the noise was so ‘discombobulating.’
Laurel had given up being angry when she realized her mother was truly ill, and she wondered sometimes if that illness played a part in her mother’s almost terrified insistence that she not move to Nashville when she was eighteen. It was hard to say, but Laurel Elliot took responsibility for her own decisions. She wouldn’t blame anyone but herself.
So, while she might wish for a different life, that didn’t mean it was going to happen. Laurel had made her choices — good and bad — and she was resigned to living with them. Unfortunately, the isolation of the mountain prevented her from broadening her horizons except for brief sojourns for business. Her natural reserve made it difficult and exhausting to meet people at the craft fairs she attended. And men? There were no single men around her little corner of the world — none that interested her anyway. There hadn’t been anyone, anyone since . . .
Unbidden, he came to mind: handsome, dashing and determined. The eight years of separation had softened any flaws she ever saw in him, and now he was almost larger than life to her. He had been right to believe in himself and in his ability to make his mark on the world. He had made it, too — perhaps not in the way he intended but still successful beyond his wildest dreams.
She still remembered the day she had discovered it. She had gone into the public library that February to see whether they had a new copy of her favorite art magazine. As she perused the shelves, she glanced at the latest issue of Forbes. The name in the headline drew her eyes like a magnet:
John Benwick, Eric Harville and James Marshall: From music toys to business with the big boys. A tale of three high-tech millionaires.
Hurriedly, she scanned the Table of Contents and flipped to the article. She felt numb all over as she backed into a wooden table and fumbled for the chair:
“I don’t know exactly how it happened. We met, we started talking and that led to working, and that led us to starting the company.”
Thus began the saga of one of the year’s most surprising business success stories. It’s the Cinderella tale of a company founded by three college buddies — a firm that developed software that has turned the music industry on its ear. ‘Easy Music Producer’, or EMP, is a user-friendly computer program enabling any technology-challenged layman to record and mix music tracks. Now, amateur musicians no longer have to beg, borrow or steal time in a recording studio, thus opening doors traditionally guarded by music industry professionals. Industry pundits speculate this issue might be the reason a large entertainment conglomerate, eager to get in on the ground floor of this major paradigm shift, purchased the rights to EMP for an undisclosed, yet reportedly staggering sum.
“We are lucky. No doubt about that,” says EMP front man Eric Harville, looking like the quintessential Nineties father, participating in this interview with his infant son in his lap. “We were in the right place at the right time, but we put in a lot of work too, and sometimes people forget that part.”
When asked how they came up with the idea, James Marshall speaks for the first time. Harville credits him as the inspiration behind EMP’s development.
“It all started one night after a grueling circuits’ exam. We were playing quarters with a pitcher of beer, and talking about music to try and forget about school for a little while.”
“James is a musician and a composer,” Harville cuts in.
“Okay, I was talking,” Marshall gives a disarming smile, “and Eric and John were tolerant enough to listen. I said, ‘wouldn’t it be great if . . . ?’ and John said, ‘why couldn’t we . . . ?’ and we were off. It was John who developed the original code. He’s a brilliant programmer.”
Benwick is conspicuously absent, and it is obvious his business partners feel it. They explain that he is caring for an ill relative. Both men spend several minutes raving over John Benwick’s abilities, as well as his character.
The future of this close-knit team, however, is uncertain. The terms of EMP’s sale agreement prohibit the three from developing any competing software for five years.
“We’re not sure what we’ll do next. We’re just taking things one day at a time,” Harville says, skillfully evading the question of EMP’s next phase.
Marshall continues, “We started this as friends having fun, and we would love to continue working together. We’ll just have to see what life has in store for us and make our decisions accordingly.”
Whether they form another formidable software team or strike out on their own, one thing is certain – these three young men took passion and skill, and turned it into a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. They’re set for life.
After that, Laurel couldn’t get enough. She scoured the press for information and found out that James earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering from San Jose State University. He met Benwick and Harville at college, and they started their company the year before graduation. Another article announced that software whiz kids James Marshall and John Benwick had made a list of the most eligible bachelors in Silicon Valley, with James being touted as the better catch, given that Benwick was engaged. Then about a month before, Laurel read that John Benwick was grieving the recent loss of his fiancée to a rare and aggressive form of metastatic melanoma.
Laurel had fallen in love with James Marshall when he had nothing, but seeing evidence of his success made her both proud of him and, if she were honest, a little wistful too. At times, it was hard not to regret her decision to stay at Benton all those years ago. She reminded herself that she was a young girl of eighteen at the time, and what he wanted her to do was rash and fraught with the potential for disaster. Her mother’s advice was reasonable to give a teen-aged daughter — although in those first awful months, Laurel wondered whether her mother’s motives might have been more than a little self-serving.
&
nbsp; With the perspective of experience, however, Laurel’s views on her decision changed. She now wished that she had been brave enough to take that chance and follow her heart or at least try to find some middle ground. Unfortunately, Laurel could not see any compromise at that time in her life, and her doubts, along with the persuasive arguments of her parents, convinced her to let James go. In many ways, her life path was set when she made that choice. The older women in town called her another ‘Elliot hermit,’ an unfortunate spinster in the making. The rest just called her odd or eccentric — the lady who lived all alone at Uppercross Hollow without a phone, modern conveniences, or anyone to keep her company.
She was a little surprised that some blonde, California girl hadn’t snapped up James already. She had never met another man like him. He was right when he had said she made a mistake, but it wasn’t because he was now rich and successful. It was because no one else had ever touched her heart the way he did.
Chapter 12
“So what do you think about the place?” Virginia Elliot Pendleton twirled around the living room of the house she and Stuart would call home for the next few months.
“I thought you said you rented a cabin,” Laurel replied. “This is like a palace.”
“A palace is not made out of logs. With the wood floors and stone fireplaces, it’s positively rustic, don’t you think?”
Laurel wandered to the wall of glass that opened out to a second-floor deck and an incredible view of the lake. “It’s lovely, Ginny.”
“Thanks.” Her sister seemed pleased with Laurel’s praise, yet she was nonchalant about the relative opulence in which she lived compared to the rest of her family.