by R. B. Conroy
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Cover
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
About the Author
Other books by R B Conroy
Back cover
Dreams of
Paradise
A Novel by
R B Conroy
CCB Publishing
British Columbia, Canada
Dreams of Paradise
Copyright ©2013 by R B Conroy
ISBN-13 978-1-77143-049-4
First Edition
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Conroy, R B, 1944-, author
Dreams of paradise / by R B Conroy. -- First edition.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-77143-048-7 (pbk.).--ISBN 978-1-77143-049-4 (pdf)
Additional cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada
Cover artwork credit: ID 18384721 © Lunamarina | Dreamstime.com
Disclaimer: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, and incidents either are a product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Extreme care has been taken by the author to ensure that all information presented in this book is accurate and up to date at the time of publishing. Neither the author nor the publisher can be held responsible for any errors or omissions. Additionally, neither is any liability assumed for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the express written permission of the publisher.
Publisher:
CCB Publishing
British Columbia, Canada
www.ccbpublishing.com
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my sincere appreciation to my two fine editors, Penny Schlatter and Susie Arbuckle. Their suggestions, knowledge, and attention to detail made for a better novel. And once again, many kudos to my publisher Paul Rabinovitch of CCB Publishing; the best in the business. I’m so glad I found Paul so many years ago.
And last, but certainly not least, I want to thank my lovely wife Cheryl for everything she does for me. Without Cheryl’s dedication and loyalty to me, there would be no R B Conroy. She is my inspiration to write, my chief editor, my sounding board, and the best wife a man could ever have.
Prologue
Susan wished her smiling girlfriend a good night and gently nudged the door shut on the shiny Mercedes. Ahead, accent lights spread across the cobblestone walkway that wound its way to the front door of her large ranch home. She paused for a moment on the way to the house to admire the large fountain at the center of the well landscaped yard. Arriving at the entry, she unlocked the double oak doors and slipped inside. Diamond-like crystals of light reflected off the swimming pool at the rear of the house illuminating the interior. She paused to survey the main living area. Glass shelves filled with crystal glistened in the pool’s backlight.
She flipped on the overhead lights and stepped down into the main living area. The eternally young Aphrodite smiled at her from atop her podium in the middle of the room. She walked past the marble statuette and fell into one of the large leather sofas on the far side of the room. She spread her arms across the soft cushions and turned toward the sound of approaching footsteps.
“Hello darling, you’re home early tonight.” Her deeply tanned husband with snow white hair entered the room with a glass of Merlot in hand. Always a stylish dresser, he looked snappy in his khaki Bermuda shorts and black golf shirt.
“Yes, I am a little early, Charles. Our mahjong game didn’t take as long as usual.” She smiled warmly at her husband, “You look quite handsome tonight, Charles.”
“Why thank you and you look lovely as well.”
Susan slowly crossed her long legs and began moving them slowly back and forth. “You’re so sweet.”
Obviously encouraged by Susan’s late evening playfulness, a beaming Charles stepped jauntily down to the sunken area and stood next to the sofa. “I was out reading by the pool earlier and Carl and June Huntington called and invited us to a dinner party Saturday night. Casual dress and don’t bring anything but ourselves.” Charles smiled warmly and took a sip of wine.
Her husband looked even more handsome than usual tonight. Amorous thoughts began to creep into Susan’s mind. “Aren’t The Villages wonderful, my dear? The people here are so much fun and so charming. I’m so glad we moved here and bought this home.” She winked at Charles. “I’m feeling kind of good tonight. How about you?”
Without speaking, Charles leaned over and set his wine glass on the end table next to Susan and slid his arms under her legs and lifted her up to eye level. His soft lips, sweet with the taste of wine, pressed against hers. A long and passionate kiss ensued, after which Susan murmured, “I love you so much, Charles.”
“I love you too, darling. I hope you don’t mind, but I set the temperature in the bedroom at seventy-five, hoping that we would end up there. Shall we retire to the boudoir?”
An excited Susan quickly replied, “Why Charles, what a wonderful idea. Carry me away, my knight in shining armor!” Holding firmly to Susan, he walked briskly across the living room and stepped up to the main level. She laid her head gently on his shoulder as Charles whispered sweet nothings in her ear and carried her down the hallway to the master suite for a night of romantic lovemaking.
* * *
“I love you, Charles, I lov….” Awakening from her dream, Susan rolled to her back on the worn and sagging mattress. Her nose crinkled as she took a sniff of the musty air in her bedroom. Still half asleep, she rubbed the sleep from her eyes and squinted into the morning sun that was just starting to flood through the bedroom window. She breathed deeply, trying to calm herself. It was just a dream.
It was the same recurring dream about The Villages, a retirement community where she worked part time as a cleaning lady each evening. In the dream, she was married to a handsome and wealthy man who lived in The Villages in a large, expansive home. Her husband was every woman’s fantasy mate--doting on her and always buying her expensive gifts.
The exciting community in her dream was only fifteen miles from Susan’s house in Pine Lakes. After taking a job cleaning the real estate office in The Villages a few months earlier, Susan had fallen in love with the place. She thought of it as paradise with its beautifully landscaped boulevards, lovely town squares and scores of residents scurrying about in fancy golf cart
s. At retirement age herself, Susan wanted desperately in live in The Villages. Unfortunately, the upscale enclave was out of the question for Susan. With no appreciable assets to her name, maxed out on credit cards, and carrying a poor credit rating, it appeared as though Susan was destined just to dream of life in The Villages. She shook her head despairingly and rolled out of bed, slipped on her robe and headed for the kitchen.
Chapter 1
Arms skyward, Susan Harris yawned mightily and peered through the broken-down screen door at the back of the kitchen. Dew covered patches of grass dotted her tiny backyard and glistened in the morning sun. She bumped the rickety door open with her slender hip. “Here kitty, kitty.” A scrawny white cat jumped out from behind some nearby bushes, and darted past her through the narrow opening. The brush of soft fur felt good on Susan’s bare leg. The hungry feline raced toward the empty feeding bowl sitting in the corner of the dingy kitchen. The flies grazing on the residue in the bowl scattered at the arrival of the eager cat.
Susan hurried over, bent down and slid her long fingers under the cat’s belly and lifted her up to eye level. Lips puckered, she spoke to the squirming kitty, “Is my little baby out of food again? I’m so sorry, mommy forgot your food again, but you’ll be okay, little kitties don’t need to eat everyday.” She rubbed noses with the dangling cat, and then bent over and picked up the bag of cat food next to the empty bowl and dumped the fishy smelling morsels into the bowl. The kitty fought lose from her grip and dove toward the ground landing next to the tempting feast. Susan lifted the kitty’s empty water bowl, filled it at the nearby sink and set it back on the floor next to the food. Susan watched the kitty ravage her food for a few seconds and then she grabbed the TV remote from the countertop where she had left it late the night before and headed for the living room.
On her way to the living room, Susan glanced to her left and caught a glimpse of herself in a small mirror hanging on the kitchen wall. She frowned, shocked by what she saw in the discolored glass. Her once beautiful, flowing blond hair was now a dirty gray, a disheveled mess. Locks of hair dangled haphazardly over tired eyes that were framed by dark circles. Her once amazing complexion for a woman her age was now pasty and blotchy with every age spot and imperfection on major display. The black curly stubble on her upper lip only added to the frightening image that was flashing before her. “What has happened to me?” she groaned and shook her head in disgust. Moisture filled her eyes.
She continued past a huge pile of dirty dishes stacked haphazardly in the kitchen sink. She glanced to her right at the empty Styrofoam boxes scattered across the kitchen table--remnants of her daily carry-outs from fast food restaurants. Arriving in the living room, she turned in front of her old blue easy chair, a hand-me-down from a former boyfriend, and nestled in. She laid her head against the back of the chair to rest for a moment before starting her day. Somber and reflective and wanting to try and understand the mess she was in, she began to think back over the events of her life.
As the memories started to flood back, the moisture in her eyes quickly grew into tears. Susan Harris was not expected to end up like this. Pretty and popular as a youngster, everyone predicted a bright future for her. The only child of a dentist and elementary school teacher in the small Midwestern town of North Webster, Indiana, she was pegged by everyone for college and then a successful career. Regrettably for young Susan, an inherent weakness when dealing with the opposite sex showed up early in her life and her once hopeful future took a nasty turn for the worse. Inquisitive and daring, she began experimenting with unprotected sex in her early teens. Throwing caution to the wind, she soon became a major topic of discussion in the boys’ locker room.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before the inevitable happened. Arriving home one afternoon after giving herself to the starting quarterback on the football team in the back of his fifty-seven Chevy, she happened to glance at the calendar on the kitchen wall. She can still remember how frightened she was when she realized that she was over a week past due for her period. To this day, she could still feel the sense of doom that ratcheted through her that day. It was a moment that would be etched in her memory forever. It was 8:04 in the evening on April 20, 1964. It was just a day after her sixteenth birthday.
Embarrassed and humiliated, she decided to drop out of school and with the help of her parents, she rented a one-bedroom apartment on the edge of town. Abandoned by the suspected father of the child, Susan’s life during the remainder of her teenage years centered around working as a waitress and raising her baby boy that she christened William in honor of her beloved grandfather.
Life wasn’t easy for Susan in North Webster. Feeling alone and alienated and with only her parents holding her there, on her twentieth birthday Susan decided to pull up tent and move to Florida. Desperately seeking a better life in Florida, she decided to relocate near her Grandpa William in Ocala. After wishing her parents a tearful good-bye, she and little William packed up and moved to central Florida. Once in Ocala, she rented a small mobile home and enrolled her now three-year old son, William, in a local nursery school. Tragically, her new life in Florida didn’t turn out the way she had hoped. Soon after their arrival, Grandpa William had a stroke and died. A short time later, little William, tagged “Willie” by her recently departed and beloved Grandpa, was diagnosed with a pesky bowel disorder that required constant trips to the doctor and occasional stays in the hospital.
Without Grandpa there to help out with Willie, Susan starting missing more and more work to stay home and care for her small son. Alone and with the demands of a small child to deal with, finding and holding a job became an ongoing problem for Susan. Over the next several years, Susan bounced from one menial job to the next and one live-in boyfriend to the next in a desperate attempt to put food on the table and a roof over her and Willie’s head. Finally at six years old, Willie outgrew his condition and the disorder disappeared. But with no insurance, she ended up with a lot of past-due medical bills. Buried under the huge pile of debt, she finally gave up and filed for bankruptcy just after enrolling Willie in the first grade.
After the bankruptcy, work was even harder to find and Susan once again found herself on the move. Without a high school education and bad credit on her record, her efforts to find stability became more and more difficult. Mercifully after seven years the bankruptcy finally dropped off her credit report and she was able to get a small loan to pay off some bills and rent a fairly nice apartment near Inverness, Florida. For a while things started to improve for Susan and Willie. She got a job at a local bowling alley running the snack bar and enrolled Willie in the local middle school. Surprisingly to Susan, Willie liked the school and showed some promise as an athlete.
It wasn’t long before Susan’s weakness for the opposite sex started to show up again. Longing for male companionship, she began frequenting the local bars in a misguided effort to find Mr. Right. It wasn’t long before Susan and Willie’s relatively stable life had degenerated into a steady parade of live-in boyfriends and late night parties. Angry inside and screaming for attention from his mother, Willie started to unravel. Suspended from school several times for fighting, when he turned sixteen he quit school and took a job in a fast food restaurant. Finding his home life untenable, when he was eighteen he moved out of his mom’s place and got a place of his own.
Sadly for Willie, he didn’t fare too well on his own. Still sporting the emotional scars from years of mental, and sometimes physical, abuse at the hands of his mom’s dysfunctional boyfriends, his unstable childhood started to take its toll. He began jumping from job to job and town to town just like his mother had. But unlike his resilient mother, Willie didn’t cope as well and he soon turned to drugs as a way to solve his problems. Sucking meth out of a plastic pop bottle and saturating himself with Jack Daniels soon became the almost daily ritual for the ill-fated Willie. Bad-tempered and somewhat unstable, the volatile Willie spent the rest of his adult life drug addicted and somewhat depende
nt on his mom, never living more than five minutes away from her.
For her part, Susan loved her son and wanted to do what she could to help him. She spent much of her middle aged years bailing him out of jail and giving him money whenever she could. But surprisingly, Susan never blamed herself for his problems. She was certain in her own mind that she had done all she could for her son after being cast into a difficult situation at a very young age. To this day, an unapologetic Susan still lamented the “bad breaks” life had thrown at her with little mention of Willie. “My life has been a living hell!” she would often complain to her friends.
Chapter 2
With the emotional journey into her past still fresh in her mind, a reflective Susan raised up in the chair and laid her elbows on her bare knees. She clasped her hands together as if preparing to pray, but there would be no prayer for Susan on this morning or any other morning. During her entire adult life, her shadow had never crossed the threshold of a church. Raised in a God-fearing family, she had turned her back on the church after her unforeseen pregnancy. Not wanting to accept responsibility for her own poor decisions, she found it easier to blame her religion for her failures. So now, many years later, with no spiritual foundation to bolster her up and with few friends to come to her aid, Susan’s life had hit rock bottom once again. Dumped by her most recent live-in and riffed from her steady job at the canning factory in Pine Lakes just a few weeks earlier, she was alone again and broke. Still partially supporting a now forty-four year old Willie, she was having a difficult time keeping her head above water--both financially and emotionally.
* * *
Since losing her job at the canning factory, a job in the snack bar of a golf course in nearby Leesburg was the only job she had been able to find. But after several weeks at the golf course, she was still unable to make ends meet. To keep from going further into debt, she took on the cleaning job in the real estate office at Lake Sumter Landing in The Villages. The fun and exciting atmosphere at the hugely popular Villages turned out to be the only bright spot in her otherwise dismal life.