Steam Over Stephensport: Steam Through Time Series - Book 2

by Carolyn Bond

  SteamOver Stephensport

  Also by Carolyn Bond

  Bluegrass Blush

  (Steam Through Time - Book One)

  Between Time

  SteamOver Stephensport

  Steam Through Time Series

  Book Two

  By Carolyn Bond

  Copyright © 2018 by Timepiece Books

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Published by Timepiece Books. Lexington, Kentucky, USA

  Carolyn Bond would love to hear from you if you enjoyed this book. Follow her web page at www.carolynbondwriter.com or email her at carolynbondwriter@yahoo.com.

  Acknowledgements

  I want to thank my husband Jeff for being my own example of “a man that will always love me.” The love he has shown, by not just affection or kindness, but with passion and a servant heart, has carried me through several very hard situations while writing this book. While Lily and Evan’s relationship is uniquely their own, as a writer I draw on my emotions to weave the words. Having a wonderful relationship with Jeff gives me a treasure chest of emotions to draw from.

  Thank you to my mother and father, Ashley and Larry Trautner, who taught me to dream and to persevere. Those two things are the most magical tools we have and they can change lives.

  I would also like to thank my editor, Dr. Beth Case. She has taken my work to a new level and I can’t thank her enough. Nancy Griffin’s editing helped me reach a personal goal of having this book accepted by the 2018 Kentucky Book Fair, and for that, I am so grateful. Thank you to Valerie Brock, one of my beta readers, who gives me insights that I would never have imagined. And thank you to the ladies of Susannah Hart Shelby Chapter, NSDAR. You are all faithful, encouraging friends whom I love and admire.

  This book is dedicated to all the women in the history of our country that imagined more and didn’t give up.

  Part I

  Chapter 1 – 2018

  Chapter 2 – Black’s Farm 1889

  Chapter 3 – Stephensport of the Past

  Chapter 4 – One-Room Schoolhouse

  PART II

  Chapter 5 – An Invitation

  Chapter 6 – The Desire of a Heart

  Chapter 7 – Visiting with Old Friends

  Chapter 8 - Turn of the Century Church

  Part III

  Chapter 9 – The Way Things Seem

  Chapter 10 – The Tree of Life

  Chapter 11 – Beginning a New Life

  Epilogue

  Part I

  Chapter 1 – 2018

  Craning her neck to see what used to be the old Black’s Farm, Lily looked at Sinking Creek as it disappeared in the leafless trees. Being in a place where her ancestors had lived out their lives, she had a feeling of peace and connectedness. It was just what she needed. In her own life, she’d come untied from the lines that secured her to the harbor of family and now floated helplessly with the current of her emotion. In a distracted moment, she visualized herself lost in rough water.

  The car jolted unexpectedly as the wheels hit the concrete curb. Pulling her eyes away from the hushed landscape, she barely saw the front edge of the metal bridge before it tore into her driver’s side bumper with a groaning scrape of metal. The car was suddenly airborne. Her stomach floated in her abdomen with sickening levity. She couldn’t see where the car was headed but she knew it was going toward the creek below.

  She froze as the burn of adrenaline coursed through her arms to her finger tips.

  “Oh no!” she mouthed. She closed her eyes and waited for the impact. Time seemed to stop.

  “It’s taking too long,” she whispered with her eyes shut tight.

  The sound of running water trickling past the side of the car crept into her senses. She blinked open her eyes and held her breath. The car sat on the edge of the creek, half in the water. It reminded her of a nightmare where she was too scared of getting shot, so she never felt the gunshot, but suddenly blood covered your shirt.

  “I didn’t feel the impact,” she said out loud as though surely angels must be seeing this.

  Water pooled at her feet and she felt the car slipping in the mud as the current pushed it farther toward the mouth of the creek. Beyond that, she knew the mighty Ohio would wash it away and it would sink to the dark, muddy bottom. She had to move fast while the car was still bobbing on the surface. The river’s current was nothing to mess around with.

  She opened the door and water rushed in around her legs as the car sank faster. The car turned backwards as the current pushed against the fin-like doors. She flung herself out into the creek just as the car was pulled down, nose diving for the bottom, the trunk barely showing above the water.

  She made her way to the edge by swimming parallel to the current. Muddy brown water swirled around her. She could taste dirt in her mouth but it was oddly easier to move in the water than she expected.

  “Don’t panic. Just keep swimming,” she told herself.

  She reached, caught the trunk of a small tree and pulled herself half out of the water. Her feet slid on the mud as she tried to get a foothold.

  She turned just in time to see the last of her car slide under the muddy, churning crests of river water just beyond the place where Sinking Creek dumped into the Ohio. A sob rose and threatened to choke her.

  “My car!” The burning rush of adrenaline still pumped repeatedly out to her hands and feet. Her teeth began to chatter. She had to get out of the water before shock set in. Her dress hung loosely from her shoulders as though it had been stretched in the water.

  The sunlight dimmed as a cloud passed in front of the winter sun. She heard a ringing vibration and winced at the pain in her ears. Her arms looked strange, thinner and her skin smoother. She held her hand out in front of her. Her freckles were gone. Not that she was a very freckly person before, but now there were none. She squinted and rubbed the mud from the top of her arm. The humming sound grew louder as the pressure in her head increased to an unbearable level.

  All sound and light left her in that brief instance. She fell back and landed on the soft dead grass of the bank. A rush of exhale left her lips before darkness consumed her vision.

  ***

  Earlier that morning

  “I just don’t think this relationship is going to work out.”

  The words clanged in her mind like a deafening bell. After all the time they had been together.

  He kept talking but she could only watch his lips move. All sound stopped while the repeating phrase clogged her brain.

  “…don’t think this relationship is going to work out.”

  “It’s not you. It’s me. I just can’t commit the way you want me to and I feel bad about it.”

  Her mind raced through jumbles of comebacks but none made clear sense. “But, but don’t you love me? How can you want to split?” She regretted saying it as soon as the desperate words fell from her mouth.

  His eyes darted away as his mouth pressed together. He sighed and turned back pleading, “Don’t you see? I don’t want to hurt you anymore. This isn’t good for either of us. I do care about you, but I can’t marry you and I know marriage is what you want.”

  “But,” her sentence cut off as she realized there was no going back this time. They had broken up a few times before, but this time he sounded different.

  “Lily, its better this way,” he said softly.

  “But we can be friends, right?”
>
  He shook his head. “It would only make it harder.” He paused a minute and shifted his weight as though trying to fight a decision. “I’m going to leave now. I have to work early today.” He turned his back to her, took a step and half turned back, but stopped himself. Then in a rush of determination, he left her standing alone in her kitchen. She heard the soft click of the front door closing.

  Her throat constricted as a lump rose. Hot tears welled and fell down her cheeks. Five years of hoping he would fall in love with her, hoping he would see that he couldn’t live without her, came to an end.

  “Five years wasted!”

  She balled her hands into fists and squeezed as hard as she could.

  “How could he do this to me?” she thought. “I’ve been everything he needed. I gave him my whole heart. I was the only one that really understood him. And now, he just decides we can’t even be friends!”

  “Jerk!” she spat out through her gritted teeth. A burning roil of molten lead grew in her stomach. She looked around the apartment and memories of the times they shared played like overlapping movies. Her mind numbed and only the stillness surrounded her. She walked over to the window and pulled back the curtain. She scanned the parking spaces near the walkway at the base of her stairs. His car was already gone. She dashed a tear off her cheek and let go of a sob.

  Rubbing her eyes, she noticed a landscaper working in a flowerbed near the mailboxes. “January is an odd time for gardening,” she thought. His straw hat covered his face but what caught her eye was the tender way he held the branches as he trimmed away last year’s growth. He stopped, frozen momentarily, and slowly turned his gaze up to her window.

  She wanted to jump back, but her feet were rooted to the ground. He looked at her with such sadness.

  “What’s this guy’s story?” she wondered. She quickly pulled the curtain closed but still could not move. She could make out his shape through the fabric. He slowly turned back and kept working on the bush.

  “I’m super-imposing my broken heart on other people.” She turned and looked around the lifeless room. “I have to get out of here.”

  ***

  The bare trees reflected the empty feeling gripping her. The cut, white limestone rose in statuesque walls along the sides of the desolate Bluegrass Parkway. She looked at the tree-covered, rocky landscape as her ancestors must have seen it. Time felt like layers of alternating shuffled cards. Her timeline and theirs touched. She imagined her great-grandparents traveling beside her in a wagon. She felt their comforting presence.

  She flipped through the radio stations. She was too far from any major city to get the music stations. Angry preachers yelled through her car speakers with bursts of emotion.

  “You can find everything you ever dreamed of inside the doors of a church. If you never go, you will never know. Hellfire awaits those who refuse to see the truth. This very day January 2nd, of the year 2018, follow your heart. It knows what’s true!”

  She pressed the volume button to silence the assault. The last thing she needed to hear was their intrusive ranting like some turn-of-the-century revival sermon. Silence surrounded her, giving her space to be alone with her thoughts. The two-hour drive to Stephensport to talk to her grandmother was just what she needed. She needed to figure out how she felt. Other than a pounding pulse, she couldn’t describe the intense emotions flooding her brain. It was all white noise in her head.

  Every mile took Lily farther from the pain and the pressure that surrounded her at home in Frankfort. Andrew had dumped her, but it felt like so much more than that.

  The loss of Andrew’s companionship left her adrift. He was more than a boyfriend, he’d become her best friend. Nearly every day for five years they’d talked all day by text and email at work. They called each other every night and talked until they went to bed in their separate homes. She thought back to the countless festivals and movies, or touristy things they had done together. Andrew was safe to her. His Baptist church was safe. Follow the rules and you know your soul is fine. Dating him was the same way. As long as she avoided his pet peeves and didn’t pry too much into his past, he gave her all the attention she needed. While he seemed to enjoy her company, it never translated into the love she was looking for. She kept telling herself that, in time, he would see that he couldn’t live without her. She’d invested in this relationship so heavily that she really didn’t have any other friends.

  Maybe she had made him into a super hero that would rescue her from becoming an old maid. At thirty-six, her options were running thin. He said that he couldn’t be what she needed. Her forehead scrunched together: what did she need? She wasn’t even sure what that was. She just didn’t want to be alone. A string of failed relationships littered her love resume’.

  Granted, he wasn’t perfect, but he made her feel like she was somebody. She had auditioned for the part of his wife for a long time. She had it down. Apparently he just really didn’t want a wife. But, she couldn’t shake the nagging question, why didn’t he love her? Was there something about her despite what he said?

  Tears streamed down her cheeks. The ache in her heart felt like a weight that sucked the air out of her lungs. The road blurred in her vision and she smeared away the tears in a fit of anger. She blamed herself for being so stupid. She’d let herself be a doormat. She knew the relationship had issues within the first few months but brushed them off. He just needed time to trust again, she thought. Whatever his problem was, she decided, it was his. She told herself she was a good person: giving, pretty and intelligent. She had a nurturing personality and put others’ needs ahead of her own. She was an experienced fourth grade teacher. She was a capable leader and could take care of herself. She’d won awards for her teaching and leadership. What’s more, she didn’t need Andrew’s authoritarian religion meddling in her life, either, with their weekly Sunday school lessons telling her what she could and couldn’t do.

  After he left that morning and she was alone in her apartment, she decided she had to get away from Frankfort. She just had to be by herself to think. She loved visiting her grandmother’s grave at Cedar Hill Cemetery in Stephensport along the Ohio River. A sudden heart attack took her grandmother away. She always felt like she and her grandmother were connected. After she passed, Lily could still feel her spirit on that grassy hill overlooking the quiet Ohio. She couldn’t wait to sit under the shade tree and feel the river breeze tousle her hair. It was so serene and other-worldly.

  She’d pulled a clean, white cotton dress over her head and hastily packed an overnight bag. She gave herself a glance in the mirror by the door. A gray hair was woven into her waves of auburn hair near her temple. She reached up and pulled the solitary reminder that she wasn’t getting any younger. With her coffee in hand, she was ready to burn up the roads. The landscaper was gone by the time she bounded down the steps in her white sneakers. She knew she was acting on defense mechanisms but she didn’t care. She didn’t even tell her parents where she was going. She figured she would find a roadside hotel to stay the night and have a personal retreat. As an only child, she knew they would worry, so she resolved to call them as soon as she checked in somewhere.

  Her mind shifted back to reality when the enormous road signs for the Leitchfield exit came into view. As the sun was gaining intensity, she turned off the Parkway. This was the final leg of the journey. The two-lane country roads were so far off the beaten path that a stranger would get lost. She remembered the first time she’d set out to make her way to the cemetery alone. She crisscrossed rolling Kentucky farmland and tiny roads lined with tall trees for hours. They all looked the same until, by a stroke of luck, she found the hidden metal bridge over Sinking Creek at the edge of the tiny town of Stephensport.

  It was not much of a town to speak of. One short road that traversed about 200 yards from the bridge to the base of Cedar Hill sitting on the sleepy bank of the wide Ohio River. You could catch glimpses of the gently flowing river between houses on the right side of t
he road. Sinking Creek had a wide mouth that emptied into the river after appearing out of the trees of a bend. Her mom had warned her long ago to be careful of the creek where it empties into the Ohio. The current of the Ohio was strong and pulled anything in the creek into its depths. The banks of the creek were muddy and not much to see but she felt like it was home. The house where her great-grandfather lived still stood by the bank. It was now deserted and overgrown with weeds. Ghosts of generations before him rustled dried grass and bare winter branches of maple trees. This was her land, even though her grandparents had moved away when her mother was a baby. She could hear the whispers of love on the gentle breeze.

  About a dozen or so houses lined the quiet passage through the small hamlet. An old church with stained glass windows and a large shady lawn and a plain little building for a post office were the only public establishments. If you blinked twice, you’d miss the whole town and find yourself crossing a railroad track before the main road veered off to the left. Right there, though, a non-descript one-lane paved drive kept going straight from town before disappearing in some cedar trees at the base of a good size hill.

  Lily pulled the steering wheel to the left to follow the narrow road as it wound up the hill. Giving her Toyota Camry a little gas to fight gravity on the narrow incline, the sleepy cemetery came into view. Hundreds of headstones covered the upward slope and disappeared over the crest of the hill. A black, wrought iron sign with the words “Cedar Hill Cemetery” traversed the entrance.

  Each season here had its own feel. She loved coming in the spring, summer and fall. The winter, though, had an eerie feeling. It felt like the dead were sleeping and she had come to visit too early, before it was polite. She could imagine the spirits lazily looking up to see who had disturbed their slumber as she walked up the solitary road, crunching the thin layer of gravel.