The Journey Home
Page 14
Two nights before, Antoinette had created her first new meal since she got here. She called it “Billy’s All-My-Tomorrows Pork Chops.” The day she came home from the hospital after her baby had died, she’d seen a bowl of rotten pears she’d planned to cook and puree for him before he got sick and their world turned upside down. He’d always loved pureed pears. For the first dish she ever named for her first son, she sautéed pears in butter, finished them with a little brown sugar and brandy, and served them over grilled pork chops. Billy ate three chops and she could swear that the smile he wore when he took his first bite was the same smile he’d worn when he’d played in his high chair while she cooked. She had to excuse herself for a moment after that.
“I’m working on a new idea now,” she said.
Billy gave her another of his grins and then concentrated on his food. Antoinette caught up with the conversation around the table, something about a new department store that had popped up downtown overnight. The magic of this place continued to dazzle her. Billy was taking Don and her on a car ride tomorrow to explore more of it. There was so much to discover. And so much to embrace.
Antoinette prayed that Warren was doing well. As her clarity of mind returned, she realized what the last year of her life had been like. Warren had been unbelievably good to her and she’d made things so much harder for him than she would have wanted. She loved that he tried to cook for her. Antoinette also found it fascinating that he’d taken to cooking for the nurse, Jan – a very pretty, very nice woman – when she could no longer eat. Antoinette had overheard their conversations, though she couldn’t comment on them. They seemed to have quite a spark, though it wasn’t obvious whether Warren noticed this. He’d never been the best with women. Something told her Warren was going to get it right this time, though.
Some day, he’d grace this table. Maybe both of them would. Not for a long time, though, she hoped. They had so much more of their journey left before they came home.
A NOTE TO MY READERS
Each of my novels has had a strong source of inspiration. This has never been truer than with The Journey Home. My parents’ marriage was always something that dazzled me. They made up a seamless whole together. They entertained and regaled one another, supported one another through tragedy, and always seemed to want to be together. It was simply impossible to think of one without the other. My father was the only man my mother ever dated and she proclaimed this proudly. My father actually had a thing for my mother’s sister before he met my mother. My aunt showed absolutely no interest in his affections, which my father considered the luckiest break of his life, as it led him to her very cute younger sibling.
When my father died, the emptiness my mother felt was un-fillable. As Antoinette does in this novel, she went to an assisted living facility where she found entertainment and companionship (along with all the tasteless butter cookies she could eat). However, she never spent a day after my father died when she didn’t wish she could be with him instead. As Alzheimer’s took its toll, she still spoke about him with clarity. And when she got very sick toward the end of her life, she told my sisters and me about conversations she was having with my dad where he told her he was waiting for her. We all knew exactly where those conversations were leading. They struck me when my mother first told me about them and they led me to write The Journey Home.
My next novel will also have a family theme, though this one will be broader. Titled Leaves, it is my first attempt to write a series. The setting for Leaves is the imaginary Connecticut River Valley town of Oldham, CT. Oldham is representative of the many cozy-but-sophisticated towns that dot the Connecticut River. These towns have the feel of small places where everyone knows everyone else, but, with New York to the south and Boston to the north, have a distinct urbane sensibility. I make regular trips to these towns because I find them both quaint and stimulating. In the fall, they are also uniquely beautiful. As it turns out, a combination of climatic features along with a rich variation in vegetation leads to an explosion of color as the temperatures cool that many consider to be the most vibrant in the world.
The novel follows the Gold family from the beginning of October until the end of the month. The Golds have been pillars in Oldham for decades and the inn that their parents ran, the Sugar Maple Inn, has been a draw for visitors all over the country. However, with the death of the elder Golds, the siblings have decided to sell the place. A new owner – a syndicate that owns a collection of inns all over the country – will take over on November 1, after one last Halloween party, an event the Golds have hosted for Oldham for as long as anyone can remember. Leaves follows the Gold siblings, Anthony, Corrina, Deborah, Maxwell, and Maria as they navigate through the final days of the inn and deal with the various challenges in their lives – romantic, interpersonal, professional, and communal. Holding together as a family is tougher now than it was when their parents were alive, and their commitment to each other will be tested strongly over the course of this story. Complicating it all is a series of “hauntings” that touch each of the Gold siblings, though the message of these benign interventions remain a mystery for a long time.
Leaves is the first novel about the Gold family and Oldham. My intention is to follow it with a new one every year. Here’s the prologue that will appear in the novel:
The car pulled up to the inn at the corner of Oak and Sugar Maple. The passengers came from Parsippany, New Jersey, but they could as easily have come from Boston or New York or Dayton, Ohio. They could even have flown in from Heathrow the night before.
The leaves were the reason that people came, whether it was for an overnight diversion or to settle for decades, raising generations of others who would remain nearby. The hundreds of miles of coastline, the dramatic topography, the distinctive architecture, and the Revolutionary-era history were all attractions, all contributors to a sturdy economy and buoyant property values. But the signature of the Connecticut River Valley was its October leaves.
Few places in America or, in fact, anywhere in the world, were capable of presenting a fall palette as varied and vibrant as this one. The warm, wet springs, the moderate summers, and early autumn days drenched in sunlight and crisped by cool evenings conspired to urge the trees into gaudy displays of color. The yellows of the hickory. The bronzes of the beech. The purples of the sumac. The oranges of the sassafras. The scarlets of the maple and the oak. The leaves were an industry here, the vehicle that filled every town in the area for the entire month with “leaf peepers,” traveling from places where nature didn’t provide such a rich visual bounty.
The visitors stayed in places like the Sugar Maple Inn in Oldham, Connecticut. The Sugar Maple opened its doors 32 years ago after Joseph and Bethany Gold drove up from Long Island and decided to stay in Oldham the rest of their lives. It was known regionally for the magnificent dinners it served, the homemade cookies and chocolates it left for every guest, and the artisan quilts that adorned each bed. But Joseph had been gone four years now and Bethany had joined him in the summer. The Gold children, all of whom still lived in Oldham, made the painful decision to sell the Sugar Maple to a syndicate that operated country inns all along the Eastern seaboard. It would officially change hands November 1.
And so as this month began, the Golds prepared for the last days of the physical centerpiece of its family. October was always a meaningful month to them, on occasion even a momentous one. But none could have possibly anticipated just what this October would bring.
Certain threads would fray and certain binds would loosen. Unspoken words would be uttered at last while things that needed to be said would be withheld. Tradition would be honored and the past would be rejected. One heart would beat for another’s for the first time, while one heart would stop beating forever. And a message would be delivered that was essential to all who heard it.
All before the last of the leaves came to ground.
Leaves goes on sale in September 2010. Please stop by my website, www.michaelbaronb
ooks.com for a longer excerpt when we get closer to publication.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.
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eISBN : 978-0-984-19058-4
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First Story Plant Printing:
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