The Cumberland Creek Mystery series by Mollie Cox Bryan:
SCRAPBOOK OF SECRETS
SCRAPPED
SCRAPPY SUMMER E-Novella
DEATH OF AN IRISH DIVA
A CRAFTY CHRISTMAS
Scrappily Ever After
Mollie Cox Bryan
Kensington Publishing Corp.
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Table of Contents
The Cumberland Creek Mystery series by Mollie Cox Bryan:
Title Page
Acknowledgements
SCRAPBOOK OF THE DEAD
Copyright Page
“Vera? What do you say? Will you marry me?”
Eric was hopeful. His eyebrows were lifted and he had a slight smile on his face.
Vera’s face heated. Marriage? So, this was what the fuss was all about. The private elegant dining room overlooking Massanutten, the fresh tulips, the candlelight. Why hadn’t she seen it coming?
“I’m . . . I’m shocked,” Vera managed to say. She felt the air escape from her chest. She took a deep breath. Lungs don’t fail me now.
He held out a ring. “Will you wear it? It was my mother’s.”
The oval emerald, set with two diamonds on either side, caught the candlelight in its glow.
“Just beautiful,” Vera said.
The silence that followed was remarkably uncomfortable between them. She loved him—this was true. Why didn’t she jump on this opportunity to spend the rest of her life with the man she loved?
“Gun shy?” he asked, softly.
She nodded. “I’m afraid so.” Her stomach twirled.
“But we—”
She held her hand up. “Eric, I love you. It’s not that. I want to be with you. I’m just not sure about marriage.” Afraid she was going to be sick, she took another deep breath.
“It’s the natural order of things, Vera. I mean, I understand your hesitation, given your recent divorce and all that he put you through. But I feel like we are already family,” he said.
“I know. Me too. Can you give me a little time to consider this?”
He sat back in his chair and looked deflated. “You can take as long as you want, Vera. I’m not going anywhere.”
Tears pricked at her eyes. This man never ceased to amaze her.
Yet, she simply could not wear his ring. At least not tonight.
Sheila dropped her scissors on the table with a thud. “You’re being ridiculous.”
They were at their weekly scrapbooking gathering. Five women sat around the table: Vera, her best friend Sheila, Annie, DeeAnn, and Paige.
Vera’s chin poked out and her mouth twisted. She looked back down at her scrapbooking page.
“Wait a minute, Sheila,” Annie said, her dark eyes lit. “Only Vera gets to say if she’s ready to get married again. C’mon.” She glued a metallic gold paper photo frame around a picture of her sons onto her page.
Annie Chamovitz, mom to two boys, freelance writer, always said what was on her mind.
“Yes, but to let that that ass ex-husband of hers dictate her next relationship!” Sheila said, clicking on her laptop.
“Is that what I’m doing?” Vera said after a few minutes.
“What else are you supposed to do? You’ve only been married to one man, so what else are you going to judge things on?” DeeAnn interjected and, true to form, passed a plate of butterscotch chocolate chip cookies toward her. “Take one, you’ll feel better.” DeeAnn owned the town’s bakery and always had a goodie or two to offer. Vera took a cookie.
“Look at your parents,” Sheila said. “They had a great relationship. Your failed marriage was not you. It was all about Bill.”
Vera sucked in her breath—there it was. She wasn’t so certain that the failure had nothing to do with her. It takes two. Could she have tried harder to keep Bill’s “interest”? Were there signs she ignored along the way? Had she gotten too ambivalent? More than anything, Vera didn’t want to hurt Eric. Maybe she didn’t have what it takes to have a good marriage.
She took a bite of the cookie. “Mmm. This is fabulous, DeeAnn! Butterscotch and chocolate chip. Who would have thought?”
“My intern is fabulous,” DeeAnn said and held up a page. “I love working with young people. Fresh ideas. You can’t beat them.”
“Humph,” Paige said. “I used to feel like that, but teaching history all these years, well I’m not so sure about it anymore.”
“Jaded,” Sheila said. “Look at this.” She held up a page that had a photo of her receiving the award aboard the Jezebel, along with a postcard of the entire ship. The page was a startling blue-green and she used black as border for the photos and starred jewels placed haphazardly around the page. A simple yet elegant design.
“Nice,” Vera said. “Are you going to add a journaling piece there?” She pointed to the huge blank area on the page.
Sheila nodded. “At some point. I wrote every day when on the cruise. I just need to transpose it. Figure out what journaling goes where. But this is my last page so I better figure it out soon.”
Vera had finished a mini-album of the scrapbooking cruise. It had given her time to process what had actually happened during that time. It wasn’t just the murder but also all of the intense scrapbooking and methods she’d learned that she found herself wading through in her mind.
Vera scooted around in her seat and looked over Annie’s book, her art journal. “That’s amazing, Annie. I didn’t know you were so creative.”
Annie looked up at her and grinned. “Me, neither. But this has been so much fun, and so satisfying. Even more so than scrapbooking—and even writing for me at this point.”
“But, you’re a writer,” DeeAnn pointed out and took a bite of her cookie. “Isn’t that a problem?”
Annie shrugged. “Not so far. My writing isn’t really creative. At least it doesn’t feel like it anymore.”
“What about your poetry?” Paige asked.
Annie shrugged. “I don’t seem to have time for it.”
“Well, if you ever want to start writing poetry again, I’d love to talk with you about trying to make some cards together. God knows I can’t write,” Sheila said.
Annie looked surprised. “I haven’t thought about my poetry in a long time. But that sounds interesting.”
A silence fell over the group. Vera hoped the subject had been changed, that nobody would mention Eric’s proposal for the rest of the evening.
Sheila bit her tongue so hard that she thought she might draw her own blood. She’d never seen Vera so happy, so centered, and so much in love. Why wouldn’t she marry Eric? Anybody with half a brain could see he was quality. She’d had her doubts at first, but he’d won her over on the scrapbooking cruise.
Sheila looked around the table. She found herself in awe of Annie’s new art journal. It was almost like a meditation for her. A peaceful look would come over Annie’s face as she considered her page—and then she might add a sticker or a button, or journaling. She’d gotten very inspired by the new art journaling movement—something Sheila found intriguing, but didn’t have the time to follow through on. And her lack of time was going to get worse. After her first few days in New York at her new design job, she was amazed by the sheer amount of work her colleagues at David’s Designs managed and what she’d have to accomplish. Everything moved so quickly in that city. And what she found with her design work—well, she found things needed some time to percolate. She wasn’t sure if she could keep up.
“I really love using doilies, like they showed us on the cruise,” Paige said. “I’ve been using them in my winter scrapbook, almost like big huge snowflake
s.”
“Great idea,” DeeAnn said. “You know, I have a bunch of crocheted doilies and I wonder if I can use some of the smaller, more delicate ones on a page. My mother made them. I want to do another scrapbook about all of her handicrafts. She always kept so busy with them.”
“I like that idea,” Vera said. “If I were you, I’d research little bit about making fabric archival. You don’t want the paper to destroy those treasures—or vice versa.”
DeeAnn bit into another cookie.
“How’s the new job going?” she asked after she swallowed her first bite.
Sheila sighed. “So far, so good.”
“How’s Steve dealing?” Vera asked.
“Fine.” Sheila waved her hand. “I leave them food to heat up and they manage. I’ve only been once so far.”
“Oh good, I’d hate to run into him in the grocery store, sulking.” Annie smiled. “When you were on the cruise, I ran into him there. He hated being at the store.”
“He’s so spoiled,” Vera said and laughed.
“That’s crazy, Sheila. He can help you out more,” DeeAnn said.
“I don’t mind,” she replied. “Right now, with Donna home, she helps out a lot.”
“But if you’re going to work, even if it’s mostly from home, he’s going have to pitch in,” Annie replied.
“Earl would never go for that,” Paige said. “I gave up on that years ago.”
The women settled into their scrapbooking even more. DeeAnn journaled, Paige trimmed a photo, and Vera was figuring out the placement of a photo.
“What do you hear from your mother?” Annie asked Vera.
“Not much,” Vera said. “She called when they landed in Paris. Then she told me not to bother them.”
“What?” Sheila said.
“Yes,” Vera said. “At least I know they landed safely. They are staying with several different people while they’re there and she didn’t want to be disturbed. She said she’d call me when they are ready to leave. I think. Is that what she said? Or did she say she’d call when they get back to the States?”
“I’m surprised you’re taking that so well. You’re used to hearing from her every day,” Annie said.
“I miss her,” Vera said after a few minutes. “But you know, I don’t worry as much about her as I used to. Jon watches over her and I know if something happened . . . well . . . he’s there. So I am not freaking out about not hearing from her.”
“Well, then, what are you freaking out about these days? There has to be something!” DeeAnn said and the other women laughed.
Vera waved them off, and Sheila went back to musing over her friends gathered around the scrapbooking table—all of them intent on the work in front of them. Papers and books and embellishments were scattered around the table, along with cookies and drinks.
Sheila’s thoughts turned to her daughter, Donna, who wanted to take the semester off from college. She needed a break—Sheila saw the weariness in her daughter. They were awaiting word to see if her scholarship would be affected by her taking time off. They should hear back any day now, since the semester would be starting soon. Sheila said a little prayer while she looked over the laptop at her friends.
The next day, Paige received a phone call from her son Randy.
“I have news, Mom,” he said.
“What?”
“I have a job interview.” They had been talking about his dissatisfaction with his current job as a pastry chef and his life in New York City. He’d broken up with his boyfriend of many years, and wanted to start anew somewhere else.
“For a cruise line? I know you were talking about that,” she said.
“No,” he said. “For Pamela’s Pie Palace.”
Paige gasped and tears pricked at her eyes. Was it true?
He continued. “They are expanding into other pastries and need someone to help out with it, along with making pies, of course.”
“I’m sure you’ll get the job,” Paige said.
Was it true? Could it be? Could her son be moving back home? She was afraid to hope for too much.
“Don’t be too sure,” Randy said. “I’m sure the competition is fierce. The pay is good for the region.”
“But you are so qualified,”
“Maybe too qualified.”
“Now that’s a possibility,” Paige said, calming herself down. That was a very real possibility. She should not get her hopes up.
“But it would be so nice to come back to Virginia,” he said.
After they finished their conversation, Paige went back to grading papers—of the chores that went along with teaching, this was one of those she hated most. She’d gotten into the field because of her passion for history. She wanted to pass that passion on, but most of the time it didn’t work that way. She sighed and read over the next page.
Earl walked into the room and opened the refrigerator door, pulled out a beer, and turned to look at her. His brown eyes were bloodshot from the late hours he’d been keeping for work.
“Who was on the phone?” he asked with a casual air.
“Randy,” she said, looking back down at her papers.
“Oh yeah? What did he want?”
“He has a job interview,” she said.
Earl opened his beer bottle and a hiss escaped from it. He sat down at the table. “Some fancy-schmancy place in the city?”
She looked up at him. Her eyes met his. What would his reaction be? After years of not speaking, he and Randy now talked occasionally. They were making their way toward one another. Paige didn’t want to rush things. But at the same time, she was excited and hopeful.
“No. At Pamela’s Pie Palace,” she said and her voice cracked.
His eye widened. “Holy shit,” he said.
Even after all these years of marriage, she still found him hard to read at times. So she left it alone when he walked out of the room and turned the television on. He was surfing the channels, trying to find a sporting event. She finished grading the papers, got up, and grabbed two beers from the fridge—one for her and another for him. He was probably ready for his next one.
“Thanks,” he said when she handed it to him and joined him on the couch
“I saw your friend Beatrice today,” he said when a commercial came on.
“I don’t know who you saw, but it wasn’t Bea,” she said. “Bea’s in France with Jon.”
“Are you sure about that?” he said. “I swear I saw her and Jon in the drugstore.”
“Nope. She’s not scheduled to be back for a few more days.”
“The more I think about it, if that wasn’t Beatrice Matthews, I’ll eat my hat.”
“I’m telling you she’s not home. I saw Vera last night. Of course, she was all reflective about Eric’s proposal, but I’m certain she’d have said something if they’d come home early.”
“Still no answer for Eric?”
She shook her head.
The game came back on and the subject was dropped.
Strange, though, for him to confuse Bea and Jon with another couple. How many eighty-four-year-old women were hopping about town with a dashing French man?
Vera had a whole day to herself in the house, a rarity. She loved this old house. So many memories here—and they didn’t build houses like Beatrice’s old Victorian anymore, with all of its interesting nooks and crannies, and sighs and moans.
Vera was living in her girlhood home, sitting in the window seat that she had sat in so many times as a girl, and looking out the window at the mountains. Given all the years, things hadn’t changed much. A tree or two was gone, but more had replaced them. Now an in-ground pool spread across the backyard.
With her mother and Jon still in France and Elizabeth spending the weekend with Bill, Vera’s Sunday stretched out before her, filled with possibilities. She had wanted to get into the kitchen and experiment with chocolate. Today would be a good day to do that. She also needed to do a few loads of laundry, which, now that she had
a child, seemed to be never ending. She had some bookkeeping to do as well, for the dance studio. All of these things floated through her mind as she looked out at the mountains. Eric and his marriage proposal weighed heavy on her mind.
She sighed. Why marriage? They had been having such a good time together. Marriage might spoil things. It certainly had with Bill.
She stroked the new family pet, Junie Bee, a long-haired tortoiseshell cat. She fit right into their household—even Beatrice was fond of Junie Bee. She’d never let Vera have a cat the whole time she was growing up—but when Lizzie had asked for one, Beatrice couldn’t say no.
Junie Bee was three years old. Lizzie had picked her out at the local animal shelter. Junie Bee’s original owner had passed away. The cat was mostly well behaved, with a sweet, playful personality. Lizzie had named her after a character in one of her books and she loved playing with her.
But Junie Bee had a few strange quirks about her that Vera found a little annoying. She’d often found her on the kitchen counter—where no cats were allowed. And the cat had a penchant for shiny things—aluminum foil, jewelry, shiny paper, anything. Also, for an animal, the cat had developed a finicky appetite. No cheap dry cat food for little Miss Junie Bee.
The phone rang and she got up to answer it.
“U.S. Customs,” the voice on the other side of the phone said. “Is this the home of Beatrice Matthews?”
“Yes,” Vera said. “Is everything all right?”
“Yes, but we have a package here that needs to be claimed,” the voice said. “She must have left it behind at the airport.”
“But she isn’t here,” Vera said.
“We can hold it here for her to pick up or we can send it to the house. But we need a credit card to do that.”
“Well, hold on. Let me get my purse,” Vera said.
She walked over to the dresser, the cat tangled beneath her feet, and as she reached for her purse, it struck her as an odd thing that her mother had done. Why ship a package from France instead of bringing it home with her? And why did the person seem to be suggesting her mother had left it there? Beatrice wasn’t scheduled to be back for a few days yet. Vera shrugged.
Scrappily Ever After Page 1