House at Whispering Oaks

by Hargrove Perth

  House at Whispering Oaks

  Hargrove Perth

  Dorothy Dawson

  House at Whispering Oaks

  Copyright December 2014 Hargrove Perth and Dorothy Dawson

  All Rights Reserved. No portion of this work may be reproduced by any means whatsoever without the explicit written consent of the author and the author's publisher. This work contains people who have been used in a fictionalized setting for the purpose of historical reference. Any resemblance to persons living or deceased is used strictly for the embellishment of the story to lend creditable of the fictionalized work. The copyright laws of 1988, namely the Berne Convention Copyright Laws of 1988, and the Digital Millennium Copy Right Act of 1998, enacted by Congress protect this work from piracy and any transmission, trade, or sale through means electronic, printed, shared, or otherwise is strictly prohibited and will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

  Printed in the USA. Published by Star Crossed Hearts at Celestial Waters Publishing. This book is a Clean Read, suitable for YA, New Adult, and Adult readers.

  Dedication

  This book is lovingly dedicated to our spouses who give us their undying support, allowing us to pursue our dreams, and give us days made of stardust….

  Two women, who became the best of friends, one a certified Yankee, and the other a certified Southerner who never saw anything but kindness in each other and a love of writing, wrote this book.

  Chapters

  Chapter One Cordie’s Journey

  Chapter Two Whispering Oaks Plantation

  Chapter Three Balcony Blues

  Chapter Four A New Day

  Chapter Five Starting Over

  Chapter Six Guidance

  Chapter Seven Lost

  Chapter Eight Schelling House Summer 1863

  Chapter Nine Petulia

  Chapter Ten Daughters of the South

  Chapter Eleven The Secret Room

  Chapter Twelve Bolivar Plantation at Whispering Oaks 1864

  Chapter Thirteen Revisiting Petulia

  Chapter Fourteen Bingo?

  Chapter Fifteen Ruby

  Chapter Sixteen Down by the Riverside

  Chapter Seventeen Save Me

  Chapter Eighteen I’m Not Crazy

  Chapter Nineteen Finding Her Way

  Chapter Twenty Cricket the Betrayer

  Chapter Twenty One Maggie

  Chapter Twenty Two Compromise

  Chapter Twenty Three Storm

  Chapter Twenty Four Schelling Plantation Fall 1864

  Chapter Twenty Five Miss Cricket

  Chapter Twenty Six Cordie Goes Home

  Chapter Twenty Seven Our Niece

  Chapter Twenty Eight August 22nd 1866

  Chapter One

  Cordie’s Journey

  “Oh dear heavens,” Sadie Buckner whispered, not moments after answering the phone. Tears streamed down her face as her husband entered the room.

  “What is it?” he asked. Sadie waved her hand, dismissing his question as she listened intently.

  “Who is taking care of her?”

  Jesse knew a question like that one didn’t have a pleasant ending. He waited until his wife laid her cell phone on the table before questioning her further.

  “What happened?”

  Sadie collapsed onto the sofa, staring blindly out the window, nearly unable to believe what the New York State Police Officer had just told her.

  “James and Amy were on that plane,” she whispered. The reality of the situation really hadn’t set in yet. Her brother and his wife were dead, leaving Cordelia alone.

  “Where is Cordie? Is she okay?” Jesse asked immediately, wondering where his niece was and who was taking care of her, all the while praying she wasn’t on the plane with his in-laws.

  “She’s in state custody until we can get there.” Sadie burst into full-blown sobs. Her relationship with her brother had been very close when they were children, but they had drifted apart after James moved to New York to take a job working in the Attorney General’s Office. Cordie had come to the plantation only once when she much younger. Now she was a senior in high school. It seemed like ages ago.

  “I’ll make the arrangements. We will take the first flight out. Don’t worry, baby, we’ll get Cordie and bring her home.

  Sadie barely heard her husband as he called Savannah Travel to book the flight. All she could think about was the fact her brother was gone, her niece was sitting in some strangers house, alone without family, and her parents were dead.

  Cordie sat in the living room of the group home looking at the floor with little emotion. The first thing the doctor who saw her, after she blacked out, had done, was sedate her to keep her calm. She stared aimlessly, knowing her parents were gone, but unable to cry. She knew her Aunt Sadie would come for her. She just knew it.

  “Cordie, why don’t you come to the kitchen, and we’ll make you something to eat,” Florence Smith said. She had seen many children come to the home under duress, usually due to abuse or some other horrible treatment. This was the first teen that had ever come to her after the death of both parents. She was nearly at a loss as to what to say to comfort the young woman that was sitting on her couch.

  “I’m not hungry,” Cordie whispered, wishing her aunt and uncle were there.

  Florence, who was not a small woman, sat on the couch alongside Cordie. She knew a little bit about Cordie’s family from talking to Child Protective Services when she picked Cordie up at the police station.

  “So your family is from Georgia, mine is too. Do you know very much about the history of Savannah?”

  “Not really,” Cordie whispered. She didn’t want to talk and only wanted the woman to go away and leave her alone.

  “My family is from Alabama now, but during the war, they were slaves in Georgia. Not sure exactly where right off the top of my head since my great-gram was the one who knew all that. She passed away some time ago but always said Georgia was far prettier than Alabama any day of the week, despite what her momma endured there.”

  Cordie really didn’t care to make small talk, and she knew Florence was only trying to distract her from what had happened. It was a nice enough gesture, but that last thing she wanted to talk about was Georgia. She barely knew her aunt and uncle, except for the customary call on her birthday and the holiday cards they sent with money inside. Cordie had only stayed at the plantation house once when she was eight years old during a two-week vacation. Now they were the only family she had. Everything about her life would be different now. New school, new friends, new everything, and it wasn’t something she wanted.

  “I don’t feel like talking,” Cordie whispered. Florence stood and patted Cordie on the shoulder before starting to walk toward the kitchen to make something for her to eat. “Mrs. Smith, thanks for being so nice,” Cordie said.

  “You’re welcome, child, now let me get you a sandwich.”

  A whole day had passed since the plane crashed; the police showed up at her home, and whisked her away. It seemed like a year to Cordie as she sat alone without anyone she knew around her. She had hoped the police were going to let her stay with a friend, like at Becky’s house, until her aunt and uncle could come, but they told her not since her father had listed Aunt Sadie as her legal guardian in the event something happened.

  Surely, Aunt Sadie knows by now. I wonder what is taking her so long? Cordie thought.

  Cordie turned when she heard a car pull into the drive and saw it was a taxi. She saw her aunt and uncle rush from the car up the stairs and begin frantically knocking on the door. She leapt from the couch, running to the door, and opened it before she fell into her aunt’s arms. Mrs. Smith walked down the hall and smiled.
She was relieved her family had arrived so quickly.

  “What information do you need?” Jesse asked immediately, pulling out his identification to show Mrs. Smith.

  “Why don’t you follow me to the kitchen where I’ll get the release papers? Would you and your wife like a cup of coffee?” she asked.

  “No, but thank you, we just want to get Cordie home.”

  Jesse followed Mrs. Smith to the kitchen as Sadie wrapped her arms around her niece.

  “You and I will fly home right away. Uncle Jesse will stay behind and take care of whatever needs to be done with the house and get your things sent. Do you want to pick up a few things before we leave?”

  Cordie really hadn’t thought about going home, at least not to pick up clothing or anything else she would need for the trip.

  “I guess we should,” she began and started crying. “What am I going to do Aunt Sadie?”

  Sadie tucked Cordie’s hair behind her ear and held her tightly.

  “Don’t you worry that pretty little head of yours about a thing. It will all be right as rain. You’ll see.”

  Right as rain, momma used to say that,Cordie thought as she began to cry even harder.

  Chapter Two

  Whispering Oaks Plantation

  Cordie could hardly believe her eyes as the long drive came into view. The house was basically in the middle of nowhere except for one other plantation house that sat along the same road. She stared at how the Live Oaks framed the driveway, overhanging and shadowing the road and the drive. She had forgotten how large the house at Whispering Oaks was since last she visited.

  “You can pick whatever room you want to be yours, Cordie, but if you pick one of the ones upstairs, on the backside of the house, you get a nice breeze from the North at night. We don’t run the air very often. Your daddy and I didn’t get that luxury when we were kids. I guess it’s just something I never grew accustomed to as I got older. Besides, you’ll have the balcony too. It’s nice to sit out there in the evening.”

  “Thanks,” Cordie whispered. My life is over…this couldn’t get any worse. No big city. No friends. No Metropolitan Art Center…no mom…no dad… Cordie thought as she stared at her aunt, with wide eyes.

  The list of things she was thinking could go on forever were it not for her aunt, continuously talking, and interrupting her train of thought.

  “I know this hard for you, Cordie. It’s hard for me too. I loved your dad more than you could ever know, and I made him a promise the day you were born that if anything ever happened, we would take care of you and love you. That’s what I am going to do. I can’t replace your mother, and I would never want to do that. I just hope in time, you could be happy here like your dad and I were when we were young.”

  “I know, Aunt Sadie.”

  Sadie stopped the car and opened the trunk. Cordie didn’t want to go home with her parents gone so the only bag in the trunk was just the carry-on Sadie took with her.

  “Come on,” she said, after picking up her bag and motioning for Cordie to get out of the car. “Later today, we’ll head into town and pick a few things up, do a bit of shopping, so you have some clothes to wear until Jesse gets your things sent.”

  She stood behind her aunt as Sadie unlocked the door. “Welcome to Whispering Oaks.”

  Cordie followed her inside, stopping in the foyer to look at the portraits hanging on the wall that dated to before the Civil War. She paused at the picture of her father and then her aunt, noting how much alike they looked.

  “We are lucky those ever survived the war,” Sadie commented as she stood behind Cordie. “Your great-grandpa, he rolled those paintings up and tapped them to the rafters in the secret room. Did I show that to you when you were here last?”

  “You really have a secret room?” Cordie asked with astonishment.

  “We sure do. It isn’t like you think, though. It’s not like a regular room. It actually runs the length of the house on the west side where there are no windows. It’s long and skinny, but served the purpose.”

  “What did they hide in there?”

  “Oh, a little bit of everything. Family heirlooms, dresses, some of the furniture all went into the room. You had to be careful how much you put away, and your great-grandma Louisa, she only kept out her plain dresses so it looked like the plantation had been raided long before it really was. Our family was lucky they didn’t burn Whispering Oaks down like some of the homes in the area. We were very lucky. So was the Schelling Plantation we passed on the road. Nearly all the houses around our families burned. Some people are still mad about the war. I just think it is sad it ever happened in the first place. So many families lost everything on both sides. I can’t imagine what it must have been like.”

  By all accounts, her dad had painted the picture of the perfect Southern Belle when he spoke about Sadie, and it surprised Cordie that her aunt wasn’t angry about the Civil War. It seemed a natural response to her.

  “You aren’t mad?” Cordie asked.

  “That was a long time ago, Cordie. Your great-grandpa and your grandpa were mad enough for all the generations that followed. Things were different when I was growing up. I was born in 1962. They cared about love and peace, bettering the world for all men and women, and real equality just when I was starting to understand what was happening. Your dad was a late baby so he didn’t get to see as much as I did. Things were a lot better in the seventies, but we still have a long way to go.”

  Cordie wondered how old her aunt was by the way she talked. She didn’t look a day past being in her early forties, but knew that wasn’t possible. Her dad was forty-seven, and her mom had only been thirty-nine.

  “Well, anyway, it was a long time ago. Things are better, but they aren’t as good as they could be.”

  “We owned slaves, then?” Cordie asked in near disbelief. Her father never talked about the family history, and she never thought about the fact the house her dad was raised in was built long before the Civil War. It just didn’t seem possible her family had been slave owners.

  “Sadly, Cordie, we did, but let’s not dwell on that. Let me give me you a tour,” Sadie said, changing the subject.

  It appeared to Cordie the past had a certain sadness for her aunt even though she hadn’t lived during that time, like the events of their ancestors provided Sadie with a certain amount of shame.

  “What happened to the Schelling family? Do they still own the house down the road?”

  “Yes, but it’s boarded up and has been that way for years. There’s a rift in that family that dates clear back to the war. Something about one of the sons running off to join forces with the North or at least that is what the talk was, all I can say is it split the family right in two.”

  “That’s kind of sad. I hate to see empty houses. It’s like they lost their soul. When I drove around New York with mom and dad, we saw all these neat row houses that people lost during the crash. It really made me sad. Dad always says…” Cordie stopped mid-sentence realizing she was speaking in present tense as though her father was still alive. “Dad always said a house unloved has no soul.”

  Chapter Three

  Balcony Blues

  Cordie allowed her aunt to distract her the rest of the day. Together, they purchased Cordie’s new clothes and a few hygiene essentials. Sadie urged her niece to browse the bedding and décor sections.

  She wanted Cordie to feel free to make the room she’d chosen her own. But, Cordie actually liked the old charm of the room. She loved the antique chest, and the bedframe was ornate and perfect. She felt it would be a shame to ruin it.

  Hoping to make her aunt feel more at ease, Cordie compromised. She selected two pictures to hang on the wall. She gazed at the scenes so rich in color and perfectly framed.

  Her mother was from the south too. Although she was younger, and her roots weren’t quite as deep as those of her aunt’s, her mother loved growing up in the country. She often talked about the old magnolia tree that sat in the midd
le of their backyard. Cordie pictured it perfectly in her head, as her mother would tell the stories of all the tea parties and games that took place beneath the tree, of all the warm summer nights she chased fireflies and put them in mason jars.

  Tears welled in her eyes, and she fought them back quickly before her aunt saw. Cordie knew her aunt was trying so hard to make her feel better, and she was old enough to know that they were both hurting. Cordie wouldn’t add to her aunt’s sorrow when she had taken her in when she had nothing.

  Her aunt had given her a bit of space while she shopped for new towels for Cordie’s bathroom. She appreciated that her aunt was being respectful of her feelings and was not trying to control her choices or be too motherly.

  Cordie didn’t have any siblings so she couldn’t imagine what it was like to lose a brother. All she knew was that losing her parents was unimaginable. She didn’t even think she had let it register yet. Her parents were gone. Forever.

  Her heart ached to see them again. She hadn’t totally let herself feel the pain that accompanied their absence. She had pushed it into the pit of her stomach, forced herself to breathe and concentrate on the kindness being shown by her aunt.

  She had no idea what her life would be like now. Missing her friends and her life would be natural, but Cordie wasn’t going to write off a new experience. Savannah was charming. If her mother was here, she would tell her to make the most of it.

  Cordie longed to have some time alone. She was thankful for all her aunt was trying to do to help her. She just needed more space than a couple of aisles.

  “I just got off the phone with your uncle, sweetheart,” Sadie said, pulling Cordie from her reverie. “It’s going to be tomorrow before he can return. He has your things all packed up and ready to be shipped. He’s going to stay in a hotel tonight.”