Zimmerman Academy_New Beginnings

by Kathi Daley

  On the other hand, as I age I find my stomach is beginning to droop and my butt is not far behind. Under any other set of circumstances, I might just ignore my sagging body parts, but if I truly want to get back on the horse, as the saying goes, and find a new man to fill the void left when Will moved away, I really should partake in a bit of body maintenance.

  For those of you who are unaware, Will Danner was my first and only boyfriend in more than forty years. I don’t remember ever consciously making the decision never to date, get married, or have children; it’s more that I got busy with my career and the time got away from me. When Will arrived in Ashton Falls I felt my previously dormant heart come to life. Will was younger than I am and he had only recently lost his wife, so I tried not to fall in love with him, but I’m afraid that fall in love with him was exactly what I ended up doing.

  I know Will wasn’t looking for anything serious, but we did get along, and it seemed that perhaps we might even have a future. Just when I was beginning to believe in happily ever after, Will received a job offer on the other side of the country and I saw the future I’d begun to imagine dissolve before my very eyes.

  I know Will gave the situation a lot of thought before deciding to take the job at the college where he was offered a professorship. It was located close to his aging father, who, Will had informed me, was beginning to experience health issues. Will leaving has been hard on me. More than hard. I suppose I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said that on many levels it has been devastating. But I know, like the other heartbreaks and setbacks I have endured in my life, the feeling of emptiness created by Will’s departure will likewise pass. It does help to have a full life now that the girls have moved in and occupied the empty spaces in my life.

  “Wow, you look great,” Pepper commented when I came downstairs. “Are you going somewhere?”

  “Senior fitness.”

  Pepper frowned. “Shouldn’t you have on sweats or yoga pants?”

  “It’s just the orientation, so there won’t be any actual exercise today. Where are the others?”

  “Eve went into town with Alex and Zoe and Pi picked Brooklyn up. I guess they have plans.”

  I felt my light mood deflate just a bit. I didn’t expect the girls to make a big fuss over my birthday, but I did hope we would all be together. Perhaps Brooklyn had forgotten. It wasn’t as if I’d been walking around all week reminding everyone about the big day, but I had marked the date on the calendar we all share.

  “I thought maybe we could go to dinner tonight.”

  “I’m hanging out with Chad today. Maybe another time. In fact, that’s him now.”

  Pepper kissed me on the cheek as she ran out the door.

  I felt a sadness overcome me as I looked at Charlotte, who had followed me down the stairs and into the kitchen. Perhaps I should have made firm arrangements with the girls well ahead of time. It’s not as if they had known me long and would therefore be expected to remember something so insignificant in their busy lives as the date of my birth. Of course I remembered their birthdays. I’d bought each of them a gift, made them each a cake, and sponsored a small party with their friends so they would know they were loved and remembered.

  “It looks as if it’s just going to be the two of us again after all.”

  Charlotte meowed and wound herself around my legs in a circle eight pattern. I supposed it would be fine. I’d spent a lot of birthdays alone. Most of them, if I were to be honest. It’s not that I don’t have friends; it is more that the old Phyllis really didn’t like to make a fuss. In fact, my past five birthdays each have been spent watching an old movie with Charlotte as I sipped a glass of wine and she lapped up a saucer of milk. In the past spending a quiet evening at home was exactly the sort of thing I would have enjoyed. Perhaps it is not just my exterior that has changed over the past year.

  Oh, well; what was done was done. The girls had plans and I wasn’t going to ask them to change them. Besides, if spending the evening with Charlotte in a quiet house was good enough for the old Phyllis, it would certainly be good enough for the new one. It might be rather nice, or so I tried to convince myself. A quiet evening at home would give me the opportunity to reflect on the past year and make plans for the future.

  “Can I have everyone’s attention?” Muffy Baldwin, the seventy-two-year-old leader of the fitness group Ethan and I planned to join, began the orientation all new class members were required to attend. I was chagrined to notice that Muffy was in better shape at seventy-two than I was when I was forty-two. Maybe Ethan’s idea to join the group had merit after all.

  “Let’s begin by getting to know one another. It’s important in this group that we all support the effort and goals of the others we’ll be sharing our time with.”

  I sat quietly and paid attention as Muffy introduced everyone. There were fourteen people in the room including Ethan and me. I knew almost everyone after having lived in Ashton Falls for quite a few years, but there were a few new faces in the group whose names I made a point of committing to memory.

  When we’d arrived I had taken a seat at the front of the room, as I had made a practice of doing over a lifetime in academia, while Ethan had chosen a seat in the back, next to Luke Donovan. I could see they were talking during the introductions, and while I thought it rude not to pay attention while Muffy spoke, they were chatting quietly, so I decided not to say anything.

  “There are ten key points to consider when planning a fitness routine,” Muffy continued.

  She seemed to know her stuff, though I was afraid she was being overly thorough in her presentation. I tried to pay close attention, as I wanted others to do when I spoke, but I found my mind wandering as she rambled on about details that seemed little more than routine.

  Not that I’m not grateful that Muffy was so specific in her instructions, but based on the members of our little group, where I’d say the average age was seventy-five at least, it seemed more likely that someone would break a hip while navigating the steps in front of the fitness center than become dehydrated from a long-distance run. Not that proper hydration during distance training isn’t important; it’s just that in this particular group I found it irrelevant.

  I noticed several members of the group begin to nod off as Muffy continued to drone on. Perhaps having us sit while she held the meeting was a mistake. I had a feeling that if she didn’t get us all standing and walking around a bit, one or more of the seniors in the room was going to slide right off their chair and onto the floor.

  I noticed Hazel sneak in through the side door just as Muffy began to wind down. Talk about perfect timing. She most likely would get credit for attending the meeting because Muffy made a point of waving at her, but she would only be forced to endure a few minutes of what seemed to be an endless monologue. I hoped Hazel would join me in the front of the room, but she sat down in the back next to Luke.

  I have to admit I feel a tiny bit jealous of the companionship Hazel and Luke seem to have found in each other. Not that I begrudge them their relationship, but when I watch the way they look at each other I have to wonder if I will ever find the other half of my soul. There are times when I have a deep realization that I’ve waited too long and am destined to spend my golden year alone.

  “Okay, let’s review before we wrap things up,” Muffy announced.

  I tried to focus all my attention on the woman at the front of the room. I’d been an academic far too long not to understand the importance of the postlecture wrap-up. Still, I found my eyes as well as my mind wandering. Brooklyn thinks I should begin to look for a man to replace Will rather than waiting for one to find me. I suppose women in this day and age do oftentimes initiate dates, but I’m not sure I’ve evolved to quite that degree. At least not yet. Brooklyn told me that I needed to look at men as prospective lovers rather than just as friends or colleagues, which made me blush, but I understand the point she was trying to make. If I wanted a man in my life perhaps I needed to take a more proactive
approach.

  The minute Muffy excused the group I made my way to the back of the room. “How was the meeting with Zak?” I asked Hazel.

  “It went well. We agreed on an extensive library, so ordering the books we need should keep me busy for the next few months. I’m sorry to have missed most of this meeting. How did it go?”

  “It was long and you didn’t miss much. Do you have plans for the afternoon? I thought maybe we could all have lunch.”

  “Actually,” Hazel widened her glance to include myself, Ethan, and Luke, “I was sort of hoping the three of you would have time this afternoon to help me with my little mystery.”

  “Mystery?” I did love a good mystery. Perhaps this birthday would be a little more exciting than I’d first imagined.

  “Do you know the Hornwell house on the edge of town?”

  Ethan, Luke, and I all confirmed that we did.

  “It seems the court finally settled the probate and it sold a few months ago to a lovely family. The new owner brought a box of books into the library last week that had been left in the attic by the previous owner. He didn’t want them and hoped to donate them.”

  I waited for the punch line. So far a box of books from an old house that had been boarded up for ten years or more since Edith Hornwell passed didn’t make for a mystery.

  “Anyway,” Hazel continued, “I found what I initially thought was a personal journal among the books. When I looked more closely at the journal, I realized it was actually a novel written out in longhand. I read it and loved, it so I overnighted it to a friend who works as an editor for a publishing house. She indicated that they were very much interested in publishing the story if we can find the author, or the heir if the author has since passed, and work out a contract. The main problem is that the only information we have as to the identity of the author is the name Anna B.”

  “When was the book written?” I wondered.

  “In 1956.”

  “So the author most likely has passed unless she wrote it when she was very young,” I pointed out.

  “I suppose there’s a good chance the author has passed, but if she was, say, twenty when she wrote the book she’d only be eighty now. I know it’s a long shot, but I thought it would be fun to try to track her down.”

  “I guess it would be fun to do a little sleuthing.” I found myself being pulled into the mystery. “What’s the book about?”

  “It’s the story of a woman who marries an older man when she’s just a teen and then leaves everything behind to start a new life in the west. The story is set in that latter part of the nineteenth century, and in many ways it’s a common story as historical romances go. In my mind the thing that makes it stand out is that the woman who wrote the novel had an exceptional grasp of both human emotion and motivation. When she describes the hardships and heartbreaks her heroine endured, you can easily make the leap to what many women experience in everyday life even in the twenty-first century. How women lived a hundred years ago is very different from how they live today, but how they felt about the challenges and sorrows in their lives is very much the same.”

  “It sounds like a wonderful book. Did you keep a copy?” I asked.

  “No. But I’m sure my friend will return the one I sent her when she’s finished with it. Anyway, I got a sub for the library today because I had the meeting with Zak and wasn’t sure how long it would take, but we finished up early so my day is wide open. Are you interested in joining me in a little investigation?”

  “I’m game for whatever you want to do.” Luke put his arm around Hazel and gave her a brief squeeze.

  “Sounds like a good way to spend the afternoon,” Ethan agreed. “I might even have some documents at the house that will help. Edith Hornwell was a force in the community for a lot of years. There were quite a few news articles written about her, and I happen to have a copy of a biography that was published about her maybe twenty years ago. If the journal was found in her attic she must have known the author and maybe she’s mentioned.”

  “I’m in as well.” I smiled.

  “Let’s all head to my place,” Ethan suggested. “We can have lunch while we come up with a game plan.”

  Ethan lives in a lovely home, although it is very much a bachelor pad. It is decorated in dark colors with hardwood furniture that is a bit austere for my taste, but his library is absolutely fabulous. The floor-to-ceiling bookshelves frame a warm and inviting room where it is easy to imagine whiling away a winter day or a lazy summer afternoon. Ethan seems to spend a lot of time in the room, as evidenced by the worn sofa along one wall, a cozy chair near the fire, and a long table completely covered with books.

  After asking his housekeeper to prepare a light lunch of fruit and sandwiches, Ethan instructed us to head down the hall toward the library. He cleared the table of the books, then instructed us to take seats while he gathered the materials he thought we’d need. As it turned out, Ethan had already done quite a bit of research about Edith Hornwell, which I found both helpful and suspicious. Suspicious of what I really didn’t know, but given the fact that Hazel had just informed us about the manuscript and the mystery, it seemed a tiny bit too convenient that Ethan had the documents he would need close at hand.

  “Is there anything we already know about Edith that might help us choose a direction for our research?” I wondered.

  “I’ve actually read up on the woman, as I have many of the original families,” Ethan informed us. “I can’t claim to know who Anna is or how she might or might not be related to Edith, but I do have a basis from which to initiate our study.”

  Ethan informed us that Edith had first moved to this area in 1930, when the town was known as Devil’s Den. She was just twenty at the time she moved to the mining camp with her new husband, who owned the general store. The couple were wealthy by local standards, so the house her husband built was one of the largest around. Ethan reported that, based on what he had read, the couple seemed quite happy with their lives and their marriage, in spite of the fact that they’d barely known each other prior to the wedding arranged by mutual friends.

  It seemed odd to me that Edith would not only marry a man she’d only met a handful of times but would move across the country, giving up everything she knew to do so, but Ethan informed me that Edith’s father was an abusive man and, in his opinion, she’d been faced with two less than desirable choices and had chosen the lesser of the two evils.

  Edith and her husband had four children, all boys. Her sons, as well as her husband, all predeceased, so when she passed in 2006 at the age of 96, the only heirs left to inherit her estate were distant relatives she had never met. The house stood empty until the past year, when it was sold to the man who’d donated the books to the library.

  I thought it was important to remember that Devil’s Den had turned into little more than a ghost town in the 1940s before it was redeveloped by Ashton Montgomery a decade later. While most residents had left the area during that time, there were a few who stayed through the transition, and Edith was one of them.

  According to Hazel, the novel she found was dated 1956, so the person who wrote it would have lived in the area during the initial phase of the redevelopment of Devil’s Den to Ashton Falls. That is, assuming the person who wrote the novel lived in the area at all. We were just speculating at that point that the author was known to Edith in some way, perhaps even staying in her home. It was entirely possible that Edith had gained possession of the piece of writing in some other way.

  “So Edith would have been forty-six when Anna wrote the novel. We know Edith only had sons; could Anna have been a daughter-in-law?” I asked.

  Ethan opened the biography. “According to this, Edith had four sons. Her oldest son married a woman named Lily Belltree and had three sons of his own. He second son married a woman named Carolyn Kingsley and they had two daughters, Beatrice and Angelica. I suppose it’s possible Anna could be a nickname for Angelica.” Ethan turned a few pages and then turned b
ack a couple, as if looking for something specific. “No, it looks like Angelica would only have been six in 1956, so it couldn’t be her.”

  “And the others?” I asked.

  “Son number three was killed in a riding accident as a young man and never married and son number four married a woman named Glenda Wall who apparently was barren. They adopted two sons. There don’t appear to be any Annas in the family tree that I can see. At least not in the immediate family. Edith had seven sisters, so it’s possible Anna could be a sister, or a niece perhaps?”

  I sighed. “As far as I can tell, we have two big problems. First of all, the novel is simply signed Anna B. Anna is a common name, and the B could stand for anything, so I really don’t see how we are going to be able to track this person down even if she has not yet passed, which, given the fact that it has been sixty years since the manuscript was written, seems more likely than not. Our second problem lies in the fact that the novel was written so long ago that anyone who might have had firsthand knowledge of this Anna has most likely moved on or passed on. I’m not sure where to begin.”

  “It would be easy enough to see if Edith had a sister or niece named Anna, I suppose,” Hazel offered. “I’ve helped several people create family histories over the years and you’d be surprised how much information is readily available on the Internet if you know where to look for it. Chances are Edith’s sisters are all dead but there might be a niece.”

  “Ethan has an extra computer in the den if you want to take a look I can help,” Luke offered.

  Hazel looked at Ethan.

  “Fine by me. There are a few people in town who lived in the area in 1956. Maybe we should just ask around to see if anyone remembers anything.”

  I hadn’t lived in Ashton Falls that long so I didn’t know which of our neighbors Ethan might be referring to, but Luke came up with a name right off the bat: Burt Pollin. Burt, like Edith, had lived in the area prior to the redevelopment and stayed on when the others left. Luke wasn’t certain of his age, but we all agreed he had to be in his midnineties.