No Shadow
Prodigal Sons of Cane: Book One
S.N. Clemens
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 by S.N. Clemens. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Epilogue
Chapter One
Helen Walton stood in the doorway of her supervisor’s office, nearly hugging herself with excitement. “He’s selling!” she announced.
Judy, the director of the university library at Cane College, blinked as she looked away from her computer screen. “Pardon me?” Judy was an attractive, polished woman in her mid-fifties, and she was never less than meticulously polite.
Helen grinned, so happy she was practically shaking with it. “He’s selling.”
“The manuscript?” Judy’s face changed as she processed the information, and she rose to her feet behind her desk.
“Yes. The manuscript. Thomas just called to let me know. He’s definitely selling the manuscript.” Unable to contain herself any longer, Helen clapped her hands like a girl. “We can buy it! We can finally get it!”
For the last five years, Helen had yearned for the original manuscript—written out in the author’s own hand—of Geneva Bale’s first novel, Shadow Past.
Bale was a nineteenth century Appalachian novelist who had been born and raised in Cane, Virginia. Helen liked to think of Bale as the American Jane Austen. Buying this particular manuscript for Cane College’s library collection had been Helen’s mission for the last six months.
And finally the library could acquire it.
After discussing a few plans, Helen left Judy’s office, popping her head into other offices to share the good news.
Ezra Harrison had owned the manuscript for the eighty-six years of his life. He’d inherited it from his father, who’d been Geneva Bale’s great-grandson. Six months ago, Helen had started talking to Ezra about possibly selling the manuscript to the local college.
Ezra was on the point of caving when he had the stroke. After that, of course, the manuscript’s fate was put on hold. He only partially recovered from the stroke, and four months later he died from a second one.
The precious manuscript had passed, with the rest of Ezra’s estate, to his grandson Thomas. So, after giving him a respectable amount of time to grieve and make arrangements, Helen approached Thomas about the manuscript on behalf of Cane College Library.
Just today he’d made the decision to sell it.
Helen had made extra sure not to take advantage of the tragedy of Ezra’s death to pursue her own agenda, but the manuscript was important—to literary scholarship, to the college, to her.
And now it looked like they might finally get it for the Bale collection.
Helen headed for the stairs, her chunky heels clipping on the concrete as she descended to the library basement level, where the English department offices were located.
Dr. Lorraine Eckols was a tall, attractive black woman in her mid-thirties. She’d worked at Cane College for eight years, having been hired the same year as Helen. She was four years older than Helen, but they were both single professional women in a small town in the Appalachian Mountains where such women were few and far between. They’d had a lot in common to begin with, and the intervening years had cemented their friendship.
“What’s wrong?” Helen asked, as she popped her head in through Lorraine’s partially opened door.
Lorraine’s angular features twisted in a tortured expression. “It’s the end of September. What do you think is the matter?”
Helen recognized the signs, and she didn’t have to find the large stack of papers on her friend’s desk to understand. With a sympathetic smile, she guessed, “First papers to grade of the semester?”
Lorraine moaned and sank her head into her hands.
In too good a mood to be truly sympathetic, Helen giggled at Lorraine’s exaggerated misery. Since she had a dual Master’s degree in English and Library Science, Helen had taught a few freshman English classes herself, and she knew the kind of dread an English teacher suffered when faced with a big stack of ungraded papers. But still… “One of the joys of the profession.”
“What are you all happy and squirmy about?”
Helen hadn’t realized she’d been so obviously wriggling with delight. She straightened up and composed herself. “He’s selling!”
It took Lorraine only five seconds to process the words. She stood up, raising her hands in the air, her eyes lifted toward the ceiling. “Hallelujah! Thank you, Jesus!”
Lorraine, who’d written one of the two academic articles on Bale published in the last ten years, had as much of an investment in the manuscript as Helen did.
“Did he agree to sell to the library?” Lorraine asked, coming around her desk to join Helen. She was wearing a stylish, urban suit in gray and red. She was originally from Chicago, and she still didn’t entirely fit into the little mountain town.
Helen forced herself to sober a bit as she admitted, “No. He just said that he’s decided to sell it, but who else would want it but the library?” When Lorraine opened her mouth to respond, Helen hurried on, “You know Geneva Bale isn’t important enough yet for big research universities or archives to be interested. While we’re sure she’ll hit it big soon, she hasn’t yet. We’ve got the manuscripts of her other two novels in the Bale collection. We’re the obvious choice.”
“I know. I know.” A mischievous quirk lifted the corner of Lorraine’s mouth. “And it doesn’t hurt that you have such a convenient ‘in’ with the seller.”
To her infinite annoyance, Helen felt her cheeks start to grow hot.
Lorraine cackled. “I knew it! You act all innocent and clueless, but he’s definitely interested in you.”
“He’s not interested in me. You’re being ridiculous.”
“Of course he is. Why does he keep calling you up to discuss the manuscript?”
“Because he wanted to know more about it in order to make a good decision about whether or not to sell.” Helen stuck out her chin obstinately, silently daring her friend to doubt her word.
Lorraine just laughed again. “Oh. I see.”
Thomas Harrison, Ezra’s grandson, was a widower in his early forties. And, while Helen had told herself firmly that he was just being kind and interested in the manuscript, she’d had a few little suspicions that maybe his interest was more personal.
The thought made her ridiculously shy. She was a mature, intelligent thirty-two year old woman, but she’d actually had very little experience with men.
In school, she’d always been shy and bookish—definitely not popular-girl material. In college she’d dated occasionally, but she’d been wrapped up in her studies, and none of the guys she was really interested in showed her any attention at all.
In graduate school, single, straight men who shared her faith had been harder to find, and she’d come away from her three years in South Carolina still single
She’d moved back to her hometown then and gotten the job at Cane Coll
ege. After that, her dating possibilities had completely dried up. There simply weren’t very many eligible men in the small rural town or the surrounding communities, and the ones that were available showed no interest in a quiet woman with two higher academic degrees.
Helen hadn’t had a date in almost four years.
So just the thought that someone might be interested in her—even someone like Thomas, about whom she wasn’t particularly excited—made her feel rather shy.
“Are you going over there today?” Lorraine asked, bringing Helen out of her reflections.
“Yeah. Judy said I could leave at three o’clock to see Thomas. He’s out at the house now. Obviously I can’t do any of the real negotiations for the sale, but we want to make sure we have an understanding with him about the library’s buying the manuscript.”
“It’s a good thing you dressed up today then.”
Helen glanced down at herself. Despite her lack of social life, she privately thought that, at thirty-two, she was prettier than she’d ever been in her life. Over the years, she’d developed her own sense of style, and she raided garage sales and thrift stores to find fun vintage pieces and old-fashioned accessories. Today, she wore a brown forties-style suit with short fitted jacket, pleated skirt, and braided silk trim. She combined it with a ruffled pink blouse and faux pearls.
She knew some of the students at the college snickered at her old-fashioned style and considered her the quintessential librarian with her small wire-framed glasses and her long hair pulled up in a chignon. Helen was no longer insecure about her appearance or her taste in clothes, however. And she actually liked to encourage the image of the librarian, since she thought it fit her very well.
She wore her contacts today, rather than her glasses, and a glimpse in Lorraine’s mirror proved that she looked very nice—with her blue eyes shining and her clear, fair skin glowing with excitement.
“You look very pretty,” Lorraine assured her, having noticed her brief assessment. “I’m sure Thomas will appreciate it.”
“Lorraine!” Helen felt her cheeks warming again. “Stop it. I think Thomas is very nice, but we have no proof he’s interested in me. And, to tell you the truth, I’m not really attracted to him.”
“I was afraid you might say that. But who knows? That could change. If he asks you out, would you even consider accepting?”
Helen knew that many happy couples hadn’t started with initial attraction. She knew that might come later, and she would be a fool to dismiss a good man simply because she wasn’t drawn to him at first sight. Long ago, she’d given up her dreams of being swept away by a handsome dream guy.
She just wasn’t the girl those men chose. She wasn’t the girl any man chose.
So she gave her friend her most disdainful sniff. “Thomas is a really good guy, and I haven’t had a date in four years. Of course I would go out with him.”
***
“It really is a wonderful house,” Helen said, slanting a smile up to Thomas as they sat on a bench in the front yard of the home that had been in the Harrison family for five generations.
When she’d arrived, he’d been working in the yard, trying to clear out some of the underbrush that had tangled around the dilapidated gazebo. Thomas was a contractor, and he was doing most of the work around his grandfather’s house on his own.
“I like it,” Thomas admitted. He stared up at the sprawling Victorian mansion. It had been run down in the last twenty years, since Ezra had refused to put much money into restoring it, but the lines of the porch and gables and the architectural bones of the house were strong, charming, and a testament to another time. “It needs a lot of work.”
“Well, it’s a good thing you’re so good at that sort of work,” she said.
Thomas wasn’t a handsome man. He had a pleasant face and mild brown eyes, with a receding hairline and a belly that wasn’t quite flat. She liked his bashful smile, though, and she couldn’t help but be flattered by the flicker of admiration in his expression as he looked over at her.
She would have to be very careful not to flirt with him, just because she liked the attention and it had been so long since she’d gotten any.
Deciding to move them on to the purpose of her visit, she said lightly, “So you’ve decided to sell the manuscript after all?”
“Yeah. It’s out for appraisal right now. I suppose I could hold onto it and hope it increases in value. But I really don’t know anything about keeping a manuscript, and I don’t want it to get damaged. So I might as well sell it. Especially since there’s interest in it now.”
Helen sucked in a quick breath, suddenly nervous by the obliqueness of his last words and the almost embarrassed way he’d glanced away from her. She said very slowly, “The library has always been interested in obtaining it.”
“Yeah. I know.” He turned back to meet her eyes. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. You see, earlier this week, someone else approached me about it. The library is no longer the only interested buyer.”
Helen swallowed, clenching her hand at her side and trying to breathe around her sudden surge of defensiveness. She’d been working on this for so long. Surely he wasn’t going to sell the precious manuscript to somebody else. “Someone else wants it?” she said, her voice a little shrill.
Thomas studied her face in concern. “I knew you’d be upset. I’m not saying I’m going to sell it to him, but I wanted you to know.”
“Him? So it’s not another library?” She felt a wash of relief at his nodded affirmation. Individuals tended to have far fewer resources than institutions like libraries—even ones as small as Cane College.
“It’s a man, yes. He’s not connected to any library.”
“Why does he want the manuscript, then?”
“I don’t really know. He said something about it being a good investment.”
Helen gasped in outrage. “An investment! He wants it as an investment!” With effort, she moderated her tone. “The library really wants it,” she said, “And not as an investment. It’s important to the history of literature and the history of Cane. You know Geneva Bale is the only important author in Cane’s history. The manuscript is so much more important than money.”
“I know. If money wasn’t an issue, I’d sell it to you in a minute, but fixing up this place is going to cost a fortune—even just to fix it up enough to sell it.”
Helen’s gut started to twist in anxiety, as she began to see a whole picture develop. “The library will be as generous as possible,” she said carefully. She was not equipped to discuss financial specifics with Thomas. That would have to be done by someone else. Judy had met with the Dean a couple of months ago to discuss a budget for the manuscript purchase. While Helen had some rough estimates about what the school would be able and willing to pay, she hoped Thomas wouldn’t want to get into all of that now.
“I know,” he said. “I just wanted you to know. This other buyer has a lot of resources himself, and he’s made it clear that he’ll top whatever the library offers.”
This news was so upsetting she actually covered her mouth with her hand. Who would do such a thing—snatch a manuscript away from a library where it obviously belonged? And who would have the spare money at hand to pay for it?
“Who is it?” she finally whispered.
Looking awkward and embarrassed, Thomas handed her a business card.
She stared down at it blankly until the name finally broke through her dazed consciousness. Then things started to make sense.
The history of Cane had always been dominated by two families. The Harrison family, whose heir was now seated beside her. And the Cane family, after whom the town was named.
In the late 1700s, Joshua Cane had founded the town as a stop on a wagon trail through the Appalachians. His family had lived in the town ever since. It really was remarkable, in as transitory a culture as the modern United States, that a family could have the kind of rooted history that the Canes had in Cane, Virgini
a.
Another Joshua Cane—who’d died only six years ago—had been able to trace his heritage back in a direct line to the founder of the town. He’d gone off to live in New York for several years in his twenties but had returned to marry his high school sweetheart, Abigail. They’d had three sons before Abigail had divorced Joshua.
The three Cane boys were all handsome, dark-haired, and talented—excelling at sports, at academics, at anything they put their hands to. The Canes had been members of one of the local churches growing up, the church Helen’s father still pastored.
She’d known the boys growing up, although she’d never been in their social circle. The youngest of the boys had been a grade above her in school. She’d had a hopeless crush on him—on all three of them, really. Who wouldn’t? They were like princes: handsome, charismatic heirs to the leading family in the town. They’d never known she existed, of course.
Then, in her late teens, one by one they had all gone. Not all at once but gradually over a few years. No one exactly knew what happened. But they left their father, their faith, and their hometown. As far as Helen knew, they hadn’t been back.
It was both a tragedy and an endless source of speculation for the town. What had happened to drive all three of the Cane boys away? No one knew.
The oldest of the Cane sons was Andrew. Four years older than Helen, he’d always been a figure of awe to her as a child. He’d gone to college and then gotten a Master’s degree in International Business. He’d moved quickly to the top of his profession. Partnering with his college roommate, he’d started his own web design company in D.C., which had boomed in the last five years. Helen knew the details of his successful career, since they were often discussed around Cane. She hadn’t seen him in years, though—not since she was a senior in high school and he made the last trip home he’d ever made.
Andrew Cane had money and power and talent, and his life had always been privileged. He’d long ago forsaken his roots and apparently his faith.
No Shadow (Prodigal Sons of Cane) Page 1
