Small Town Secrets

by Roxanne Snopek

  Small Town Secrets

  Secrets of Cherry Lake Romance

  Roxanne Snopek

  Small Town Secrets

  Copyright © 2015 Roxanne Snopek

  EPUB Edition

  The Tule Publishing Group, LLC

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-1-943963-08-9

  Dedication

  The talented team at Tule Publishing, who gave us free rein with this new series, the brilliant Sinclair Sawhney for being, well, brilliant and the authors with whom I was lucky enough to create this lovely world: Paula Altenburg, Joan Kilby and Jeannie Watt. You guys are awesome!

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Dear Reader

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  The Secrets of Cherry Lake Series

  About the Author

  Dear Reader,

  I’ve always been the sort of person who looks at others and thinks I wonder what went on in their past to make them the people they are today. The mystery of people fascinates me because nothing is ever simple. And in writing this novella, I had an opportunity to dip into the lives of two immensely complicated and fascinating people. Though they only appear briefly in the novels that follow, their character and love is part of the bedrock on which the world of Cherry Lake is founded.

  So here’s to Nate and Pansy. I hope you enjoy their company as much as I have!

  –Roxanne

  Chapter One

  ‡

  Spring, 2006

  Jackson Cherry Orchard

  The cherry orchards on the banks of Flathead Lake under a moonlit sky were a place of magic and romance. Boys and girls, sitting side by side, the air thick with words unsaid, kisses not yet risked, every breath, every moment so intense. So precious.

  But on Grad Bonfire night, this same tiny portion of the Jackson Cherry Orchard was less a place of magic and romance and more of a raucous pit of raging hormones.

  The high school never had a shortage of chaperones for the event, but problems only began after the adults left at the appointed hour, supposedly shutting down the festivities.

  “I’m too old and frail for this,” said Pansy Oppenheimer, tucking her cardigan around her thin but sturdy shoulders. She stood on a gentle rise overlooking the mass of bodies dancing in the firelight below. She wasn’t the least bit frail and she’d never be too old for this.

  “And they aren’t nearly old enough.” Nathan Jackson patted the lawn chair beside him. “I told you you didn’t need to come tonight.”

  Nate had the timeless, rugged Jack Palance appeal, but she still pestered him to join her in her endless walking about town, worried about his heart health. And though Nate had once compared her to Christie Brinkley in comfortable clothes – a compliment she tucked away like a debutante’s treasured nosegay from her first dance – Pansy described herself as having the musculature, cardiovascular system and enthusiasm of a young goat.

  “I’ll quit when you quit,” she told him.

  He snorted and passed her a thermos of hot tea.

  Unburdened by motherhood herself, Pansy happily took an interest in all the young people of her town and made a point of following the various events and dramas that played out around her. And Nathan Jackson’s family had always held a special place in her heart.

  “Can’t let you wander around alone up here in the dark,” she replied. “You’d break a hip or something.”

  Nate had taken to overseeing these goings-on back when he’d still been running the Jackson Cherry Orchard and had a naturally vested interest in it not being burned to the ground. Though he’d long since handed the business over to his son, old habits died hard.

  Everyone knew that the after party was the real party. So, once a year, when the teachers set down the mantle of responsibility with a sigh of relief that their part was over, and parents locked up and went to bed, insistent in their belief that their kids weren’t the type to sneak out at night, Pansy and Nate took over.

  “I put a box of condoms on the table beside the ice buckets,” said Pansy.

  She waited for the inhale. Nate didn’t disappoint.

  “If Robert finds them during the harvest,” he said, “he’ll have a heart attack. I hope you can live with that.”

  Pansy loved Robert, of course, but it was her steadfast opinion that Nate’s oldest son had been born with a rough-barked cherry branch protruding from his nether cheeks.

  She shrugged. “It’s not the first time these trees have witnessed shenanigans by those on the cusp of adulthood. He’ll survive.”

  A low, raunchy chuckle rumbled up in her. Oh, there’d been shenanigans, all right.

  “Will and Brett will see to it that there’s no evidence left behind, anyway,” said Nate.

  Too bad. A little dose of reality would be good for Robert.

  “Are they both working the harvest?”

  Nate nodded.

  Robert’s son, Will, and Brett, son of Nate’s youngest boy Hal, were currently being groomed to take over the orchard. Pansy, a strident liberated woman ahead of her time, who’d once railed that Nate’s twin daughters Jane and Cathy hadn’t even been considered as potential heirs to the cherry throne, didn’t bother asking if the granddaughters were in the running.

  “Is it by choice?” she asked. “Do the boys want the orchard?”

  “That’s their problem,” answered Nate with the wisdom of being a generation removed.

  A comfortable silence descended between them, broken only by the catcalls, shouts and relentless music drifting up from below. The more things changed, she thought, the more they stayed the same.

  Pansy – Aunt Pan as the younger ones liked to call her – surveyed the bodies sitting cross-legged on the ground, the planes of their faces dancing orange in the flickering light. So full of promise, so much anticipation and idealism. Jane’s only child, Jessica, and Cathy’s oldest daughter, Carrie, were among the celebrants and Pansy’s heart ached with vicarious pride.

  Their lives lay ahead of them like a fresh, open road and a full tank of gas. Who knew what they might accomplish?

  Then she frowned and stood up.

  “Jessica Palmer!” she called. “Unless you’re being examined for poison ivy, the shirt stays down.”

  The girl either didn’t hear, or was doing a dang good job of making it look that way. She had a wild streak and the poor boy she was with had no idea the world of heartbreak she was undoubtedly setting him up for.

  “But you brought condoms,” observed Nate with a laugh. “Seems a little hypocritical to me.”

  “Details,” she responded. “I’m acting as honorary mother tonight.”

  Nate had nothing to say to that. Janie Jackson had done her daughter no favors by choosing that Palmer fellow to father her only child. Wealth and status were fine. It turned out that marriage and parenthood weren’t what either of them wanted. Janie wanted a perfect princess. Instead, she got Jessica.

  But Pansy couldn’t say if it was the wild twin’s daughter or
the too-proper twin’s daughter who got the worst end of it.

  Carrie Logan, Jess’s cousin, was wound way too tight for her own good and had an overly involved mother for whom image was everything.

  Jessica wanted to be an actress. Carrie wanted to be a photographer. Pansy wondered if the girls’ mothers realized that these careers in role-playing and image-making could be directly linked to the expectations put on them in childhood. But which of these girls wasn’t hampered by such constraints? Pretty Emma Stanhope, cursed with an honest-to-god beauty queen sister? Or sweet, rudderless Jacie Rose, finding her way despite a mother who considered herself incomplete without a man? Did Lilian Reynolds’s consistent honor roll placement shield her? Or Tina Carson’s bossiness?

  No. While girls nowadays had more choices than she’d had at the same age, true freedom was as elusive as ever.

  For boys too, sometimes, she admitted grudgingly, looking at Damon Brand. If ever a boy looked trapped, it was that one.

  Poor kid.

  She leaned a little closer to Nate. Family could be the tightest trap of all.

  Laughter rippled over to her from a group closest to the water. Pansy saw the glowing tips of cigarettes and smiled to herself, waiting for the coughing fits that would follow from the initiates. She assumed that beyond the rim of dancing light the kids were pushing other boundaries as well. She might be an old spinster, but she knew plenty about sex, drugs and rock ’n roll. The pillars of Cherry Lake would likely choke on their Metamucil if they knew just how much she’d indulged her own youthful curiosity.

  So, despite her warning to Jessica, Aunt Pan wasn’t too worried about keeping anyone on the straight and narrow. Choose your battles, that was her motto. She just wanted them to stay out of the police station and the emergency room.

  If they ended up in the delivery room nine months from now, well, the condoms were there. It wasn’t her fault if they didn’t use them.

  And a surprise baby wasn’t the worst thing that could happen.

  No, there were worse things. A lifetime of regret, for instance.

  *

  Nathan Jackson braced his hand under his jaw, observing his flamboyant granddaughter drape herself into some poor sucker’s lap, her long hair falling perilously close to the flames. It would serve her right if she got those locks singed off.

  “Jess,” he called. “You’re going to set your hair on fire.”

  “I thought you wanted her to be accountable.” Pansy elbowed him gently. “She’s got hair to spare. A little campfire ’do won’t kill her.”

  “Don’t want her to end up in the burn unit, that’s all.”

  Jessica Palmer, daughter of Nate’s social-climbing daughter Jane, troubled him. Though both Jane and Cathy had chosen successful, wealthy men, neither match had brought his beloved daughters happiness. The price for their choices, he feared, was being extracted from his granddaughters.

  Sins of the father being revisited on the children?

  Perhaps, but whatever character flaws he saw in his children, however they trickled down now to his grandchildren, the responsibility was his alone. Mary was not to blame.

  Mary had deserved far more than she’d gotten out of life.

  Over at the campfire, Jess had moved on to a new lap and was flicking the ends of her perfectly unburned hair in the boy’s face while he laughed and tickled her.

  He shook his head. “That girl will be the death of me.”

  “She’s free-spirited.” Pansy smiled. “You love that about her.”

  “And she’s set to run off as fast as she can. Just like you were.”

  She was quiet, and instantly he felt bad. He hadn’t meant it to come out the way it did. It was supposed to be a joke. But even he knew there were some things you didn’t joke about. They’d come to an understanding, he and Pansy. So it wasn’t quite what he wanted. It was better than the agony of being without her. He could live with this.

  “Sorry,” he said gruffly. “The time of year. It brings out the worst in me. Old patterns.”

  She nodded. “I know. It’s okay.”

  She patted his hand.

  His explanation wasn’t a lie, but it was a cop-out and he should have known Pansy would call him on it.

  “Do you ever think you’ll fully forgive me for leaving?” she asked.

  “There was nothing to forgive,” he said, choosing his words with care. Then, “I forgave you for leaving years ago, Pansy.”

  “But not the other thing.”

  Ah, he thought. The other thing. That one had stuck in him for a long time.

  “It’s not that, either.” He shook his head. “Pansy, let’s not rake up that old muck. We got caught up in things that were beyond our control. Perhaps we made mistakes. We’re both human. Neither one of us intended to hurt anyone. I know that.”

  But it was hard not to get drawn back into old memories when you could see them playing out again, in front of you. Different players, some of the details changed, but the same old heartache on the horizon. He wished he could warn his grandchildren, protect them from what was ahead, but without explaining how he knew so much about it, he couldn’t.

  And some stories were better left untold.

  Chapter Two

  ‡

  Spring, 1956

  Jackson family farm

  Nathan Jackson adjusted his denim pants, subtly, he hoped, and got to his feet.

  “Fire’s burning low,” he said to the group of friends sitting in a loose, broken circle around the glowing embers. “It’s my turn to get wood.”

  He turned from the group and went to comb the scrub surrounding the orchard for anything burnable that his father wouldn’t miss. His thigh burned where Mary Lewis’s hand had rested, her fingers cleverly but oh-so-discreetly massaging his flesh.

  The group, sheltered beneath young cherry trees heavy with fruit, was made up of mostly high school classmates, with a few from the years just ahead or behind, celebrating the once unthinkable achievement of graduating secondary school and the freedom that lay ahead. The fact that few, if any of them, actually had freedom to look forward to, was not part of the discussion on campfire night.

  On this night, while the boys passed stubby bottles of beer purchased by someone’s friend’s older brother and the girls giggled together, heads bent close, hands over mouths, some talked about travel or college ambitions, others of the land they would purchase, the houses they’d build or the stock they’d raise.

  The giggling was mostly about who was going around with whom, and which of them would be first to marry.

  But one girl sat cross-legged in front of the fire, accepted by the group, yet somehow apart from either faction.

  “I’m not getting married,” she said, causing a halt to the giggling. “I’m going to do things with my life.”

  Nathan paused, just beyond the dim circle of light cast by the dying fire. Alone but not lonely, the girl had an air of containment that was both disturbing and fascinating. Her clothes were different, her ideas were different, even her name was different. Pansy.

  “Like what?” asked Mary.

  Pansy shrugged. “See the world. Feed the hungry. Cure cancer. I haven’t decided.”

  A few uncomfortable titters sounded. Someone passed her the beer bottle and she accepted it, tipping her head back to drink, exposing the length of throat and revealing, just for a moment, her soft pink tongue.

  It wasn’t just him, Nathan told himself. Everyone was fascinated by Pansy.

  She’d arrived in his class at Cherry Lake High School last winter, brought in by truant officers. Rumor was they’d found a bunch of “gypsy” kids who were being taught by their parents on some kind of commune but that could have just been talk.

  Nate slipped away, moving deeper into the brush, putting Pansy out of his mind. The ache in his loins had subsided, somewhat, but thinking about Pansy confused both body and mind. He was driven by urges both shameful and irresistible and having them directed at one
girl was bad enough.

  He’d been going around with Mary since just after Christmas. Neither of them was headed for college, he with plans to work the orchard with his father, her with plans to be a helpmeet of just such a man.

  Nathan was pretty sure he was in love with her, though it was hard to tell what was love and what was lust. Mary wore her smooth nut-brown hair tucked in a demure braid, her features pretty as a porcelain doll, and he’d seen enough of her figure to imagine exactly how nice she’d look naked. Her clever fingers notwithstanding, she was a nice girl, from a good family. Smart, quiet, kind.

  Appropriate.

  And there was certainly no doubt about her feelings toward him. He’d felt her serene gaze on his back as he walked away, burning into him, claiming him, reminding everyone of what was what.

  He picked up a large dry branch and whacked it against the ground until it splintered.

  Could a man actually die of frustration? He felt that it was not only possible, but that he was on the brink of proving it.

  In his family, and Cherry Lake in general, there was no question of sex before marriage. But the way Mary kissed him left him on fire with desire, trembling with the effort of holding himself back. Of course he loved her. He couldn’t wait to marry her and have her to himself, fully sanctioned, to make love all day and all night, for the rest of their lives. He felt beyond lucky to have attracted the attention of such a sweet, sexy, loving girl.

  They’d be perfect together. Everyone knew it.

  So why did he find his thoughts drifting to Pansy, with her golden hair dancing loose on her shoulders, her flashing eyes challenging him to… what?

  He didn’t know.

  “I think it’s dead now.”

  Nate jumped, dropping the branch.

  “Pansy,” he said. His pulse quickened as he realized she’d followed him into the bush deliberately. They’d barely spoken, ever, but the first time he’d seen her, the “new girl” standing in the doorway, their eyes had met and a spark had flashed between them.