Copyright 2012. © ProseWorks Entertainment. Rachel Remington.
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Four Seasons of Romance
Rachel Remington
Table of Contents
Prologue
Part One: Spring
The First Interlude
Part Two: Summer
The Second Interlude
Part Three: Fall
The Third Interlude
Part Four: Winter
Prologue
They say every good town has a river running through it but that no river runs alone. That’s certainly the case in Woodsville. The Connecticut River runs straight through the heart of the town, calm and straight as a deep blue arrow, but just before the old covered bridge, it shoots off into the Ammonoosuc, frothy as a hem of fine lace. The rivers intertwine like two lovers holding hands, their fingers laced together, knuckles pure white with love, which is only fitting because what you’re about to hear is a love story.
If you walk a few paces to the east of the crossing, you find yourself staring at the Bath-Haverhill Bridge. It’s dusty, muted red—the color of a heart that’s seen a few good breakings— the oldest covered bridge in New Hampshire, the records state.
But if you grew up from youth in Woodsville, then you wouldn’t go for the history. You’d know the bridge as the perfect place to steal away with your sweetheart and a picnic basket on a sleepy summer day. There, surrounded by a pitcher of fresh lemonade and cucumber sandwiches, she might let you lay a hand on her freckled arm. And if you were feeling particularly lucky, emboldened by the water coursing strong beneath your feet, you just might hazard a quick peck on her creamy white cheek.
Life was good in Woodsville back in those days. The Boston, Concord & Montreal Railroad brought enough commerce to keep the townspeople fed and informed. They were happy on an island of tranquility, floating along a slow-moving stream despite the cold winds of the Depression. The hard times gave the residents—all 750 of them—a reason to come together. Indeed, that time was chockfull of life-transforming stories… but none quite like the story of Catherine and Leo.
A good love story’s much like a river—it twists and bends, ebbs and flows. Frankly, sometimes, it’s a real mess. The rivers in Woodsville were lazy in the warmer months but violent during the rainy season. When a family lost a child to the river’s wrath, the Woodsville minister would press the Bible to his chest and preach from the pulpit on love’s redeeming power—a familiar theme for Catherine and Leo.
Like any veritable force of nature, the rivers could be downright tumultuous. Leo and Catherine were the spitting image of each other, passionate as a summer thunderstorm. Sometimes, things seemed warm and sunny, but for many years, trouble brewed in the depths.
Woodsville birthed its share of famous baseball players, prominent businessmen, and wholesome regular folk. One could tell a dozen yarns of decent people, fine tales of love and hope, attainment and transformation, but no story from Woodsville comes close to the one you’re about to hear.
In the gentle spring of 1935, Leopold Taylor first laid eyes on Catherine Woods and their journey began. Theirs was a love that coursed strong and dangerous, eternal and eternally unpredictable. It’s a story of love, but not a perfect love story; the good ones never are.
Neither Catherine nor Leo imagined the first spark igniting a fire that would burn for more than seventy years—a fire that neither the Connecticut River nor the Ammonoosuc River could wash away. A fire that went through the pouring rains to burn until Catherine and Leo took their last breaths. And while they are both gone, the flame that fueled their hearts is not extinguished. It burns on in each of us through this story—forever.
Part One: Spring
The sky was a flawless blue that warm April morning. Spring in Woodsville came quickly on the heels of winter, and that day was the warmest day of the year so far, though that wasn’t saying much. Through most of March, the schoolchildren wore thick wool long johns under their clothes and the little red schoolhouse was as cold and drafty as an attic and just as dusty.
When it came to schooling, the good citizens of Woodsville didn’t have many options. There were no fancy highbrow institutions, no boarding schools and prep academies like there are today. The town had two schools: one red brick elementary for the first through seventh grades, and one brown brick high school for eighth through twelfth.
Catherine and Leo first met at the little red schoolhouse. On that beautiful day, the wildflowers were slowly beginning to emerge—the lilies, the trillium, the violets, the milkweed, the columbine, and the black-eyed Susans. The snow was gone; the rivers were high; and the sun lingered long hours in the evening sky.
Because children came from many miles to learn reading and arithmetic in Woodsville, there were enough children for two fourth-grade classes that year; something the headmaster told them when the Taylors moved to Woodsville and went to enroll their young son Leo. So, there was a fifty-fifty chance that Leo would not wind up in the same classroom as Catherine, a fifty-fifty chance this love story would never have found its footing beneath blackboards and composition books. The odds, however, were in their favor that brisk April morning.
Catherine looked up from her book as the headmaster lumbered into the classroom. He was a strange-looking man with a beard like a wedge of watermelon on his chin. The children called him Master Melon behind his back. But Catherine didn’t notice the beard that morning, noticing the slender dark-haired boy at his side instead.
“Students,” Dr. Ayers drawled in his nasally voice, “we have a new student joining us this morning. I hope you’ll all be ambassadors of Woodsville Elementary in welcoming…” He checked the paper he was holding, “Leopold Ellis Taylor, Jr., recently moved from Littleton, New Hampshire.”
“Leo,” the boy said. “It’s just Leo.”
The headmaster scowled at Leo over his glasses, unhappy with the interruption. “Very well, Leo. You may take a seat.”
Leo shot like a dart toward the first open seat he could find, which happened to be the desk behind Miss Catherine herself. The headmaster stomped out of the room. No sooner had he left than Arthur Yarger tripped in with his satchel stuffed to the brim with books.
Now, Arthur might as well have had a “kick me” sign painted right in the middle of his forehead. He was a scrawny boy, permanently disabled from polio. An easy butt for the kids’ jokes, Arthur wore Coke-bottle glasses and spoke in a high-pitched voice.
That morning, as he stumbled into class, Catherine saw right away what was about to happen. To get to his desk, Arthur had to go right past Thomas McCaffrey and that was unfortunate for two reasons. The first was that Arthur’s book satchel was yawning wide open—he hadn’t strapped it very tightly. The second was that Tom was the biggest bully in the school.
“Arthur!” Catherine called, trying to warn him, but it was too late. Thomas casually stuck his foot into the aisle, and Arthur went flying. The boy and his avalanche of books thudded to the floor as Thomas and his cronies snickered.
Catherine was by Arthur’s side in seconds, taking his hand and helping him to his feet. His eyes were full of tears, and his chin was banged up from the fall as she dabbed at the scrape with her handkerchief.
“It’s okay,” she said softly, gathering his scattered books. “You’re a bigger man than he’ll ever be.” Gently, she helped Arthur to his desk.
She glared at Tom as she returned to her seat. Although Catherine was petite, she was a force to be dealt with when angry, her green eyes flashing, and her freckles standing out against her pale skin.
“You think you’re so clever, Thomas McCaffrey,” she hissed, “but you’re a coward through and through.” She plunked herself down at her desk just as the fourth-grade teacher appeared in the classroom doorway.
If Leo hadn’t noticed Catherine when he first sat, he noticed her now. He couldn’t take his eyes off her as Catherine felt his gaze boring into her back and straightened her posture in response. She already felt flushed from her confrontation with Thomas, and the attention from the new kid only made it worse, forcing her to sit so straight her spine felt like the yellow pencil lying in the groove on her desk.
The teacher welcomed Leo and picked up the lesson where he left off, but Leo was oblivious, busy sizing up the brave girl in front of him. Her long brown hair cascaded down her shoulders, glossy as the toffee Leo’s mother used to make, grace and strength infusing her every move. Something about her presence reminded him of the home he never had; he was in love before she ever turned around.
Leo knew her freckled face with those green eyes burning, the calm and level courage in her voice. And he knew he would spend this lifetime with her, God willing. Leopold Taylor was ten, but he knew exactly what he wanted.
Meanwhile, Catherine tried her darndest to pretend the boy in the seat behind her didn’t exist, not daring turn around once in her seat. She hadn’t meant to draw attention to herself that morning, but she had. Now, she felt like an object of the new boy’s curiosity, and she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of being curious back. Besides, she’d seen enough of his looks and demeanor to know he came from a different world, noting the dark curls that fell into his eyes and over his ears. She could hear her father now. “What kind of boy has hair that long? Certainly not a respectable one.”
Even at nine, Catherine prided herself on understanding the ways of the world very clearly, and she had a good hunch that Leo didn’t come from a proper family, which meant a lot in a town like Woodsville.
“Hey,” Leo whispered. “Pssst. Hey, pretty girl!”
Catherine stretched her spine again, determined not to give in to the temptation to swivel around and tell him to please be quiet.
“I made you something,” he said. “Don’t you want to see it?”
I most certainly do not, she thought; though in truth, she was curious.
She made it through the rest of arithmetic class, having to wipe her sleeve across her writing tablet and starting from zero since her simple addition was a mess. Thanks to the new boy, she couldn’t focus on a thing.
Catherine made a point to ignore him at recess, playing with her friends on the monkey bars, eyeing him slyly ever so often as he sat on the schoolhouse steps where he had fashioned a piece of chalk out of an old rock. Several other children, including poor Arthur Yarger, gathered around and watched as he drew all manners of animals and castles on the sidewalk. Even from far away, she could tell that they were impressed with the new kid’s handiwork, but she kept a safe distance.
As the students lined up to go back inside after recess, Leo filed in line behind Catherine. “You should see the clay sculptures I made,” he said, Catherine pretending not to hear.
When she returned home that afternoon and unloaded the schoolbooks from her satchel she noticed a small piece of clay fall to the floor. Suspicious of what it might be, she pinched it between her thumb and forefinger as if it were a thing diseased.
It was a tiny clay figurine, hard to determine what form it conveyed—it had gotten a little smashed in her bag—but she guessed it was a black-eyed Susan. That boy must have stuck it in my bag when I wasn’t looking, Catherine reasoned, angered by the intimacy of the gesture.
She had to admit the flower was good though. No crude clump of clay, it showed the beginning of artistry, but as she knew from her father’s teaching, art was little more than a waste of time. Part of her was touched by the gesture, yet a boy who toyed with art couldn’t possibly be serious about his studies. How would he ever mature into the kind of man her father would want her to associate with? The kind of man she would want to be associated with?
Catherine crushed the clay in her palm and threw it in the wastebasket. To her surprise, it pained her a little, destroying that flower, but she convinced herself it was the right thing. Maybe he’ll stop all this nonsense by tomorrow, she thought.
But it wasn’t to be. Leo waited for her on the schoolhouse steps the next day.
“Hey there,” he said, extending his hand, “we haven’t been formally introduced. I’m Leo. Leo Taylor.”
Catherine nodded brusquely and tried to walk past him into the school, but he wouldn’t budge.
“Don’t you at least want to tell me your name?”
She glanced at him, unblinking.
“Actually, I did a little homework,” he continued. “Not the kind with books. I mean that I figured out your name. You’re Catherine Woods, the judge’s daughter.”
“That’s right.” She nodded toward the door. “May I go in, please?”
“Sure. I’ll let you inside.” As she walked through the door, he snatched her satchel off her shoulder. “But you gotta let me carry your books.”
Furious, Catherine stomped to her chair and plopped in it, then Leo placed her bag gently on the desk and grinned.
*
As the week went by, Leo grew more desperate to talk to Catherine, and she grew more desperate to ignore him. He tried to play with her on the playground or offer her his apple at lunch, but she only turned up her nose with a haughty air.
The more she ignored him, the angrier and more determined he became to get her attention. His gestures turned slightly more devious as he did everything to draw attention to him—he tapped his pencil loudly on his desk, gave ridiculous answers when the teacher called on him, and drew increasingly elaborate chalk drawings at recess. Once he got so exasperated, he tugged on Catherine’s hair, the teacher catching him midtug, and that day, Leo spent lunchtime alone in the corner wearing the dunce cap.
Catherine was resolute in her campaign of aloofness, full of smiles for the other children—for Arthur, who treated her like a princess, and for her girlfriends who hovered around her like worker bees around their queen, but she had no smiles or kind words to spare for Leo. And the more she ignored him, the more he wanted her to look.
So, they began. Leo was in love, but Catherine wanted nothing to do with him. Every ridiculous gesture and every clay figurine he gave her confirmed what she already knew—Leo Taylor was unlike her, someone from a different kind of family, hence a different world.
And she was right. Catherine’s father was Josiah Woods, a prominent circuit court judge and a direct descendant of one of Woodsville’s founding fathers. Puritan to the core, he descended from a long line of lawyers. Josiah ruled his household much as he ruled his counties—with a heavy gavel and an iron fist.
Leo’s father, Ellis Taylor, was the stark opposite, a manual laborer with a drinking problem who had worked as an auto mechanic in Littleton until he was accused of stealing from his employer. After that, he and his family were forced out of town. Ellis had managed to find work at Acer Lumber, one of Woodsville’s two large lumber mills, prompting the Taylors’ move.
Catherine didn’t know any of this yet, but she could tell from the way Leo talked and the easy, carefree, almost indecent way he carried himself that he came from an uneducated family. For the elitist Woods clan, education was paramount—Catherine’s mother, Elaine, was an English teacher at the brown brick high school. Both Elaine and Josiah were esteemed in the community, and they had what was widely considered an enviable marriage. Strangely, young Catherine could not remember a single time she had seen her parents hold hands or kiss. She thought perhaps this is what enviable meant—the absence of all physical affection.
Over the weeks that followed, she watched Leo from afar with one-part revulsion and one-part envy. Catherine realized they came from distinct and opposite social classes—she from the privileged elite and he from the working class. Deborah, Le
o’s mother, worked part-time as a housemaid, and the Taylors lived in a simple wood-plank home on Central Street, the wrong side of town. The Woods, by contrast, lived in an elegant three-story Victorian mansion on 147 N. Eagle Drive, high atop the bluff across the Connecticut River.
Yet Catherine couldn’t help noticing that, despite his hair that was a bit too long and his pants that were a bit too short, Leo was deliciously carefree in a way foreign to her. She felt as if the whole town was always watching her, and they probably were—she was, after all, the judge’s daughter. Leo, on the other hand, was free to do as he pleased and took full advantage of it even if it meant turning his freedom into teasing and, eventually, into trouble.
*
That first spring, Leo played many practical jokes on Catherine at school, just to attract her, but it never got him the kind of attention he wanted. As he was only ten and desperately in love, Leo decided to up the ante. Before he left for school that day, his mother found a dead mouse floating in the milk pitcher.
“Mamma mia!” she exclaimed. Deborah was the daughter of an Italian immigrant, and she often burst into spontaneous Italian when frightened or angry.
“What is it, Mama?” Leo asked.
“A rat.” She fished it out and dumped it in the trash bin.
More of a mouse, Leo thought, as he fished it out of the bin the moment she wasn’t looking, wrapped it in newspaper and slipped the parcel into his book bag.
By the time he got to school, Catherine sat at the desk in her impeccably prim uniform. He loved it—the way she sat pencil-straight mere inches from him, her hair like a shiny brown waterfall down her back—and she wouldn’t give him the time of day, but today was the day that would change, or so Leo thought.
He waited patiently until recess, though his fingers itched to take out the parcel. As soon as the teacher dismissed them, Catherine bounded out of her desk and joined her friends in the hall. Leo waited until all the students had left the classroom, then he unwrapped the parcel and thrust the little wet body into the hollow of Catherine’s desk.
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