Authors: River Rising
Dorothy Garlock
If you purchase this book without a cover you should be aware that this book may have been stolen property and reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher. In such case neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
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 © 2005 by Dorothy Garlock
All rights reserved.
Warner Books
Time Warner Book Group
Hachette Book Group
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The Warner Books name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
First eBook Edition: May 2005
ISBN: 978-0-446-50998-5
Cover illustration by Wendell Minor
Contents
Heartfelt Praise for Dorothy Garlock and Her Captivating Novels of the Jones Clan
“There is nothing better than Dorothy Garlock at her best.”
—Sandra Brown,
New York Times
bestselling author
“Dorothy Garlock writes about real people and real life.”
—
Romantic Times BOOKclub Magazine
“No one brings home small-town America in a more picturesque manner than bestselling author Dorothy Garlock.”
—
Under the Covers Book Reviews
“A gifted writer.”
—
Chicago Sun-Times
A PLACE CALLED RAINWATER
“Top-notch... and authentic. Garlock secures her standing as the premier writer of the Americana romance.”
—
Booklist
“Superb.”
—
Southern Pines Pilot
(NC)
“Strong historic romantic suspense.”
—
Midwest Book Review
“Nonstop action.”
—
Kirkus Reviews
“Outstanding...Will keep your heart pumping.”
—
Rendezvous
“Impressive...A breathless, captivating, and stimulating sojourn into early twentieth-century America...Will leave one feeling enriched and blessedly gladhearted.”
—RomanticFiction.Tripod.com
“Exciting... All the suspense you could hope for...Garlock outdid herself with this one.”
—
Romantic Reviews
HIGH ON A HILL
“Passionate...sweetly nostalgic... earthy and funny.”
—
Publishers Weekly
“Garlock [is] noted for her grit-between-the-toes feel for time and place... Plenty of period detail and an earthy portrayal of small-town life.”
—
Minneapolis Star
“A powerful and rewarding story.”
—
Rendezvous
“Poignant...Ms. Garlock remains true to form with heart-warming stories, sympathetic, believable characters, and an easy-to-read plot.”
—RomanceAtItsBest.com
THE EDGE OF TOWN
“A heart-stirring story spiced with suspense...This is a gift from a writer whose books keep giving long after the last page...It’s impossible to choose a favorite character. I fell in love with them all and relished every word of their heart-warming story.”
—Sandra Brown
“An exciting historical romance . . . a luscious Americana novel... another treat from a delightful talent.”
—Bookreview.com
“Charming story... sprightly dialogue and convincing depiction of farm life.”
—
Publishers Weekly
“Americana at its best.”
—
Booklist
| | After the Parade | | Nightrose |
| | Almost Eden | | A Place Called Rainwater |
| | Annie Lash | | Restless Wind |
| | Dream River | | Ribbon in the Sky |
| | The Edge of Town | | River of Tomorrow |
| | Forever Victoria | | The Searching Hearts |
| | A Gentle Giving | | Sins of Summer |
| | Glorious Dawn | | Song of the Road |
| | High on a Hill | | Sweetwater |
| | Homeplace | | Tenderness |
| | Hope’s Highway | | This Loving Land |
| | Larkspur | | Wayward Wind |
| | The Listening Sky | | Wild Sweet Wilderness |
| | Lonesome River | | Wind of Promise |
| | Love and Cherish | | With Heart |
| | Midnight Blue | | With Hope |
| | More than Memory | | With Song |
| | Mother Road | | Yesteryear |
This book is dedicated with love to my sisters, Mary Bruza and Betty O’Haver.
If I could have chosen sisters, I would have chosen you.
RIVER RISING
Edging toward the town of Fertile
Close to flooding o’er its banks
River rising.
Passions rising.
Deep beneath the surface waters
Hidden crimes and vengeance roil.
Passions rising.
River rising.
Dammed with rocks
And damned by laws
Love, unstifled, surges forth.
River rising.
Passions rising.
Break the dam.
Release the current.
Let it wash away the past.
Let the river, clean and rushing,
Take its course,
Be free at last!
—F.S.I.
Fertile, Missouri
1928
T
HE WOMAN CLUTCHED THE SLIM
tin box tightly to her chest, hurried down the street to her house and up the stairs to her bedroom. She closed the door and sank down on the edge of the bed, sucked in gulps of air and waited for her heartbeat to settle into a regular rhythm.
The vile, rotten, lying, conniving sonofabitch had hidden his dirty little secret well!
She muttered her fury, unable to find words to describe just how despicable she found him to be. If he were not already dead, she would kill him again and again. She fervently hoped that he was burning in hell!
She never would have found out the sinful things her husband had done if not for the leak in the roof at the hardware store. Water had come down the wall in back of the counter. When shelves had been emptied and moved out, she had found in the wall behind the bottom shelf a box that contained not only a ledger but bow ribbons, garters, buttons, snips of hair tied with a string: his mementos. In an envelope were Kodak pictures of his bastards: a shaggy-haired boy in overalls too short for his skinny legs, a small girl with blond curls, another girl with dark braids, a tall boy standing beside a board fence and a baby in a carriage. She wondered how he managed to get the pictures.
She had told her brother, when he asked what she had found in the box, that it was her personal diary she had put there for safekeeping and that it really was of no consequence to anyone but her. She had not realized then the significance of the ledger, but she had figured it out later when she scanned the names. One name jumped out at her:
Julie Jones—July 1917—girl March 1918 named Joy.
Below he had written:
I couldn’t have picked a better name myself.
Now in her room behind a locked door, she moved to the chair beside the window, opened the ledger and began to read. An hour later she was too angry to cry. Pregnancy had resulted from his intercourse—he didn’t consider it rape— with twenty of the fifty-seven women and girls he’d penetrated with his mighty sword, as he had so disgustingly called it. Only a very few of his encounters had been consensual. His notes made it clear that he preferred a challenge and thoroughly enjoyed stalking the women and girls he had chosen to have his children and forcing them to accept his seed.
Her husband had kept a careful record of each conquest and was proud that only two miscarriages and the death of one of the women had been the result of his desire to procreate. He regretted the death, but his victim knew who he was and he’d had no choice but to kill the girl.
In a note written in 1917 he explained his compulsion to rape:
I will sow my seed in young females and leave behind a part of myself when I leave this earth that will go on and on into the future
. When he died, he left eighteen children and three pregnant girls. Two girls from neighboring towns had received a second dose of his sperm when he discovered that they had failed to catch the first time and the opportunity had arisen for him to copulate with them again. Behind these names he had written:
Second time was even more satisfying because the bitches knew that they were going to get plowed deep and long
.
The woman stared out the window at a boy riding his scooter down the sidewalk, then watched the iceman stop across the street, go to the back of his truck and hoist a large chunk of ice to his back. The boy was waiting when he returned to the truck and was given a chip of ice. As he skipped away, she wondered if he was one of her stepchildren.
Her hands curled around the arms of the chair. She had grieved for Ron Poole for five years, the same number of years they had been married before he was killed. He had never expressed regret that they had not had children. The first year of their marriage he had demanded sex morning and night and sometimes in the middle of the day. He had been a gentle lover, but when, after a few years, she hadn’t conceived, he seldom touched her and had begun to act more like her brother than her husband.
Looking back, she remembered him as being kind to her and acting the doting husband in public. His standing in the community was important to him, and it helped to make it all the more difficult to believe that he was a rapist.
She covered her face in shame as she remembered lying in bed waiting for him to come to her, love her and satisfy her sexual hunger. She realized now that the rutting stud didn’t need his wife. He was getting his satisfaction from young girls, not only here but in surrounding towns.
An idea began to form in her mind, a way that she could get even not only with him but with the stupid, careless women who had allowed him to take advantage of them. With a goal in mind she skipped a few pages in the ledger and began to make her own list.
When she finished, she realized that she knew nine of his children. They lived right here in Fertile. Some had been raised as brother or sister to the girl who had given them birth. Some of the girls had married as soon as they realized that they were pregnant and passed the children off as their husbands’. But the man for whom she had grieved for all these years had known better; and, according to the notes he had posted beside the birthdates, he had received an enormous amount of satisfaction watching their development.