Letters Never Sent Read online

  Letters

  Never Sent

  Sandra Moran

  Bink Books

  Bedazzled Ink Publishing Company • Fairfield, California

  © 2013 Sandra Moran

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

  reproduced or transmitted in any means,

  electronic or mechanical, without permission in

  writing from the publisher.

  978-1-939562-10-4 paperback

  978-1-939562-11-1 ebook

  Cover Design

  by

  TreeHouse Studio

  Bink Books

  a division of

  Bedazzled Ink Publishing Company

  Fairfield, California

  http://www.bedazzledink.com

  Three women, united by love and kinship, struggle to conform to the social norms of the times in which they lived. In 1931, Katherine Henderson leaves behind her small town in Kansas and the marriage proposal of a local boy to live on her own and work at the Sears & Roebuck glove counter in Chicago. There she meets Annie—a bold, outspoken feminist who challenges Katherine’s idea of who she thinks she is and what she thinks she wants in life. In 1997, Katherine’s daughter, Joan, travels to Lawrence, Kansas, to clean out her estranged mother’s house. Hidden away in an old suitcase, she finds a wooden box containing trinkets and a packet of sealed letters to a person identified only by a first initial. Joan reads the unsent letters and discovers a woman completely different from the aloof and unyielding mother of her youth–a woman who had loved deeply and lost that love to circumstances beyond her control. Now she just has to find the strength to use the healing power of empathy and forgiveness to live the life she’s always wanted to live.

  For Cherie and Cheryl—who never once doubted

  Acknowledgements

  It’s said that you’re only as good at the people with whom you surround yourself and in this regard I’ve been enormously lucky. Much thanks to my friends and family for putting up with my weird schedule. I am thankful for Ashley Fletcher who read, re-read (and sometimes re-read) each and every draft of the manuscript. Thanks also to my beta readers Stephanie Smith, Kathy Belt, Rebecca Maury, Betts Ballard, Nancy Kasting, Rachel Bailey, Nancy Orlich, Kathy Graff, Kathy Harmon, and Mary Shields. Thanks to Jordan Chambers for designing and hosting my website. Thank you to my agents, Denise Marcil and Anne Marie O’Farrell, for their unflagging support and to my editor, C.A. Casey, whose eagle eye and encyclopedic knowledge of the Chicago Manual of Style made the book sing. Huge thanks to Ann McMan who took a chance on a stranger with the caveat that I pay it forward. Finally, a special thank you to my mother, Cherie Moran, who likes to remind me of how she went through fifty-two hours of excruciating labor and gave up her career as an Ice Capades dancer to be my mother, and to Cheryl Pletcher, without whose patience, support, and love none of this would have been possible.

  Chapter 1

  Lawrence, Kansas, 1997

  THE RAMBLING VICTORIAN house stood empty and still, a dark mass hunched forward against the illumination of the city. It was strange, Joan realized as she stared into the darkness, to see it and know that Katherine, her mother, wasn’t inside—strange and almost surreal. But, if she were honest, she could admit that she was slightly relieved. Still, how awful did it sound that she was relieved that her mother was dead?

  Joan placed both hands on the steering wheel and stared thoughtfully out the windshield. She could drive away. She could just as easily go to the Eldridge Hotel and get a room. She could go down into the old smoking lounge and have a drink. She could sit and chat with the other strangers before wandering back through the antique lobby and up to her room. She could deal with all of this later.

  Or, her mother’s brittle voice intoned in her head, she could shut off the car engine, get her bags out of the trunk, and go inside. There were certain things that had to be done, like them or not, her mother would have lectured. Strange how the teachings of youth haunt us as adults, she thought as she forced herself to turn off the engine and pull the key from the ignition. No sense in spending money for a hotel when she had free lodging here. There was a lot of work to do over the next few weeks and it would be better all the way around if she just jumped in tomorrow without having to worry about paying a bill, getting checked out, and driving back across town. Granted, Lawrence wasn’t that big, but still, with all the students and people going to work, it just made more sense to stay here. Before she could reconsider, she dropped the keys into her purse, pushed the button to pop the trunk, and opened the car door.

  The air was crisp with the sweet woodiness of fall—her favorite season when she had lived here—and she smiled at the sound of dried leaves crunching underfoot as she walked to the back of her car for the suitcase. She grunted as she hauled it out. She had packed far more than she needed for the two weeks, she knew, but experience had shown her that having choices was important when it came to dressing for Kansas fall weather. Warm mornings could turn into cool, or even cold, afternoons without warning.

  As she lugged the suitcase up the walkway that led to the porch, she was unprepared for the motion-sensor light that snapped on and bathed her in fluorescent, unforgiving light. She dropped the bag with a loud, “oh.”

  “Joanie?”

  The voice was soft and came from the darkness to her right. It was a scratchy, old woman’s voice, and for a moment, Joan crazily thought it was her mother’s.

  “I was beginning to worry.”

  Joan blinked against the light as realization set in. It wasn’t her mother; it was Mrs. Yoccum, her mother’s neighbor and, as far as she knew, her only friend.

  She squinted in the direction of Mrs. Yoccum’s porch. “Hi, Mrs. Yoccum. I didn’t see you there.”

  “I was waiting for you to make up your mind,” Mrs. Yoccum said. “You sat in that car for such a long time.”

  “I wasn’t sure I was ready to go inside,” Joan admitted and held up her hand to shade her eyes. She could just make out the shadowy form of the elderly woman sitting on one of her wicker chairs. “How have you been?”

  Mrs. Yoccum laughed softly. “Oh, I’m as good as can be expected.” She paused. “It’s lonely without Kate next door.”

  Joan nodded. “Well, you know . . .”

  “Will you be here long?” Mrs. Yoccum asked.

  “Oh, no,” Joan said. “Just a couple of weeks. Just long enough to clean out the house and get it ready to go on the market.”

  “So you’ll be selling it, then.” It was a statement rather than a question. Mrs. Yoccum sighed, no doubt concerned that strangers would be moving into the neighborhood—moving in next door to her.

  “I will,” Joan said. “There’s no way Luke and I can take care of it from Chicago. And renting it out would be too much work.”

  Mrs. Yoccum made a noise in her throat just as the motion-sensor light snapped off, thrusting them back into darkness.

  Joan felt slightly disoriented. Spots of white and yellow and pale green floated across the back of her eyes, obscuring her vision. She swayed slightly.

  “ . . . let me know if you need anything,” Mrs. Yoccum was saying.

  Joan nodded. She was tired of the conversation already. Her head ached and suddenly, she longed for the safety and solitude of the house. Her mother’s house. Her house now.

  “Well, I guess I had better get inside,” she said after a moment.

  Awkwardly, she leaned down to pick up her suitcase. The motion-sensor light snapped on again, but this time she was prepared.

  “Good night, Mrs. Yoccum,” Joan said and walked the remaining stretch of sidewalk to the porch, where she was once again returned to shadow.

  She turned slightly, using the glow
of the yard light to sort through her keys for the tarnished brass key worn smooth from use. It slid easily into the lock. She took a deep breath as she turned it and pushed opened the door. Her mother’s smell struck her full force—Chanel No. 5 mixed with lemon Pledge and the somewhat acrid smell of recently-activated furnace. She felt like she was seven . . . fourteen . . . nineteen years old.

  Joan closed her eyes and allowed herself to be momentarily swallowed by the darkness. She waited several seconds before she extended her hand toward the wall and fumbled for the light. Her fingers found the faceplate and then the switch. She hesitated, flicked her finger upward, and flooded the entryway with light.

  It was exactly as it had always been. The narrow wooden stairs on her left with its darkly-polished newel, the umbrella stand with its four umbrellas, the antique mirror to her right, under which stood the narrow table with its arrangement of artificial flowers. She felt as if she should announce herself.

  “Silly,” she murmured. Still, she hesitated, then finally walked fully into the center of the entryway. To the right was the living room, where, when her father had been alive, she could remember the two of them watching television and lounging on the couch. To the left was her mother’s sitting room where, when she wasn’t next door visiting Mrs. Yoccum, she sat doing crossword puzzles or writing letters.

  Her parents each had their spaces. But when her father had died, her mother laid claim to the living room. It hadn’t even been a day after the funeral when her mother asked her to remove the television—a feat that was easier said than done given that the console television was as much a piece of furniture as a means of entertainment. After attempting to push and shove it on her own, she finally commissioned two neighborhood boys to help her move it to the curb.

  Now the picture window was the focal point of the room, where her mother had sat in her rocking chair and kept tabs on the activities of the neighborhood. Joan walked to the window and looked out. The light from the room made it impossible to see anything other than her blurred reflection. She stared instead at herself. Her eyes were dark and enormous. And empty. Or was it just a trick of the reflection? She blinked and then turned to look at the rocking chair. She trailed her fingertips lightly over the top rail of the chair’s back. The wood was smooth. Cool. Comforting. She nudged it forward with her index finger and watched it rock gently back.

  Joan reconsidered her decision to stay at the house. She really wanted a drink. She stood motionless for several seconds, contemplating whether to get back in her car and drive downtown or simply to go upstairs and sleep. It would invariably be better in the morning. Wouldn’t it? Finally, with a resigned sigh, she walked back into the entryway, picked up her bag, and climbed the stairs.

  THE NEXT MORNING, Joan stood barefoot in the doorway to the living room and stared again at her mother’s rocking chair. Sleep had been elusive, and when she had dozed, her dreams had been surreal and only partially-formed. She was surprised to find that she actually missed having Luke next to her—even though his snoring generally annoyed her.

  Luke.

  Despite the reason for her trip, there was a part of her that had almost been looking forward to this time apart. She needed time to think—time to figure out what she was going to do about her marriage or more to the point, her lack of marriage.

  Joan shook her head at the thought. There was nothing wrong with Luke—nothing substantial, anyway. She just didn’t love him. She had probably never loved him, she had come to realize. Theirs had been a romance of convenience. They had simply fallen into the relationship and had been too lazy to do anything but marry. And honestly, it had seemed like the thing to do at the time. She had secured a good job. She had a nice apartment. It had been time to add a husband to her list of accomplishments. And then children—though in retrospect, she found herself wondering why exactly she had thought that she needed a husband and kids.

  The answer was obvious, though she didn’t like admitting it. She had done it, in large part, to show her mother that she was her own woman.

  “Guess the joke was on me,” Joan muttered as she leaned against the door frame, the irony of her situation not lost on her. She hadn’t wanted to be like her mother but there was a part of her that knew she was. It was clear in her actions—no matter how she tried to deny it.

  Like her mother, Joan had married a man she didn’t love. And, like her mother, she had had children that made her feel tethered to a life that felt like someone else’s. She thought about the woman she had planned to be as opposed to the woman she had settled for becoming. She was supposed to be a lawyer rather than a paralegal. She was supposed to be living in New York surrounded by eclectic and clever people instead of a living in Chicago and shuttling the kids to their never-ending social events. She was supposed to have torrid love affairs instead of going to bed each night next to a snoring husband.

  Was this how her mother had felt? Was that why she had always been so distant and angry? Had she, like Joan, wished she had made different choices? Had she, too, settled? Her mother had never specifically said she didn’t love Clyde but she didn’t have to. It was obvious. When she was young, Joan had often wondered what had brought them together—why they had married. She’d heard the stories, of course—about her father’s strange infatuation with the Henderson sisters. And she knew her mother wasn’t her father’s first wife—or even his second. She had been the third choice of three sisters.

  Joan was struck by the desire to see her parents’ wedding photos. They were packed away upstairs, she knew, though where, she wasn’t sure. The most probable places would be in the spare room, in her mother’s closet or, more than likely, in the attic. She would look, she promised herself. But only after she had some coffee.

  In the kitchen, Joan fumbled with the old-fashioned plug-in percolator her mother insisted on using. As she waited through the burbles and gasps for the final wheeze that signified the percolator was finished brewing, she went to the entryway and removed from her purse the folded to-do list she’d put together after talking to the auctioneer. After she inventoried the furniture, she would go through the smaller things like books and clothing. But for now, she just needed to get an idea of the scope of the sale. The task seemed suddenly daunting—especially on an empty stomach.

  Joan wandered back into the kitchen and rummaged through the pantry. She had cleaned out the refrigerator when she had been back for the funeral, and all that remained were canned vegetables and tuna fish. She would have to settle for coffee. She searched the cabinet for the biggest mug she could find—a battered mug with Ziggy hanging from a rope encouraging her to “Hang in There, Baby.” She rolled her eyes, filled the cup, and wandered back into the front sitting room where, despite her reservations, she allowed herself to settle into Katherine’s chair. It was comfortable, and she rocked slowly, enjoying the quiet creak of one of the joints. It felt strange to sit there, but still, she didn’t move.

  As she sipped, Joan stared out at the leaf-filled yard. It needed to be raked. She knew that her mother typically hired one of the neighbor boys to do it, but the thought of getting outside and working in the crisp autumn air sounded appealing.

  “It’s probably because I’m dreading the work I need to do in here,” she murmured as she finished the last of her coffee and rose to get more. It was time to start working, she knew. She poured another cup and went to her room to change into jeans and a T-shirt.

  Her approach was methodical, beginning with the upstairs and working her way down. She inventoried everything but the contents of her mother’s room and finished late in the afternoon. The fact that she hadn’t found her mother’s pictures suggested they were in her closet—which meant that she had to enter the room she had been avoiding. She sighed, walked back to the foot of the stairs, and looked up at the hallway and the closed door of her mother’s bedroom.

  “Might as well get it over with,” she said and forced herself to again climb the stairs. She reached out for the door
knob and was surprised to see her hand tremble. She curled her fingers into a fist and willed them to stop shaking. Her mother’s room had always been off-limits and apparently, that restriction still stood despite her death—at least in her mind. She shook her head and resolutely forced her fingers to close around the door knob.

  The room was characteristically tidy. Her mother was one to have things always in their place. The bed, in which she had died, was the only thing that seemed out of place. It had been stripped of the sheets and bedspread, leaving only the bare mattress. Joan tried not to stare at the bed and, instead, focused on the task at hand. If the photographs were going to be anywhere, she realized, they would be in the closet. Quickly, she strode across the room and opened the closet door. She was unprepared for the smells. Chanel No. 5. And laundry soap. And the faint hint of herbs from a faded sachet in the back of the closet. It was the smell of her mother and, for a moment, she felt an overwhelming sense of . . . what? Love? Nostalgia? Loss?