Seasons of Her Life Read online

  Ruby looked at the huge stainless steel bowls full of cookie dough. It had taken them hours to mix. “We’re not throwing it out, that’s for sure. One of us has to stay here and bake and the other one has to go down and get a business license. Do you have any extra money?”

  “Ruby, you know I don’t have any money”

  “You told me you and Hugo have a joint savings account That means whatever is in that account is half yours. If you want to, you can draw out all the money; all you have to do is sign a withdrawal slip.”

  “Okay, I’ll do it!” Dixie said in a shaky voice after a long moment of struggling with her fears.

  After her friend had left, Ruby dropped her head into her hands. What right did she have to tell Dixie to steal from her husband? Ruby reached for the phone. Her heart pounded. Finally, Dixie’s breathless voice came over the wire. “Don’t do it, Dixie. Don’t go to the bank. I’ll think of something else. I’m sorry, Dixie. I had no right to put you in a position like that.”

  The rest of the day passed in a blur for Ruby But the best thing that happened was her realization that friendship was more important than material things, or even the business. She felt now as though her friendship with Dixie was carved in granite.

  Books by Fern Michaels

  A Family Affair

  Forget Me Not

  The Blossom Sisters

  Balancing Act

  Tuesday’s Child

  Betrayal

  Southern Comfort

  To Taste the Wine

  Sins of the Flesh

  Sins of Omission

  Return to Sender

  Mr and Miss Anonymous

  Up Close and Personal

  Fool Me Once

  Picture Perfect

  About Face

  The Future Scrolls

  Kentucky Sunrise

  Kentucky Heat

  Kentucky Rich

  Plain Jane

  Charming Lily

  What You Wish For

  The Guest List

  Listen to Your Heart

  Celebration

  Yesterday

  Finders Keepers

  Annie’s Rainbow

  Sara’s Song

  Vegas Sunrise

  Vegas Heat

  Vegas Rich

  Whitefire

  Wish List

  Dear Emily

  Christmas at Timberwoods

  E-Book Exclusives:

  Desperate Measures

  Seasons of Her Life

  To Have and To Hold

  Take Down

  Countdown

  Upside Down

  Serendipity

  Captive Innocence

  Captive Embraces

  Captive Passions

  Captive Secrets

  Captive Splendors

  Cinders to Satin

  For All Their Lives

  Fancy Dancer

  Texas Heat

  Texas Rich

  Texas Fury

  Texas Sunrise

  The Sisterhood Novels:

  Eyes Only

  Kiss and Tell

  Blindsided

  Gotcha!

  Home Free

  Déjà Vu

  Cross Roads

  Game Over

  Deadly Deals

  Vanishing act

  Razor Sharp

  Under the Radar

  Final Justice

  Collateral Damage

  Fast Track

  Hokus Pokus

  Hide and Seek

  Free Fall

  Lethal Justice

  Sweet Revenge

  The Jury

  Vendetta

  Payback

  Weekend Warrior

  The Godmothers Series:

  Classed

  Breaking News

  Deadline

  Late Edition

  Exclusive

  The Scoop

  Anthologies:

  When the Snow Falls

  Secret Santa

  A Winter Wonderland

  I’ll Be Home for Christmas

  Making Spirits Bright

  Holiday Magic

  Snow Angels

  Silver Bells

  Comfort and Joy

  Sugar and Spice

  Let it Snow

  A Gift of Joy

  Five Golden Rings

  Deck the Halls

  Jingle All the Way

  FERN MICHAELS

  SEASONS OF HER LIFE

  LYRICAL PRESS

  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Books by Fern Michaels

  Title Page

  Dedication

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE - SPRING

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  PART TWO - SUMMER

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  PART THREE - AUTUMN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  PART FOUR - WINTER

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  EPILOGUE

  Teaser chapter

  Copyright Page

  I’d like to dedicate this book

  to someone I used to know

  PROLOGUE

  The graduation dinner for Ruby Connors wasn’t really a graduation dinner at all because George Connors, her father, demanded a six-course meal in their house seven days a week. Tonight the fare was fresh fruit, soup, salad, a fish mixture, roast chicken, stuffing, cranberry sauce, string beans and peas from the garden, mashed potatoes, gravy and homemade biscuits suitable for sopping up gravy, and a cake. It was a rich double-chocolate cake, three full layers, with nearly an inch of frosting between each layer. The top was full of swirls and little peaks with colored jimmies all over.

  Grace was long and drawn out. Ruby wished her father would get on with it so she could attack her food, not because she wanted it, but because she had to eat it. At least four times a week she puked up her dinner. She watched, her face blank, when her father loaded up her plate. Already her younger sister, Opal, had tears in her eyes. Opal could never eat all her food and always had to sit at the table till eight o’clock, when her mother would take the plate and wrap it in waxed paper so it could be served to Opal for breakfast. George Connors called the heavy, horrible meals “providing for his family.”

  Opal Connors cried a lot, but not Ruby. Ruby had learned to do what she was told, for the most part; otherwise punishment was swift and terrible. Once she had spilled a handful of salt on the floor, and her father had forced her to lick it up. Often he had beaten her until she limped. If he found out she threw up after these heavy meals, he probably would tape her mouth shut.

  Tomorrow would change all that. Tomorrow she was leaving this house and Barstow, Pennsylvania, and she was never coming back. Tomorrow she was going to Washington, D.C., to live with
her older sister, Amber, and to work for the government.

  Ruby watched as her father poured glasses of milk for her and Opal. She hated drinking milk because it filled her up even more. This was her second glass, to be consumed with the cake. If only one of her parents would say something about her valedictory speech and graduating with honors, but she knew there would be no words of praise. There never were.

  At least Grace Zachary, the Connors’ next-door neighbor, had been there for her at the ceremony. Grace had sat with her husband, Paul, in the front row of the bleachers, smacking her hands together in applause after Ruby’s speech and enthusiastically poking her husband in the shoulder while he whistled between his teeth and hooted, “Yay, Ruby!” How often Ruby wished they had been her parents instead of the ones she’d been given.

  The moment Ruby finished her cake, she asked to be excused. George reached out, slapped his hand over her wrist, and said, “You sit there till your sister finishes her supper.” Ruby’s heart fluttered. Her eyes swiveled to her mother, who was staring at her own wedge of cake as if it were her enemy. Ruby sat back and folded her hands in her lap.

  She had the ability, from long years of practice, to shift her mind into neutral when she had to. But the moment George Connors left the table to go out to the shed, she flew off her chair and scraped Opal’s plate defiantly into the coal stove. She watched the banked coals spit and hiss before she stared down her mother.

  “Eat the damn cake, Opal, and stop sniveling,” she snapped, but not unkindly. To her mother she said, “I suppose you’re going to tell, like you always do.” This time her voice was unkind. “This is as good a time as any to tell you I throw up these damn dinners almost every night. Tell him that, too,” Ruby said, marching out of the room and upstairs. If she’d taken the time to look, she would have seen her mother’s eyes fill with tears.

  Ruby waited for her stomach to rumble and chum, then beelined for the bathroom and upchucked.

  PART ONE

  SPRING

  CHAPTER ONE

  1950

  Almost free. Almost.

  Ruby Connors looked around her room for the last time. She was really leaving this house, this room, and if she had anything to say about it, she’d never come back. Her eyes fell on the white curtains hanging stiffly at the window, starched in sugar water and stretched on curtain stretchers. No more of that, Ruby thought gleefully. No more pinpricks. And no more white iron bed with its crazy quilt made by her mother with patches from her older sister’s dresses. She hated the quilt, just as she hated Amber.

  Someday she was going to have a pretty bedroom like the pictures in the Sears, Roebuck catalogue. She’d have a dressing table with a white organdy ruffle with curtains to match—and not the kind that had to be stretched, either. She’d have a meadow-green carpet and a real bedspread. Every table and corner would have plants and flowers, mostly daisies. On her dressing table would be silver frames with pictures, maybe of her dog or cat. Everything would be alive. Maybe she’d even put her picture of Johnny Ray in it, the one she’d sneaked out of a Photoplay magazine.

  Ruby sat down on the edge of the bed, and the springs squeaked under her ninety pounds. The room was sweltering hot, even though it was only June. In the summer she baked alive, and in the winter she froze with cold drafts from the attic.

  Almost free. Almost. “I’m leaving and I’m never coming back, nevernevernevernevernever,” Ruby singsonged quietly.

  Her suitcases were packed; she was wearing her sodality medal and the scapular that her mother always insisted on. Her dress wasn’t new, but it wasn’t as faded as her others and a ruffle had been added to cover the let-down hem. Her hairstyle, if it could be called a style, was a dutch boy with bangs. As soon as she could, she was going to get a permanent and some colored barrettes, maybe a ribbon or two if that’s what the girls wore in Washington, D.C.

  Ruby scuffed at the braided rug with her polished saddle shoe. The shoes were almost new, and so were her socks, but they smelled like No Worry. So did her underwear. If only she weren’t so skinny and plain-looking. She was starting to worry now and have doubts. She was doing the right thing. There was no way she wanted to stay home and work in the shirt factory. She’d seen girls that graduated a year or two ahead of her getting off the bus at the railroad tracks with threads all over their clothes. They always looked so tired and listless. Her mother called the shirt factory a sweat box. Living with her older sister, Amber, was not going to be divinely wonderful, either. Amber was prissy and meticulous, and she was a liar. But it would be better than living here and working in the factory.

  Ruby carried her suitcases out to the hall. Two hours to go. She put the rag rug back in place at the side of the bed. Two quick swipes and the quilt was wrinkle-free. She backed out of the room. Her hand stretched toward the door. If she closed it, she would no longer exist, she thought. Her parents would walk right past it and never think of her. If she left it open, they just might think, this is Ruby’s room. Maybe ... could be ... dumb thought, Ruby. She pushed the door shut, a defiant look on her face.

  The house was so quiet, Ruby thought as her saddle shoes snicked at the rubber treads on the stairs. Her mother, Irma, was probably on the back porch, shelling peas for dinner. Her father had gone uptown for the mail and to shop at the A&P because he said Irma didn’t know how to shop and look for bargains. Opal was at catechism class. She was going to miss Opal. Out of necessity she and Opal had banded together against their parents and Amber. She’d promised to write to Opal, but to send the letters to her grandmother’s house. Opal had promised never to show the letters to their parents. Opal was going to have a tough time with her gone.

  In the wide center hallway, Ruby listened for any sound that might mean her father had returned. The screen door squeaked when she opened it and squeaked again when she closed it. She waited a moment on the front porch to see if she would be called back into the house. A bee buzzed about her knees. Ruby swatted it and killed it with her bare hand. Amber would have squeaked and gone white in the face the same way she’d always gotten white in the face when it was her turn to scrub the porch floor. Because of Amber’s regular weekend illnesses, Ruby scrubbed this porch every Saturday for as long as she could remember. She would never again have to do it. Now it was Opal’s turn.

  Ruby ran, careful not to scuff her shoes, down the street, past the lumber mill, over the railroad tracks, past Riley’s Monument Works, where her father worked. She raced past her uncle’s garage, over the bridge and up the hill. The smell of stale beer from Bender’s beer joint made her hold her breath as she careened around the corner that led to her grandmother’s house.

  A smile tugged at the corner of Ruby’s mouth. She’d said good-bye to Bubba every day for the past two weeks, but when you weren’t ever planning on coming back, you couldn’t say good-bye often enough. Besides, she needed this last visit, this last good-bye.

  Almost free. Almost.

  Ruby took a moment to drink in the sight of her grandmother’s house, to commit it to memory. It was a squat little house made from fieldstone with a matching wall. She’d never sit on that wall again, never lie under the old chestnut tree in the front yard. She loved the old chestnut and the way its branches hung down and covered her like a grand umbrella. She would forget the house she grew up in, but she would never forget this house. Never.

  Inside, the kitchen was big and square with cabbage-rose wallpaper that sometimes made her dizzy, but her grandmother loved bright things. The windowsills and shelves held glossy green plants in colorful clay pots, and the room always smelled of cinnamon and orange. The curtains, as cheerful as the wallpaper, were made from linen and trimmed with inch-wide red rick-rack, handsewn by her grandmother. They were changed twice a year, when the mullioned windows were washed. The crazy quilt linoleum on the floor was blinding. What she loved most, though, were the old-fashioned coal stove and the pots that constantly simmered with orange peels. It was a kitchen of pure love. This h
ouse was similar to her parents’, having been built by the same lumber company, but love had made it into something very different. Love was something she was never going to be without again.

  “Ruby, is that you?” her grandmother called from the back porch.

  “It’s me, Bubba,” Ruby trilled as she made her way past the snowball bush, which was in full bloom. Once she’d picked a bouquet from it for her room, and her mother had thrown it out, saying she didn’t want any bugs in the house. Later Ruby had pulled the wasted bouquet from the trash.

  Ruby planted a noisy kiss on top of her grandmother’s head. “Apple pie tonight, huh?” Her uncle John loved apple pie. Uncle Hank liked rhubarb. Ruby knew there would be two kinds of pie tonight. “I came to say good-bye again.” Ruby laughed.

  “I knew you’d come this morning.” The old lady smiled in return. “You look pretty, Ruby. Did you have breakfast?” Ruby nodded. “Are you nervous about going on the train all the way to Washington?”

  “No. Well, maybe a little. About Amber mostly. She’s supposed to meet me, and she won’t like that. But I bought a present for her last week at the company store, so she’ll have to be nice to me. I’m going to do my best to get along with her.” She could tell by the anxiety in her grandmother’s eyes that she wasn’t convincing her.

  “You know, Bubba,” Ruby went on, “I feel different ... inside ... I’m changing or else I already changed ... it’s not just me going away, either. It’s something else, something I can’t explain. Maybe it’s because I’m turning eighteen next month. But whatever it is, I think it means you don’t have to worry about Amber and me. It’s going to work out, it really is.”

  “I hope so,” Mary Cozinsky mumbled under her breath. “You stand your ground with your sister, Ruby, and don’t let her push you around.”