No Dark Valley by Jamie Langston Turner

Author:Jamie Langston Turner [Jamie Langston Turner]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781441204417
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group

20

Till the Last Beam Fadeth

At first Celia had thought of it as a total miracle that somebody wanted to buy Grandmother’s house, but then she had learned that the train no longer kept its daily schedule along that stretch of track. With that drawback out of the way, she could see how somebody might want a small clean house like her grandmother’s, even though it would need a new roof in the next few years and the kitchen was no bigger than a walk-in closet. Maybe a widow or a retired couple, somebody who didn’t do a lot of cooking, would find it just right.

But it turned out to be a newly married couple. And one of the biggest surprises was that they were paying cash, so there was no loan approval to wait for. Evidently the girl’s father, an orthodontist, was giving them the house as a wedding present. They wanted to move in soon, in July, so they’d be all settled by the time school started. They were both teachers in Dunmore, one at the high school and the other at an elementary school. They had come by twice already to take some measurements while Celia had been here this time, and it was clear that they were champing at the bit to start hanging curtains and unpacking dishes.

This couple was a great mystery to Celia, and she marveled that they hailed from right here in Dunmore. They looked like they belonged in some big city like Atlanta or Savannah. They were both good-looking in a wholesome, all-American way—shiny brown hair, clear fresh complexions, straight white teeth. Their names were Luke and Ashley Franco, and they both had one whole year of teaching under their belts.

The first time they came by the house, Celia had two more names for her list of married couples who looked like each other. Here they were, the Franco twins, with their shiny-faced star quarterback and head cheerleader kind of good looks. She added them at once to the preacher and his wife, the look-alike Davidsons, and her next-door neighbors back home, Bruce and Kimberly, whose last name she didn’t even know, who, not counting his scars and her extra weight, could also be siblings.

Now that she thought about it, though, it wasn’t just the couples she had met recently. Milton and Patsy Stewart looked alike, too. They were almost exactly the same height and body build, wore the same bland smiles, and from a distance appeared to have something perched on top of their heads, Patsy’s hairdo looking like a helmet with earflaps and Morton’s like an upside-down mixing bowl. Even Ollie and Connie favored each other, with their Scandinavian kind of good looks, both tall and big-boned with blue eyes and blond hair going gray. And Boo Newman’s husband was as plump as she was, though Celia had seen him only a couple of times through the art gallery window and couldn’t judge how much they looked alike in the face.

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