Sour Grapes: A Dewberry Farm Mystery (Dewberry Farm Mysteries Book 10) by Karen MacInerney

Author:Karen MacInerney [MacInerney, Karen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gray Whale Press
Published: 2025-09-29T00:00:00+00:00

We got the goats some water and then headed inside to Flora’s linoleumed kitchen for tall glasses of iced tea.

“Thanks.”

She slid a tall glass of tea across her Formica kitchen table to me. I sipped it, thankful for the cool tea and trying not to worry too much about whether Blossom was okay… and why she wasn’t with the goats.

“So,” Flora said, sitting across from me. “The Knox house.”

“Is that what it’s called?”

She nodded. “It’s got a long history. People said that property was cursed for a long time; that’s why nobody bought it before the winery went in.”

“Did Bunny and Jim know about the supposed curse?”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “Anyhow,” she said, “the story goes that a young man named Francis Knox came out from Tennesee to Texas to prove up some land. He brought his wife Eleanor and twin girls with him and staked a claim on that land. You saw the irises?”

“I did,” I said.

“Those came from Eleanor’s garden back in Tennessee, or so the story goes. There’s a big patch of ‘em out there, but it’s too shady now for them to bloom.”

Maybe I’d transplant a few to see. “So they made it here and got a house built.”

“They did,” she said, “but the first house burned down almost as soon as they got it up. They survived, but one of the girls had terrible burns. She died soon after,” Flora told me. “There’s a little graveyard near the house, or so they say; I’m not sure where. Anyhow, they were rebuilding the place when their cow got into some poisoned plants, and the mama and the second twin fell sick.”

“Oh, no,” I said. “Did they survive?”

“Eleanor did, but she lost her second daughter. That’s why the place was called Lost Sisters Ranch until just a few years back.”

“That’s horrible,” I said. “Did they have any more children?”

“The story goes she was too heartbroken to try again and disappeared one night to head back east to her family. No proof of it, except one of the horses was gone.”

“Do you think that’s what really happened?”

“Nobody knows,” she said. “Her husband stayed on, but nothing ever came of the land, and he died alone and was buried next to his daughters.” She shook her head. “The land reverted to the state, and it’s been bought and sold for pastureland many times since then, but nobody’s ever built a homestead there since. The legend goes that Eleanor’s haunting the place, looking for her lost babies and warning everyone away. ”

“That’s such a sad story. No wonder the place has such a desolate feel to it.”

“And now we’ve got more death,” she said, shaking her head. “I never should have put a dime into that place. Everyone in town knows that land is bad luck.”

“But everyone seemed so excited for the winery!”

“Well, not everybody, I guess,” Flora said. “But my mama told me that story when I was knee high to a grasshopper, and all my friends knew it, too.

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