Seneca Shadows by Lauralee Bliss

Author:Lauralee Bliss [Bliss, Lauralee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-60742-910-4
Publisher: Barbour Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2008-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

eight

Lucy looked in the oven at the dish she’d prepared—chicken and dumplings, her father’s favorite. Daddy was coming home for the noon meal, a rarity as the lumber mill often kept him away for hours on end, sometimes late into the evening. But with his expected arrival today at noon, Momma had decided to have the main meal then so he could enjoy it before his business took him away again. Lucy promptly set to work making the dish as soon as her mother informed her of the plan.

She now took the casserole out of the oven to find it nicely browned, the gravy bubbling through the cracker crust, when a commotion erupted in the front yard. “Must be Carl and Tim,” she told Momma, untying her apron. “They can smell cooking a mile away.”

She came to the window, prepared to see them racing each other to the porch, flinging open the screen door, waving their soiled hands in her face while their voices begged for food. Instead, to her amazement, she saw Nick enter the yard, leading each boy by the arm. Both brothers had flushed and downcast faces. Neither said a word. She opened the screen door. “Captain Landers, what happened?”

“Are your folks at home, Lucy?”

She stepped aside as Momma came to the door.

“What’s this about? Carl, Tim, where have you been?”

“It wasn’t anything,” Carl began.

“You sure about that?” Nick said, nudging him slightly.

“I just wanted to try it out. It wasn’t anything.”

Nick frowned. “Getting stranded on a ledge sixty feet up with no safety equipment and no way down is hardly nothing. And especially when others had to stop their own business to come up there and rescue you.”

“Oh, no!” Momma cried, just as Daddy walked into the room. “Did you hear what happened, Dick? Carl and Tim were up there on Seneca Rocks and this soldier had to rescue them.”

“What’s this?” Daddy came forward, the morning paper in his hand. Nick quickly unfolded the details. “I don’t believe it. The one day I get off at noon and you boys have to do something like this.”

“I didn’t get stuck up there,” Tim declared. “Carl did.”

“You could’ve been hurt!” Momma wailed.

“Killed is more like it,” Daddy said in a matter-of-fact tone that sent another wail from Momma’s lips. “We’re very thankful, Mister …”

“Landers, sir. Captain Nick Landers with the Mountain Training Group.”

“Thank you, Captain Landers. I’m much obliged. Now surely you can come in and share the noon meal with us. It’s the least we can do to thank you.”

Lucy’s heart nearly skipped a beat as she watched Nick look beyond her father to the table in the dining room and the dish of chicken and dumplings, its steamy aroma wafting through the house. “Well … I do have things to do, but I left my sergeant in charge. I suppose he can handle it.”

“Good. Come on in then, and make yourself at home.”

Lucy thought she had died and gone to heaven. The man she dreamed of day and night now stood in the foyer of her humble home.

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