The Secret Keepers of Old Depot Grocery by Amanda Cox

Author:Amanda Cox [Cox, Amanda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction;Domestic Fiction;Christian Fiction;FIC042000;FIC044000
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2021-07-28T00:00:00+00:00

Jessamine had chosen to return to school that morning, despite the fact that Glory Ann wasn’t ready for life to fall into a routine. A routine meant accepting that this was their new normal. A life without Clarence.

Glory Ann had squeezed her youngest daughter tight and reminded Jessamine that if she needed to come home before the end of the day, she understood. She could call the moment it got to be too much. Her daughter had extracted herself from her embrace and with a resolute set to her shoulders, swung her pink backpack on her back and hurried to the waiting bus. Leaving Glory Ann alone. Waiting for Rosemary to come back home.

When Jessamine had told her where Rosemary had gone, Glory Ann refused to believe her mother’s home, of all places, was where Rosemary had chosen to seek asylum. Thankfully her mother had called straightaway, informing Glory Ann of Rosemary’s safe arrival. Glory Ann could only pray her mother refrained from speaking too much about the past. And that she was kind and loving, at least in the sparse way her mother knew.

Surely she wouldn’t spill the truth, not when she had shunned her own daughter and granddaughter for years in efforts to bury the secret. This was not the time for Rosemary to discover that Clarence hadn’t been her biological father.

Glory Ann sat in the kitchen, warm mug clasped between her hands, staring at the place Clarence always occupied at the round table for four.

What would Clarence do if it had been he who outlived her? He’d get up and go to the store. He’d serve the community. He’d “keep on keepin’ on,” as he used to say. He’d face the hard things head-on.

Glory Ann tidied the kitchen and then traded her bathrobe for her slacks and an Old Depot T-shirt. Palms sweating, Glory Ann tried not to think about what she’d face as she drove toward the store. The broken front glass that needed to be replaced. The food that spoiled while the store was closed. The . . . the blood staining the wood-planked floors.

Tremors shook her body as images from that night played in her mind. Images the officer tried to shield her from, but she insisted on surveying, knowing her imagination would substitute reality with something far worse.

She should turn the car around. Board the place up. There would never be a day she’d be ready to face Old Depot without Clarence’s steady strength by her side.

More images played in her mind. Clarence taking her hand that first day she walked through the door. Uncertain and sure all at the same time when he told her father he’d marry her. His quiet strength as he worked beside her. Not saying a word about the chill she sent his way or her halfhearted efforts. Or the childish way she willfully stocked items in incorrect places for weeks on end as Rosemary grew inside of her.

Years later she asked him why he’d been so kind

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