The Unmothered

By Brenda McCreight

Eden Sheridan spent years recovering from a traumatic childhood while re-inventing her life as a successful business woman. Now that the lakeside Inn she bought as an abandoned derelict and re-built as an upscale resort is ready for sale, she finds herself held back by a tangled relationship with her lover, Constable Rhiannon O’Hara, and by the resentment that comes from Jubilee, the grown daughter she raised alone.
Then, a reclusive old hippie is found murdered in her isolated mountain cabin, and only days later, a successful realtor is killed on a ferry crossing. As the body count climbs in the small, interconnected communities that dot the shores of Kootenay Lake, Eden realizes that she is the only common thread in the victim’s lives and Rhiannon is determined find the killer before Eden becomes the next target.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brenda McCreight
• Release date: Jan 29, 2012
• ISBN: 9781465764874

Brenda McCreight

Brenda McCreight, Ph.D., is a therapist, author, and consultant specializing in services for adoptive and foster families dealing with challenges such as FASD, ADHD, conduct disorder, attachment disorder, developmental delays, and cognitive impairment. Brenda is the author of “Recognizing and Managing Children with Fetal Alcohol/Syndrome” published by the Child Welfare League of America, and of “Parenting Your Older Adopted Child” published by New Harbinger Publications and “Eden’s Secret Journal: The Story of an Older Child Adoption” published by Adoption Press and “Help I’ve Been Adopted” by Tapestry Books. Brenda sees clients at her office in Nanaimo, British Columbia and she provides distance parent coaching by phone and by email. Most importantly, she is the mother of fourteen children and has seven grandchildren. She can be contacted through her web site at http://www.theadoptioncounselor.com

Book preview

THE UNMOTHERED

by

Brenda McCreight

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Smashwords Edition

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Copyright 2010 Brenda McCreight

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Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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PROLOGUE

There are those among us who find a place in time and claim it as their own. They live in sweet oblivion to the passing of years, and only the stare of strangers gives them the occasional pause to wonder if something is amiss. Willow Martin, stuck firmly in the 1970’s, was one such person.

Willow’s once copper colored hair had long since turned grey, yet she refused to admit to the changes in her body anymore than she conceded to the changing of the times. She still wore her hair long and flowing, with shiny little plastic beads braided into the thinning strands. Anyone watching Willow as she sat in her house, hard at work on her newest piece of stained glass, would immediately notice the veined hands and the wrinkles around the eyes that presented so harsh a contrast to the fresh faced young hippie she had been when she first came to the mountain, almost forty years ago.

Her skill with stained glass, acquired in one memorable year in San Francisco, had sustained Willow for most of her adult life. She made enough money selling the pieces at craft fairs and in the local tourist stores that she was able to keep a good supply of dope as well as pay the taxes on her isolated mountain cabin. When money ran short, usually around mid-winter, she could count on welfare and, until last year when the early stages of arthritis hit, Willow had always managed to get hired for tree planting in the summer and that gave her enough money to keep the van on the road. As long as the snow was fresh and could grip the tires, her rusty old Volkswagen, with its faded peace signs and cracked windows, could still travel the logging roads that provided a route down the mountain. She knew the van did not have many trips left in it, and Willow was uncomfortably aware that she was soon going to be without transportation.

Willow did not really have any other financial needs; she did quite well by her standards. Yet, with the creeping of age had come the harsh onset of loneliness. Now in January, when the snow was heavy, it would be weeks between her treks out to the village. No fresh faced young hikers would drop in and provide company for long, dark evenings. Still, Willow tried to keep busy, glad that she had the stained glass to absorb her attention. Her concentration centered on the glass, Willow hummed along with the music which was turned loud to shut out the emptiness of the house. The kettle Willow had filled earlier began to make boiling noises on the wood and coal stove behind her. She picked up the soldering iron and went back to her work, concentrating on the lead bead so that she could finish one small section before she stopped to make some tea.

Willow felt an unexpected chill breeze on her back. The direction of the fumes from the burning lead flux suddenly changed and blew directly into her eyes, causing them to fill with tears. She quickly put her fists to her eyes and dropped the soldering iron that landed on the table, shattering the delicate glass. Without warning, Willow felt her head yanked back and down.

Don't move old lady or you might get hurt, said a soft voice.

Willow squinted up at the face. The fumes from the flux still made her eyes to smart and tear. I can't see. Who are you? What are you doing? Willow demanded, the agitation competing with the fear in her voice. Let go of me! She tried to turn and reach up to grab at the hands that had such a tight grip on her hair. Immediately, she felt something sharp cut through her fingers and she yanked them back to her chest as the pain ripped up through the nerves in her arms.

What are you doing? she cried.

I'm killing you, Willow." With that, the same knife that had cut the old woman’s fingers made a jagged slash across one side of her neck, cutting through first her left, then her right, carotid arteries. She’d had no time to resist, no time to make a sound of protest. The hand released her hair and the top half of Willow's body fell forward onto the table, the broken chips of colored glass glinting through the beaded strands of hair.

The intruder lifted Willow's head off the table just far enough to be sure that she was dead, and then let her head drop back into the blood pooling on the glass. The killer turned around to the sound of the boiling kettle and, moving it off the heat and tidily to the side, slipped quietly out the door.

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CHAPTER 1

Eden Sheridan stared at the small red light on the answering machine. She had been sitting at her office desk on the third floor of the Westwood Inn for fifteen minutes, replaying the phone message over and over again. She listened intently, trying to decipher her daughter’s mood from the tone of her voice. Eden knew in her heart that it was a futile process. The two of them would end up in some kind of conflict regardless of Jubilee’s mood. I should have breastfed. We would get along today if I had breastfed her, Eden thought. She wondered briefly if other parents had difficult relationships with their adult children. Eden didn’t have enough friends with adult kids to ask, and even if she did, she wasn’t sure she was brave enough to hear their answers.

Eden put her head in her hands and ran her fingers through her thick, shoulder length hair, massaging her scalp through the layers of sandy colored waves and curls. As a child she hated her unruly hair, but as an adult she learned to love its abundance, and last year, when she turned forty-three, Eden began to appreciate its apparent resistance to the graying process.

Oh well, here goes, she muttered, nothing ventured, nothing lost. She reached out to the phone and hit the speed dial for her daughter's number. Eden listened to the ringing of the phone, hoping Jubilee would answer and yet afraid of again confronting the emptiness of their relationship.

Hello?

Eden's heart leapt as she heard that wonderful, familiar voice. For a moment she allowed herself a sense of hope. Hello Jubilee, it's me, Mom. She fumbled for the magic words that would keep the arguments at bay. So, how are you?

I'm fine. You don't have to tell me who you are when you call. I know my own mother's voice. Lee’s voice crackled with irritation. Besides, everyone else respects my name change. You’re the only person who still calls me Jubilee.

The hope fluttered and fell like a dry autumn leaf. I'm sorry. I'm doing better with it most of the time. Taking a deep breath Eden tried to keep her voice cheerful. Her impulse was to snap back but she was afraid of ruining the rest of the conversation. I am such a wimp. Dear God, please don’t let me start whining. Anyway, I'm returning your call. So, what’s up sweetie pie? There, that was better. It was safer to use a pet name from childhood than the wrong name in adulthood.

I just wanted to let you know that I'm applying for a summer internship with a company in Vancouver, so I'm not going to be coming home this year. You'll have to hire someone else to work at the front desk when tourist season starts.

You're going to spend the summer in Vancouver? Is this a good opportunity for you? Cheerful and friendly, she was on the right track. Maybe it was okay that she didn’t breastfeed.

Yeah, it's a really good position with a top rated firm. They do extensive product marketing in the East and even in Viet Nam, so I'd get some really good experience with the Asian market. They don't take first year graduate students very often, but I've got good references from my profs so I'm pretty hopeful.

You're interested in the Asian market? Eden replied, searching her mind to find some point of reference. She frowned into the sparsely furnished, utilitarian office. Eden felt frustrated by how little she knew of the world beyond the mountains or beyond the business of running the Inn. She didn’t have time for television at the Inn, and she rarely read anything other than the local weekly newspapers when she scanned through them for upcoming local events that she could add to the Inn’s web site to entice more tourists. She used her computer daily and was thrilled with her internet marketing, but as far as Eden was concerned, anything that didn’t relate directly to the Inn wasn’t worth looking at.

Yes, that's where it’s all happening now, Lee sounded animated, excited. The global economic crisis has really sent the Asian market bouncing so it’s an ideal time for a student to get involved. This should really open some doors for me.

Eden was struck by the lightening speed march of time. It seemed like only yesterday that Lee had been struggling with basic algebra, begging Eden to let her quit school and spend her life as a housekeeper at the Inn. And now the same girl was talking knowledgably about the global economy.

Is Asia far enough away, Lee? Eden grimaced as she heard the words tripping out from her mouth before she could stop them.

Great, Mom. I knew you couldn't manage to be happy for me. I'm looking at a really good future, you know. I'm going to do things with my life. I'm going to go more than twenty miles from Kootenay Lake.

I know, I know, said Eden, cutting through her daughter's irritation, you’re going to do more than me, and I am happy for you, Lee, it's what I always wanted for you. But I get to miss you. Mothers miss their daughters when they grow up. It's part of the contract. She heard herself whining again and she bit her lip in a futile attempt to curb herself.

So are support and encouragement, Lee responded icily, but you seem to conveniently leave those out. Anyway, I have to go. I have a class to get to. I'll let you know what's happening as soon as I hear. Oh Lee added, can you get my hiking equipment and send it to me? I left up at Willow’s last summer and I don’t know what’s going to happen to her place since her murder. I’d like my wet suit too. I think I left it in the back closet of my cabin.

Eden leapt gratefully to this safe conversational ground. I can get the wet suit and I guess I can get the rest of the stuff. I’ll have to contact the police because I’m not sure what they did with her stuff. Someone told me that most of it’s still on her property till they find a relative or something. But I’ll check into it and get it off to you. It was always better when Eden had something concrete to do, instead of having to talk. She’d accepted that about herself years ago and had built her life around action, not words.

Thanks, Mom, said Lee, her voice was kinder. I really have to go. I’ll call to let you know when the stuff arrives. Bye.

Eden slowly put down the receiver and pushed herself away from the desk. She was embarrassed by her inability to get through a simple conversation with her own child. But more importantly, she felt the sadness of their conflicted relationship spread out from her heart and insinuate itself through her body, squeezing and threatening to choke her. She stood up and walked over to the large windows overlooking the lake, seeking the familiar comfort she found in the sight.

Eden never tired of looking at Kootenay Lake and the mountains that surrounded both the water and, it seemed, her life. She had been born in a small town at the other end of the two hundred mile long lake, and had spent all of her life living in the communities that populated its shores, trying to find a way to leave, and all the while finding herself trapped there by one thing after another. Still, her sense of entrapment did not distract from her appreciation of the ever changing colors and moods created by the tightly layered combination of lake, mountain, and sky. Today everything looked gray and the sky was covered over by darkened clouds readying themselves for an early spring storm. The lake was choppy though there was little wind and it reflected the darkness of the moving sky so that it gave the illusion of pulling every shade deep into its own darkness.

Eden’s habit of finding comfort from the mountains had begun in the confusion and loneliness of her childhood. Her family had often lived within sight of some of the old mine shafts that dotted the area and still opened onto the highway. When she was little, Eden had believed her older sister’s stories about fairies and magical beings sleeping in the mine shafts by day and running at night through the hills and valleys of the mountains that cradled them. Eden had been certain that if she could just find the right way to ask, the Spirit of the Mountains might take her in and protect her from all the bad things that were happening. She had long since given up expecting help from the mountains, yet she still talked to them and found in them to be a constant source of comfort.

Eden? Eden started and turned to see the tall, slight figure of Lisa standing half-way in the doorway. Lisa had been working at the Inn for the two years since Lee left. She was a moody young woman with a tendency to sulk when things went wrong, but she had proven herself to be dependable and capable of so many different tasks that Eden asked her to stay on through the winter months. Last year she had let Lisa move into the cabin vacated by Lee. Lisa could paint a wall, plant a garden, or work the front desk without hesitation, but she had a disconcerting tendency of appearing from nowhere. Even when she was fully in the room, Eden always felt that the young woman’s presence was more like that of an apparition than a living being. Her hair was not quite blonde and not quite brown, her eyes were somewhere between blue and gray, and her skin was so white it was almost translucent. Lisa had the look of someone that nature had pasted together out of unfinished leftovers.

I wish you wouldn’t sneak up on me like that, Eden said briskly, trying to ignore the slight sense of revulsion she always felt around Lisa. I don’t know how you always manage to be so quiet.

I’m sorry. I wasn’t sneaking. I guess I don’t make much noise, said Lisa, still not moving any further into the room. She looked ready to either pounce or run, and Eden felt she had to keep quiet herself in order not to spook the young woman. I wanted to know if you were going to get someone from the village to hang the new shelves in the pantry or if I should ask Josh to do it. He’s got a hangover but he’s sober, and he says he’s feeling kind of bored today.

Josh was one of the older loggers who lived in the chalets during the winter months, exchanging labor for a reduced rent during the winter lay-offs. Twenty years ago, men like him had been able to find off-season work in the mines or the mills that dotted the sides of the lake. Nowadays the mines were shut down, and there were no longer enough mills left in the area to provide year round employment even for the young loggers who could tolerate working outside in the winter’s cold.

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In the early days of Eden’s ownership of the Inn she had rented the dilapidated cabins to some of the loggers, partly for the money, but mainly because having someone living in them during the cold months meant the pipes were less likely to freeze and burst and force her to pay for plumbers and carpenters. After the first winter, it occurred to her that she would do better to exchange work for reduced rent, and over the last fifteen years, the labor of the loggers had converted the shacks into small but charming chalets that drew the summer tourist trade. And, if the rumor was true that unidentified business interests were looking at building a ski resort somewhere in the area, she would get enough winter trade for the Inn to remain open year round and the chalets would be real money makers. And men like Josh, Hayden and the others would find themselves pushed further out of the community that their great-grandparents had helped to build.

Yes. Ask him to do the shelves, but I’d like you to go into Kaslo and buy the lumber on my account at Mr. Tanaka’s building supply. I don’t want him to scrounge up wood that won’t pass a health and safety inspection. You can take my truck. Eden fumbled with her key ring, trying to remove the truck key from the metal loop that held the whole set. I can’t get the ring open, she said impatiently. Eden was hesitant to give Lisa the entire set, but the young woman had proven her honesty on