Lost & Found

By Sandy Kay

Veronica Michaels had spent the past twenty years married to an angry, abusive man who stripped away every vestige of the poetic, independent, romantic writer she used to be. She had become a recluse, a mere shadow of the mother that her daughter Meg remembered. Roni felt trapped in a loveless marriage, burdened with debt, with no hope for a different life or a different future.

When she was offered a chance for freedom, she grasped for it - even though it involved a bit of espionage, blackmail, and a dangerous escape for her life with the help of the very handsome father of a co-worker.

Would Frank Harrison ever look at her as anything other than a desperate, weak woman needing protection, or was she destined to spend the rest of her life without the love she so longed for?

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Aug 19, 2013
• ISBN: 9781491808993

Sandy Kay

Sandy Hemphill is a self-proclaimed “wordologist”. She states, “I just love words! Nothing else is so precise, so descriptive, so influential. Words are the one thing we can never ‘delete’, or ‘take back’, because they stay forever! They can be amended, or added to, or elaborated upon, but they are forever “out there”! Sandy was born in Ohio, moved to Florida with her parents shortly afterward, and at age 5 returned to Ohio for her education. After retiring from a career in the medical field, she returned to Florida after 70 years of longing for the palm trees, the magnificent birds and foliage, and of course, the wonderful sunshine! Seldom are we able to fulfill a lifelong dream, and she is living hers! Sandy can be contacted at [e-mail]

Book preview

Chapter One

T he cloud cover must have settled back in during the night—the air felt cool and damp to her skin—but she opened the window in her car just a little further to breathe in the musky smell of the wet woods as she headed into work. Her drive this morning felt eerily dark with the clouds hovering low over the surrounding countryside. Or, perhaps that was just her mood. As she neared downtown Laurel, the fog lifted just a little, but the employee parking lot behind the local newspaper office—lit by one solitary lamppost at the entrance and a single sconce by the rear door—was sending chills down her spine and setting her nerves on edge.

It was a little before 6:00am, and the familiar old brick Sentinel building that usually welcomed her, loomed dark and forebodingly before her. This was her favorite time of day, when she had the office to herself. It was easier for her to get all the clock rings and time sheets entered into the payroll system before the place was crawling with reporters and secretaries and the printers in the basement kicked in. Today, for whatever reason, being out here alone in the dark, with the fog hovering low overhead, was making her want to turn and flee. But flee to where? She shook her head, trying to shake free from these feelings of dread and stop them from taking root and ruining her day any more than they already had.

Veronica Michaels had spent more years in this building than in any other she had ever known. She had started in the secretarial pool when she was just a junior in high school. The paper had grown quite a bit since then. It was still just a weekly local paper, one of several in the area owned and operated out of a small upstate office, but they also did the printing for several specialty papers and other local businesses.

Pulling into her parking space, Roni glanced warily around the empty lot and checked her makeup once more in the rearview mirror before getting out of the car and hurrying into the office. The makeup did a pretty good job of hiding the self-pitying little crying spell she’d had half an hour ago, but her eyes still held a bit of the tell-tale redness. I guess a little splash of cold water and a touch up wouldn’t hurt.

Punching in the key code on the alarm system, Roni unlocked the rear door and flipped a few select switches to light the path to her office. The tapping of her heels on the tiled floors echoed through the corridor and up the stairs until she reached the carpeted office area on the second floor.

Tossing her purse into her desk drawer, Roni turned on the coffee pot and sat down to check for any messages left from the day before. That was when she caught sight of the bouquet—across the room, in the center of the conference table. A weathered vase, filled with daisies and a few random wildflowers… she would recognize it anywhere.

With a tentative smile, she crossed the room and checked the tag. "Happy Birthday Roni!! Love, Soph" It must have arrived after she left work yesterday. Every year on her birthday, her sister Sophie sent her a similar bouquet: always daisies, always in a beautiful weathered vase, always with a few wildflowers in the mix. Roni plucked a small daisy from the center and carried the bouquet back to her desk.

She could feel herself getting teary-eyed all over again as she looked at the flowers. When had she become so emotional? Turning fifty must really be doing a number on her. The flowers were a remembrance of their childhood, a special time that she and Sophie had shared together growing up.

Life was so much simpler back then. They had grown up in a small cottage in the country, surrounded by farmers’ meadows and wooded glens. Roni’s father was a factory worker, her mother a housewife. Money was scarce, but Roni and Sophie had never really noticed. Their days were spent mostly playing outside, letting their imaginations run free. In the spring, they would help their father in the gardens, walking along behind the tractor and dropping seeds in the plowed rows. Roni loved the smell of the freshly turned soil, and would return frequently, watching and waiting for the first hint of green to spring forth. She enjoyed it even more at the end of the season, when she and Soph would help with the harvest and fill their small baskets with corn and string beans and carrots.

Summers consisted of lazy days riding their bikes on the country roads or wandering through the meadows of the neighboring farms, waiting for the first scent of the wild honeysuckle so they could throw off their shoes and run barefoot. Roni would always take her pen and paper with her and sit under the shade of one of the big oak trees surrounding a little church that sat at the edge of a wooded glen, adjacent to the meadows. There she would write poetry and prose while Sophie wandered close by, her long dark curls bouncing as she picked bluebells and buttercups and made little bouquets of daisies and wildflowers.

Roni had never really thought about a career back then; she had always just dreamt of being a housewife like her mother, with a loving husband and a couple of kids. Perhaps a little house in the country with a picket fence overflowing with roses and room for gardens for growing fresh vegetables and a couple of fruit trees for jams and pies.

How had things gone so terribly wrong in her life since that idyllic time? Ever since her first husband had run off and left her alone with their little girl to raise, things had gone downhill for Roni. He had been her high school sweetheart, her first love. When he left her, she had been heartbroken… and frightened. How was the minimum wage salary she earned in the secretarial pool going to allow her to raise her daughter, Meg, and support herself? She watched as her high school friends all married and moved on with their lives, and she couldn’t help but feel embarrassed about her situation, and worried about her future.

It was during that period of time when she first met Paul Michaels. Tall, dark, handsome, a few years her senior. He had come into the office to arrange advertising for his auto repair shop, and Roni had helped him with his design layout. He had flirted with her, and eventually asked her out. Roni knew that Paul had a reputation around town of being somewhat of a rebel, and an angry one at that, but he could be very charming when he wanted to be, and she was flattered by his attention. She should have seen how dangerous he was, but she was blinded by her own fear of being alone. If she could only have seen then what she knew now, she never would have agreed to date him, much less marry him a year later. Who was she kidding? She had seen it . . . she just hadn’t wanted to face it. Yet, she had hoped that Paul would mature and mellow with age, and be the husband she needed and the father Meg needed.

But, time hadn’t changed Paul for the better. They had only been married for several years when his drug and alcohol addictions had cost him the business after being sued for some faulty repairs. All of a sudden, Roni found herself shouldering the responsibility for the support of their family alone. She started taking classes in accounting and payroll… paid for by the newspaper… and worked her way up the ladder, assuming more of the responsibility in the company’s business office and working as an administrative assistant for the sales manager.

Paul, on the other hand, hadn’t done much to improve his circumstances. He actually seemed to enjoy having the financial responsibility for the family lifted off his shoulders. He flitted from one part-time, minimum-wage mechanic’s job to another, squandering what little money he did make on cars or toys and rarely contributing to any of the household expenses. Although he had sworn to Roni that he was through with his old addictive lifestyle and that he just had the occasional drink with the guys, Roni had never been entirely certain that the rest of his paychecks weren’t being spent for just that purpose. He and Roni had even come close to losing their home on several occasions when Roni just couldn’t come up with the money to cover their exorbitant debt.

She should have left him years ago. It wasn’t as if they were still in love… if they ever really were, that is. It should have been a clue, early on, that Paul hadn’t really wanted a wife; he wanted a housekeeper and a ‘mom’, someone to take care of him . . . not the other way around. Perhaps if she were younger now, or had been in a better financial situation back then, she would have found the courage to walk away. But, over the years, Paul had somehow managed to strip away any semblance of self-confidence Roni used to have. He convinced her that she couldn’t possibly survive on her own by ridiculing every idea she came up with to try to better their situation and by making her feel foolish for even trying. They argued often, and the mood in their home was frequently stressful and tense.

Roni had actually mentioned divorce on several occasions during the heat of one argument or another, but Paul would remind her of all the work he did around the house… which usually involved duct tape in one fashion or another—and how she could never take care of all of that by herself. He would also remind her, with a smirk, that she was the major bread-winner. If she were to leave him, not only would he get half of everything, but she would have to pay him alimony. How would she be able to survive, or take care of Meg in a situation like that? She couldn’t afford to leave him. Besides, how could she ever hold her head up in public if she were to have a second failed marriage?

So, Roni would swallow her pride, and she would back down and stay, and things would get better for a little while. She hadn’t done Meg any favors by doing so; at least not in Meg’s eyes. But Meg just didn’t understand. Meg and Paul had never really bonded, or even gotten along for that matter. It turned out Paul wasn’t the ‘fatherly’ type. When Meg reached her teens, she was intuitive enough to see the situation that existed between her mom and Paul and had tried to talk Roni into leaving him more than once. It had caused a rift between mother and daughter that Roni had never quite been able to repair completely, no matter how hard she tried.

Roni sighed… her little girl was all grown up now, and had married and moved out years ago. Life hadn’t been easy for her either; quite the contrary. Meg had lived several lifetimes in her short twenty-seven years. Shortly after Roni’s granddaughter ‘Catherine’ was born, Meg’s husband Drew had been killed in a mortar attack while on patrol with the military in Iraq. It had been a horribly devastating time for Meg and little Cate, and Roni had tried to help in any way she could. Yet even during that heart-wrenching time, there was still a distance between Roni and Meg, and Roni longed to be close to her daughter again, like they used to be when Meg was a little girl. She just didn’t know how to get that back.

Since Meg had first moved out, Roni and Paul had settled into a living situation that was more of a ‘co-existence’ than anything else. He usually ended up working the evening shifts, and she rarely saw him anymore. Whether that was by design or not, Roni had never been quite certain. She was in bed by the time he got home and gone by the time he woke up in the morning. Most of her time was spent either working long hours at the newspaper office or watching TV by herself in the evenings. She felt alone and defeated—imprisoned in a loveless marriage, and burdened with heavy debt. She just couldn’t see any light at the end of the tunnel.

Roni pulled the bouquet closer and breathed in the scent of the flowers, trying to force a little of that peaceful, childhood time back into her soul. Closing her eyes, she tried to picture that idyllic spot beneath her favorite old oak tree. She used to have such a poetic soul, but she hadn’t even picked up a pen in years. The few times she had tried, Paul had just ridiculed her words. Now, she couldn’t even seem to put two words together in a letter to Sophie. What would she say? It’s not like anyone would really want to know the truth. The truth? What was the truth? The truth was… Roni was scared.

Sophie and her husband had moved to New England several years ago, and she missed her terribly. They used to spend time together on the weekends, meeting for breakfast and going shopping. But now, she didn’t even have that reprieve. Roni wasn’t quite sure how she had allowed herself to get to this point, but over the course of the past few years she had become somewhat of a recluse, and hadn’t even been able to spend time or bond with her new little granddaughter, Cate. On the rare occasions when Meg had been in desperate need of a babysitter, Roni couldn’t even offer to help… not that Meg would have ever asked . . . but she just couldn’t take the chance of having the little girl in her house in case Paul would come home in one of his moods… or worse.

Roni sighed as she wiped the tear that started to trickle down her cheek. Yesterday was her fiftieth birthday. Her co-workers had gotten her a cake and some prank over-the-hill gifts to celebrate, but the fact that Meg hadn’t even called to wish her a happy birthday before she left work had broken her heart.

Granted, she had left work early. Paul told her he was going to take her out for her birthday. She had been more than a little surprised that he had even remembered her birthday, but she certainly wasn’t going to argue. Paul had been in an elated mood ever since he had persuaded his father to back him in a new business venture.

There was an old, abandoned gas station sitting on the outskirts of Gray, a small town just ten minutes from their home that Paul had his eye on. It had, at one time, included a mom and pop grocery store that went out of business years ago. The area nearby was starting to see some renewed growth, and Paul thought it would be a good location for a small custom auto repair shop.

He had somehow convinced his father that he had the experience now to make it work. Roni sighed as she leaned back in her office chair. Up until last night, she too had been hopeful that things would finally start to turn around for the two of them. As it turned out, that wasn’t to be the case . . .

It was mid-March, and although the temperatures were on the mild side all week, yesterday afternoon as Roni left work, the skies had cleared and a cold front had moved in. She shivered as she wrapped her thin sweater around her shoulders and headed home to get ready for her ‘date’ with Paul.

Pulling into the driveway, she was a little surprised to find Paul’s car gone. He had taken the night off work for her birthday, and she expected him to be home, getting ready. Roni parked her car off to the side and hurried up the gravel path to the back door, closing it quickly behind her to keep out the cold breeze. Tossing another log on the wood stove, she hurried into the bathroom to take a shower and change.

It had been a long time since Roni had to get dressed up for a night out. Surveying her closet, she realized her choices of appropriate clothing were limited. She pushed aside the dark blue sleeveless sheath. It was a little too dressy, and considering the sudden drop in temperature, not practical either. Heaven only knows where Paul was planning on taking her—he had been a little vague—but she doubted it would be anyplace too fancy. He didn’t have that kind of money.

Settling on a dark gray pencil skirt and a purple sweater, Roni stepped in front of the mirror. Not bad for fifty if I must say so myself, but perhaps a little too thin, a little too pale. She pulled the pins out of her hair and let the dark brown curls cascade over her shoulders. After applying a little bit of makeup and slipping into a pair of gray heels, she walked out into the living room to wait for Paul.

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I’m sorry, but there is no way I would ever have imagined Aunt Sophie on a fishing boat. Meg chuckled as she pulled into the parking lot of the Laurel Café. Your mom was always terrified of the water.

You think you’re surprised? Emma grabbed her purse as she stepped out of the car. "I could never so much as get her near the water. She was content with looking at it from a distance… a lo-ong distance. She shrugged her shoulders and chuckled at the look on Meg’s face. Ever since she and Charlie moved so close to that lake in New Hampshire, and Charlie bought that old fishing boat, she’s a new person. You would just die if you saw her in her fishing boots and that silly hat."

Meg opened the back door of her car and started unbuckling Cate’s car seat. I need to see pictures. Or perhaps I should just run up there for a visit and see for myself. To be honest, I could use some time away.

"Oh you should so do that; she would love it! Emma hesitated before continuing. Speaking of moms… isn’t today your mom’s birthday? Have you spoken with her yet? I’ve been a little curious about how’s she doing. I know my mom’s been a little worried about her too; she hasn’t heard from her in a while. She really wanted to come down for a visit, but Charlie couldn’t get off work, and she didn’t want to drive down by herself."

"That’s kinda why I asked you to