Mary Bobbie: The Thomas Sisters, #1

By Kathryn Spurgeon

Christmas means traveling home.

Mary Bobbie, the oldest and most jovial of the five sisters, keeps a terrible secret for eight years. Will her husband be devastated when he finds out the part she had in their daughter's death? Will the holiday be the best time to tell him? Will he still love her?

Read the first of the Thomas Sister stories.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Memory House Publishing, LLC
• Release date: Dec 3, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386661924

Kathryn Spurgeon

Kathryn Spurgeon, a graduate of the University of Oklahoma, is a Christian historical novelist. An award winning author, she has published hundreds of devotionals, poems, articles and short stories. She and her husband have six children and twelve grandchildren. They help international college students and make their home in Edmond, Oklahoma. Visit her website at www.kathrynspurgeon.com

Book preview

Kathryn Spurgeon

Published by

Memory House Publishing, LLC

Edmond, Oklahoma 73034 U.S.A.

www.memoryhousepublishing.net

Copyright 2019@Edmond, Oklahoma

by Kathryn Spurgeon

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any

means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, record or another—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

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ISBN Number 978-1946887047

Christian Historical Fiction

Cover Design by Seedlings Design Studio

Oma Jean & Robert Layne

Mary Bobbie

Mary Roberta Thomas Layne

Born April 9, 1886

Chapter 1

December 1929

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You brought that cake along? teased my hubby, Shannon Layne, as we loaded the Model T Ford. It’s been sitting around the house for two weeks. You can practically smell it fermenting.

I tucked the wrapped, ripened fruitcake between two quilts on the floorboard of our motor car. I’ll wager you’ll be the first one to sneak a bite. I shook my finger at him and grinned, showing off my dimples.

If there’s anything left after you start eating it, he said.

I turned to Shannon and saw the twinkle in his eyes. Our common interests were food and laughter. Not bad staples for married life together.

I looked into the back seat at Robert, our thirteen-year-old son. Do you have enough room back there? I asked.

The round-faced, brown-haired boy was scrunched in the back with two carpetbags, several wrapped gifts, and a box tucked in around him. His knobby knees reached up to this chin. Don’t expect me to run laps when we get there. He laughed and stretched his legs, revealing he had plenty of room to spare.

My family lived in Hollis, Oklahoma, almost a hundred miles north of Munday, Texas, and we wanted to get home before Christmas to spend time with my four sisters and their families.

I loaded the last of the packages into the Tin Lizzie and gathered up the bottom of my long, faded blue travel dress with one hand. Then I put my foot on the running board and climbed into the front seat.

Shannon started the motor and the old car sputtered like the groans of a dying locomotive. The pothole stricken trail got worse as we traveled north on Highway 6’s dusty road. Shannon paid close attention while the speed crept up to forty miles an hour.

Slow down! Holding on for dear life, I yelled over the engine noise. Don’t need to be in such a hurry! My ample belly-rolls bounced like muscadine jelly over the Old Galveston Trail.

Shannon caught my eye and I could see his excitement.

We crossed the Red River in the beat-up jalopy, rushing to get to Hollis before nightfall. I turned and glanced into the back seat. Robert was slumped down, his busboy cap pulled over his eyes. Dozing. Lordy, how he managed to sleep, I’ll never know.

I rolled down the window and wind blew strands of hair into my face. I brushed it back behind my ear and held onto the bonnet strings tied under my chin.

The flatlands were an endless hodgepodge of mesquite bushes, arid plains, and longhorn cattle strung together. A landscape only fascinating to locals and western artists—and to me. I grew up in Hollis, where a person could see for hundreds of miles in any direction and the wide open sky never ended even if you whirled around a dozen times. A scene that could take me back in time without thinking twice.

As I stared at the landscape, a melancholy feeling came over me. My thoughts skedaddled back to seven and a half, almost eight years ago when an undercurrent of tension first surfaced between Shannon and I. An uncomfortable feeling that would not disappear.

I wished I could talk to Shannon about it, go back to our carefree innocence. But how could I do anything except go on living as if nothing happened? A happy-go-lucky girl by nature, except for this nagging secret that popped up at the oddest times, tears came to my eyes. I scolded myself for the bleak feelings, shivering even though I wasn’t cold. I tried hard to bury that prickly stab deep down inside me—that dreadful ache—and pretend it didn’t exist.

Did Shannon see my nervousness? A perceptive policeman, he looked at the world with keenly trained glasses, analyzing a person’s actions with precision. Would he think I should be prosecuted? Would he leave me if he knew the truth?

Are you doing all right? Shannon screamed over the din, catching me staring into space.

I jumped and wiped my tears away. How did he always know when my nerves threatened to expose me?

I took a deep breath. I’m fine. I put on my sunny smile and yelled back at Shannon.

Reaching Highway 62, we turned west and drove until we could see the cotton oil mill standing high in the distance. The tallest building in Hollis stood out against the evening’s red and gold sunset before we spied two or three other buildings, several stories high. I recognized the rooftops as we got closer. The Motley Hotel and the First Baptist Church—or was it the Harmon County Courthouse? The downtown buildings were not like the ones in Wichita Falls which were so high they could shake hands with the man in the moon.

Let’s drive down Broadway, I said. Highway 62 led us down the one main thoroughfare straight through Hollis.

I don’t know. Can that rancid cake make it another mile bouncing around like that? Shannon smiled at me but acquiesced and slowed down as we reached the center of town.

Robert sat up in the back seat, pushed his cap back, and stared out the window along with us. I turned and smiled at him. I loved that boy to heaven and back.

The town had grown since I moved away more than twenty years ago. People had built new structures, and downtown stores boomed with energy. Electric street lights glistened and more horseless carriages than