Rising Fawn

By Estelle Ford-Williamson

Clare Connor enjoys personal and financial success by teaching people how to be their best selves--she's a professional life coach in a major Southern city. But her life starts to come undone when she experiences first one, then another major financial shock. Her husband has already been acting suspicious. Does he have a woman on the side? The financial fraud unravels the marriage, and he tells her to leave. Clare is thrown on her own devices and gets little help from a divorce lawyer. With the promise of work nearby, she flees to a remote area of the state to get her life together.
The earthquakes that forced up the mountains where she now lives reflect the seismic shocks in her own life. Without the financial security she had, Clare struggles with who she is and how she's going to make a comeback. Fate throws her together with some unlikely allies, some of whom are tied to Irish and Italian immigrants in these strange lands. She taps into the power of the area's natural wonders, what is left of her long-forgotten faith, and the tatters of her family's past to face a future that is forever changed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Jan 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9781725280045

Book preview

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Rising Fawn

Estelle Ford-Williamson

Rising Fawn

Copyright ©

2020

Estelle Ford-Williamson. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers,

199

W.

8

th Ave., Suite

3

, Eugene, OR

97401

.

The characters and events of this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Between, Georgia, a short story drawn from part of this book, selected as a finalist for the Short Story America Prize, previously appeared in the anthology Short Story America, Vol.

6

(Short Story America Press,

2018

).

For information on speaking engagements, including online discussions, for Rising Fawn, please go to http://www.estelleford-williamson.com. The website contains additional information about the book and the geographic areas depicted in the book.

Resource Publications

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

199

W.

8

th Ave., Suite

3

Eugene, OR

97401

www.wipfandstock.com

paperback isbn: 978-1-7252-8003-8

hardcover isbn: 978-1-7252-8002-1

ebook isbn: 978-1-7252-8004-5

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

01/18/21

Table of Contents

Title Page

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Acknowledgments

Praise for Rising Fawn

"Estelle Ford-Williamson’s Rising Fawn, a novel of suspense Southern-style, is empowering and engrossing. . . . Williamson’s treatment of Clare is hugely compassionate, and the novel’s exploration of the north Georgia mountain where she comes to terms with herself is a beautiful meditation on place."

—

Valerie Sayers

, author of The Age of Infidelity and The Powers

"With characters and domestic life reminiscent of Lee Smith’s classic Calkwalk, and Lawrence Naumoff’s archetypal Night of the Weeping Women, Estelle Ford-Williamson crafts a gem of a story with Claire and Willie, whose marriage is about as compatible as their favorite magazines—The New Yorker and Field & Stream. Identify theft is the least of Claire’s problems in this north Georgia saga. Rising Fawn is a winner from beginning to end."

—William Walsh, Director of MFA program, Reinhardt University

"Over a two-week span, readers are taken on a dizzying journey with sympathetic, lovable protagonist Clare Connor in Estelle Ford-Williamson’s Rising Fawn. Anyone who’s ever suffered from obsession and inner confusion will relate to this novel."

—

George Singleton

, author of You Want More: Selected Stories

"A routine case of identity fraud takes a young woman on a shocking journey of self-discovery, where she’s forced to uncover a tangled skein of family secrets that will change the course of her life. Her journey, which begins in the modern world of corporate business, takes her deep into a wild and primitive landscape that carries its own mysteries and dark secrets. Rich in detail, poetic imagery, and fast-paced narrative, Rising Fawn is the kind of book that keeps you turning pages late into the night."

—

Cassandra King

, author of Tell Me a Story: My Life with Pat Conroy

"In Estelle Ford-Williamson’s riveting novel, Rising Fawn, she takes us on a journey as tumultuous as the rapids of a north Georgia river as Clare travels to the mountains while facing a series of life events that would make any woman lose her cool. Everyone who reads this well-written novel—and I know there will be many—will follow it to its very end, caught up in the thrall of one woman’s tempestuous life."

—

Rosemary Daniell

, award-winning author of Secrets of the Zona Rosa: How Writing (and Sisterhood) Can Change Women’s Lives

To the music makers, the story tellers, the natural and historical preservationists, and the educators who help us know what it all means.

Chapter 1

Tuesday

Fraud. The woman on the phone said call the fraud department of the bank. She couldn’t be right. The woman also said that she, Clare Connor, owed ten thousand dollars from a series of Southern California cash advances, but Clare lived half a world away and hadn’t travelled there lately.

She was here. Pine forests and hills of green and emerald-leaved trees outside the tall glass tower where she worked near the Chattahoochee River. Here, in her conference room where she helped professionals find their direction in life.

Clare felt lost, unable to think. She couldn’t be a fraud. Someone was messing with her identity.

Our records show you live in Tustin, California, the credit card company rep had said. You visited several ATMs for cash advances in April. After Clare argued with her that she couldn’t have done this, the woman told her to contact her bank and hung up. Clare felt the handset slip from the sweat on her hand.

Not even ‘goodbye’, Clare told the walls. She didn’t have another appointment for a couple of hours in this room where she met clients for coaching on lives and careers. She scrunched her shoulders to relax, felt her deep brown hair just brush the collar of her dress, and picked up the phone again. She looked at her organizer for a contact, punched in the numbers, waited for her bank to answer on the other end.

Young women dressed in fashionable short-skirted ensembles of white and black and pink and men in summer-weight suits passed by her window as she sat in the midst of the accounting section of the company. An outside consultant, she met with employees ranging from IT to field engineers here. She turned to the wall as she grasped the handle of the phone there on the large table. She leaned forward in concentration, her brows joining in a frown.

Where’s Willie when I need him? Clare thought. She considered calling him, but she decided she’d better get everything straight first. What could he do? This was hers to deal with. Besides, he can’t even make it home at a decent time. She remembered looking for her last credit card statement the night before, after she’d tried to find out what was making him so late these days. She thought she owed a couple of hundred dollars on this low-interest card she got from a small bank in her neighborhood, but she couldn’t find a current bill. Then it had occurred to her either she hadn’t received one, or she’d misplaced it. Now she couldn’t even find her balance, and the credit card company wouldn’t talk to her. Embarassing. More than embarrassing. She felt herself blurring, as if she were without substance, like the faint image in the glass.

The door opened and a tall, slender man looked in. It was Jeff Goodner, the human resources director.

I hope you’ve got room in your schedule for a couple more tomorrow, he said.

Clare zoomed back to the present, all business.

Sure. She stretched over the table, peered at her organizer. Open at 10 and 11. I’m good.

Great. Jeff smiled. I’ll send you an email. He closed the door.

Clare was calm for a moment, glad of more business. If there was doubt about her finances, more income would help.

But tiny shivers shot through her as she sat in the conference room. She glanced in the wall of windows again. The woman she saw—medium height, slender with light olive skin—belied the little girl she felt was inside. Right now, with fraud accusations coming from her credit card company, she felt like parts of her were strewn in the corners of a very large room, and she could not retrieve them to put herself back together again.

Clare reached for the phone and tapped in numbers to her bank, was routed to the fraud department, but no one was in. She left a voice mail with her information.

I’m the one your records say lives somewhere other than where I know I live! You’ve got to straighten this out, she told the machine, using just enough humor to sound friendly as well as firm. The consumer guy she listened to on the radio said to go on the offense when there was a possible fraud involved. Banks had a way of making the one with the problem a victim.

A fearful thought: She didn’t know when her bank would call her back. If she didn’t report a lost or stolen card as soon as she knew about it, she’d be liable for the charges. However, if she did report it, she’d have to go through the tedious process of closing one account and opening another. For a moment she counted her one blessing: She and Willie kept their accounts separate, largely because he and his family had large holdings together. Fortunately, if something happened to her account, or vice versa, the other’s accounts would not be affected.

She called the number for lost or stolen cards on the back of her card, and an automatic digital demon assured her it would close her account.

Clare thought back to her conversation with Willie last night. Many things about her husband—they’d been married five years—were a mystery. He seemed to deftly avoid questions about his whereabouts. Did she believe—as he told her—that he was having an after-hours drink with a guy from the brokerage? That fleeting, niggling question left her feeling a little lightheaded, and she grabbed the edge of the shiny mahogany table where she sat. The hard surface reassured her.

Willie usually had an early day, leaving soon after markets closed at four. What would take three hours or more to discuss?

I’m meeting with one of the guys in the company who’s explaining a new system to us, Willie had said last night. "I work better with people if I sit down mano a mano over a drink."

Okay, she’d bought that last night, but in the clear light of day, Clare had some questions. She didn’t mention it to Willie last night, because it seemed so paranoid, but there was this phone call, a hang-up, about twenty minutes before he came in. It was probably a wrong number, but it was enough to make her wonder

Even her husband’s name, Willie Clem, was a mystery. With the amazing wealth of his family, built up over years of buying and selling Georgia timberland, Clare was surprised his parents could not have picked out a more elegant name. Willie. It reminded her of the country singer with long braids and a taste for weed. Yet when she’d met Willie, his quirky good looks— he was a little pudgy looking, due to a round face—his engaging smile, and the subtle cool of someone with money had attracted her. It wasn’t that she loved money, but a lot of her childhood had been spent wondering if her mother would bring home enough money from the family store to repair a roof leak or fix their car, prone to breakdowns. Her mother had taught her: Money beats poverty hands down. While his money couldn’t hurt, Clare liked Willie for other reasons. He showed her caring and tenderness when she’d been injured. Best of all, he had a sense of fun that had somehow been bred out of Clare’s gene pool.

They could call him Bubba and I’d still have gone for him, she told her best friend, Helene. That was after her casual friendship with Willie turned more serious on a white-water paddling trip to the mountains. They went on to date for six months; Clare knew she was falling for him when she started giving up activities with her old friends to spend time with him and his pals.

The phone on the table in the conference room rang.

Ms. Connor? A cheerful representative called her back. I’ve looked up your account, and according to your file, you sent us a fax telling us you were moving to California. That was several weeks ago. Then a week later, your husband sent a similar letter, and we, of course, sent your correspondence to the address he gave—

What? Clare was shocked.

It appears that you went to the ATMs out there quite a few times—

"I wasn’t in California."

Well, it shows a couple of transactions almost every day—

How many times? Clare interrupted.

Oh, I’d say about twenty—

Between what dates?

April first to twentieth.

"Those are the dates we’re busiest with our taxes. There’s no way I’m going to be hitting ATMS in California at that time. For sure, I’m not going to be moving to California."

Well, it appears you did make payments. I have a twenty-five-dollar money order—were you in Colorado at that time?

Clare felt herself getting very warm and angry and scared. I told you—I’ve been nowhere in those periods you mentioned! She drew in a breath.

Now I want you to send me all correspondence in my file. And please tell me why you made this change of address without contacting me? How long have I been your customer? Do I seem like the type—

W-well, just let me send you these documents, so maybe we can sort this out. The woman’s voice quavered.

What’s the amount of the damage? Clare asked.

Well, there was a total of ten thousand dollars in cash advances at California ATMs.

You’re not going to hold me responsible for that! Clare cried. Please send me the copies of transactions including those faxes we supposedly sent you as soon as you can.

She hung up and went to stand by the fax in a nearby office. She felt herself shaking as she stood next to the machine, hoping those walking by didn’t notice.

She checked her cell phone for client messages while she waited, and then a sheaf of slick papers came streaming out of the fax. There was a running tally showing someone had hit various ATMs in the LA area for three weeks, about every day, for six hundred dollars a day. There were neatly penned faxes requesting the address change—one in her name, one in her husband’s, but both were in the same hand. Why couldn’t a clerk see this clue? Did the small size of the bank mean the staff was less careful, less proficient at what banks do?

Clare looked at this strange handwriting of her name and raged. How could someone else take on her characteristics? The thief’s handwriting was distinct, practiced. The person must have used a Sharpie pen because the words were dramatically black and even. The letters showed rounded, fat e’s and l’s. There was her name: The thief had created a flourish with the first letter of her name. Did that on both letters.

Clare cycled between manic questioning about how all this happened and deep concern about the hit to her credit. What if she had to live on her own? She couldn’t buy a house. She couldn’t even rent an apartment if they did a credit check and there was a fraud alert on her account. She’d absolutely have to fork out for a utility deposit.

Why are you going there, girl? She heard Helene scolding her. Where’s your sense of yourself? How can you jump to living on your own from a financial hiccup like that? Clare was wonderfully lacking in self-confidence. Underneath the exterior of a thirty-year-old professional, she was like a bag lady, needy and not sure about tomorrow. Helene was always on her about it.

Her trust in her husband right now was shaky. When he found out about this, he’d be upset about possible damage to his own accounts. The hang-up the night before sprang into her mind again. Was that a call for him? Did it have anything to do with the fraud?

How did the thieves get their information? Okay, she had put credit card payments in the mailbox for pickup—she wouldn’t anymore. So how did they come by her Social Security information and her birth date? And how in the hell did they come across her husband’s ID? We don’t even have the same name. How could one person have access to his Social Security and his birthday and his full name? Even more mysterious—why didn’t the company blink an eye in obeying the wishes of a person with a different name who says he’s my husband, who says Clare’s moved, so send Clare’s credit card bills to this new California address?

Clare returned to her conference room now, moving her purse to the locked credenza she’d had keys to but never used. She felt she had to keep things under guard so a worker or visitor in the office where she was working wouldn’t walk in and swipe her ID. She went to the cafeteria for lunch, and she clenched her debit card in her fist so a techie wouldn’t photo her private info while standing in line at the cafeteria and send it to God-knows-where.

Sitting at the conference room table again, she heard a buzzing near her and realized it was her cell phone set on silent. She grabbed in her purse for it and answered.

Hi, honey, Willie said on the other end. Clare was glad to hear a friendly voice. But he never called her at work unless it was something really important; clients and the markets kept him busy. Why now?

Just called to say hi. What’s up?

Clare felt torn. If she didn’t tell him, it was dishonest, and this mess involved him, so he should know. But she dreaded the reaction.

You won’t believe this, she began her bad news.

What’s going on?

I just found out that someone hijacked my identity to take over my credit card account in California. Hit a slew of ATMs in the LA area, racked up thousands in cash withdrawals.

Wow. That’s bad. How much did they get?

Ten thousand—all of it bogus. Here’s the worst part—they used my ID, Social Security, address, everything. She drew in a quick breath. And they used your Social Security and ID, too. I don’t know how they got it—

What?

She imagined him exploding on the other end. I have no idea how all this happened. Let’s talk tonight.

Suddenly Willie was quiet.

See you at home. He hung up.

Clare felt caught. Someone was fooling with her identity and no telling what they’d done with it. She was in a familiar place: financially frantic. The feeling returned like it had so many times: Something was wrong, she would not be safe. Clare felt her throat. It was its normal size, not shrunk down to the width of a soda straw like she thought it was. That person in the reflection still had face, hands, arms—but she felt like her body was disintegrating.

I’m panicking, she told herself. Get a grip.

A friend who was in a highly visible new-for-a-woman role in a corporation once shared what she did when she was confronted with something unsolvable. Lacking the mentors that men had, she’d had to figure out things as she went along. She told Clare her five-minute panic trick: For five minutes, she just let things go while she gave into feelings of inadequacy, stomping, singing, whatever she could do behind closed office doors to vent the scary feelings. Then she’d get down to business.

Clare wondered if she had five minutes to panic right now. She didn’t. She went into her logical side to ward off her money-fear goblins. But she still thought about Willie. He was mad, she could tell. Was he cheating on her?

All the way home that night, Clare kept running possible scenarios of what had happened to kick off this identity theft and tried to anticipate Willie’s words. She was delayed getting home. She’d taken time at work to phone a police report not only to the local police but to the Tustin, California police. Then she’d done some detective work on the Internet.

Willie was late, too. She pulled a steak from the freezer and put it on the Jenn-Air broiler.

She prepared a fresh salad with lots of vegetables and crunchy nuts, the way he liked it. She poured extra virgin olive oil into a sparkling decanter and took down a fresh bottle of tarragon vinegar from its shelf display. Baked potatoes steamed in the microwave, and multigrain bread was ready to go in the oven. She was taking a lot of care with dinner, but she winced as she cut Vidalia onions for the salad when she remembered she might be eating it alone. There was no message from Willie on the phone, so she had to assume he was with his buddy again as he’d been the night before.

She sensed a flash to her right. Light hit the oil decanter and bounced back in her face. Willie and the woman on the phone could be behind all this.

The phone rang, and she reached for the kitchen extension.

Hello?

A woman’s voice snorted, as in a half-laugh, then clicked off.

This was a deliberate call, not a mistake. It was about the same time as the hang up the day before.

Clare felt blinded by the call—a voice was reaching her from some unknown place, pressing against her even through the windowed walls in her kitchen.

She went outside to the garden, closed her eyes, drew in the smells of the plants around her, and imagined herself as a blind person allowed only the scents of nature. She felt behind her, sat down on a bench, and breathed in slowly. She tried to imagine the plants as they were, but a spot above her breast hurt, and her body felt like it was wound tight like a spring. The phone call. A memory of a woman who’d stolen her boyfriend, Chad. He was her only other lover before Willie, back in her college days in Chicago. He’d dated another woman behind her back, then told Clare he was marrying Linda, a wealthy medical student. Hurt, and feelings of worthlessness, engulfed her for weeks after. Years after Chad and Linda, she still nursed a wound in her chest.

When she’d met Willie, she’d felt totally accepted for who she was. They met on a hiking and camping trip with mutual friends, part of an informal group of eco-minded mid-to-late twenties types. They had potlucks where they planned trips or shared pictures of past ventures hiking to Raven Cliffs, down into Providence Canyon in southwest Georgia or up Stone Mountain for a magnificent Sunday hike.

One September, the group signed up for a whitewater canoeing trip and started out on the upper Chattahoochee River. She ended up paired with Willie in