Lake House Reunion: Friendship, Felony and Flip Flops

By Beverly J. Hamilton

Kate receives an invitation to attend a sixty year reunion with five lifelong friends. In her preparation and journey, she reflects on past interactions with each of these women en route to the lake house destination.

Upon arrival at the lake house, she encounters new revelations about women she thought she knew well as they share their darkest confessions. The festivity she anticipates is abruptly interrupted by mysterious guests, and unexpected murder lies ahead, prematurely concluding the week.

• Language: English
• Publisher: LifeRich Publishing
• Release date: Feb 28, 2017
• ISBN: 9781489709950

Beverly J. Hamilton

A Kansas native, Beverly is the mother of two sons and has two grandchildren. Her career consisted of Banking, Advertising sales and Real Estate before employed as an Administrative Officer, Family & Community Medicine, KS University School of Medicine, Wichita, Kansas. She retired after twenty years of service. A business co-owner and author, she enjoys quilt making, gardening, playing the organ and is a developing artist.

Book preview

1

I t was November, and we had experienced our first hard freeze for the autumn. Many of the trees were already bare as Kate drank her morning coffee, watching the remaining leaves fall like rain. They were covering the ground with the warm hues of autumn.

Kate continued to stare out her kitchen window, watching the leaves drift by much as her life had fluttered by, and now Kate, too, was in the autumn of her life.

This had been brought vividly to her attention when she had received an invitation from Jean, an old friend and classmate, to join her and five other friends from sixty years ago at her lake house for a week-long reunion. Jean indicated, We have some catching up to do, and I have the perfect place to do it. I have just purchased a beautiful lake house and want you to come share it with me. Please come!

The anniversary of their high school graduation would be sixty years next spring, 2015. A private pre-reunion somehow seemed appropriate to Kate. Being one of the original class members, she couldn’t help but wonder how many would have survived sixty years to attend.

Looking back, they had been an odd collection of close friends, but they had liked and trusted each other. This had remained true through all the years. They had always been able to count on each other to be there when any one of them needed help. The past few years had slipped by with much less contact. Everyone was dealing with the complexities of their own personal lives.

Obviously their hostess recognized it was time for a reunion to revisit the past and old friends and to recharge their old batteries! Plus it gave her an opportunity to show off her newly acquired lake property!

Later that afternoon, Kate sat in her sun-room in a favorite chair, staring into the sunlit garden and reflecting on how they all became friends in the beginning.

The early 1950s brought lots of change to their rural community of fifteen-hundred people. Families were relocating to the city, where the jobs were, and leaving their farms and rural lives. Their small farming community quickly grew, providing new, affordable housing for those newly relocated farm families, now manufacturing workers. Their community expanded rapidly, primarily due to its proximity to Wichita, Kansas, becoming a bedroom town with lots of commuters.

Kate had lived in their small community, called El Paso, since she was five years old, and witnessed her school class double in size in just one year, 1952. Being an outgoing, friendly sort, she enjoyed making new friends, some of whom became her lifelong friends like these five ladies she was soon to see at the lake house.

This original group of girls had one commonality: they had once lived in small, rural towns. Kate had often wondered what the magic formula was that made their little group work, but it had. They were tight, as the saying went back in the fifties.

She reminisced about each of these ladies and how it all began back in the day.

First there was Dolores, who lived with her dad, mom, and younger sister in a trailer house while the family built their own home. They had sold their family farm in southwest Kansas.

They called Dolores, Dee, as they were all into one-syllable names, just to be cool! Her dad worked at the airplane plant and worked on their home in his spare time, along with the help of everyone in the family.

Dee had a talent for fixing hair. She dreamed of being a hairstylist to the rich and famous, probably movie stars. She planned to attend beauty school after high school graduation.

Dee was a natural beauty; slim and well-proportioned with long, lush, beautiful reddish-blonde hair and the most beautiful green eyes you ever saw. But what God had given her in beauty he had shorted in brain cells. School was a struggle for her. However, when it came to life and street smarts, she did okay. Dee kept her ambitions modest; she wanted to be a great hairdresser. She was shy by nature and usually a follower, except when it came to design. Dee really did shine.

Her beauty brought her many friends, male in particular, but she had her eyes on the running back on the football team. Fortunately he had his eyes on her as well. They were football queen and king their junior year. They remained a couple until after high school graduation, when they married in a simple ceremony. Our group attended and observed the young couple so much in love; surely they would live happily ever after.

Dee enrolled in beauty school that summer in pursuit of her dream. Her husband, Kyle, went to work for a construction company building a new school in our growing community.

A few years had passed when Kyle was drafted and left for basic training. Dee had started a small hair salon in our town with two other stylists. She decided to expand while Kyle was gone and add a stylist every six months if the client volume would support the growth. Dee seemed to have a good head for business, and this idea was no exception.

Dee’s business reached her goal in one short year, changing her shop to a more elite grooming destination with the addition of a manicurist, artificial nails, massage therapy, and tanning.

2

K ate continued remembering, and Lynn came to mind: the eldest of nine siblings living on one of the original farm homesteads in their community. Her parents were very strict Southern Baptists.

When the school bus would roll up in front of their home, all nine children would be waiting to board the bus, like a flight of stairs. Every one of her siblings was beautiful. Lynn was especially lovely with her creamy complexion, big brown eyes, beautiful long, dark, brown hair, and gorgeous, busty figure. She always attracted a lot of wolf calls from the boys.

Lynn was one of the smart ones in our group and, coming from such a large family, she knew college was out of the question.

Lynn was able to obtain a good job with a local attorney immediately after graduation. This attorney was the sole one in our rapidly growing town. She still lived at home and decided to buy a brand-new black Ford automobile. Lynn was the envy of all of us with her independence and her new ride.

Several years passed with Lynn doing little outside of her work schedule, when at the local pizza place she met a handsome young man named Scott. He worked heavy construction in our growing town. Scott lived and worked on his dad’s family farm. Construction was his day job.

After considerable conversation, there was one major difference that could not be overcome - Scott was Catholic. Lynn decided to keep that quiet for the time being.

After dating a while, they fell in love, and the time came Lynn had to tell her folks Scott was of the Catholic faith. As she knew they would, Lynn’s parents insisted she stop seeing Scott. But their relationship had gone much too far to go their separate ways.

They were determined to be married, and Lynn started taking classes to convert to Catholicism. When the classes were completed, she was baptized, and the young couple married. We all attended their beautiful wedding. Once again, another one of our six had found true love.

Scott had been saving his paychecks from his construction day job, and they put a down payment on their own farm. Lynn kept working for the attorney, helping with their farm work in the evenings and on weekends right along with Scott. He kept his construction job, and together they started making their way in life.

There was sadness in Lynn’s life, however, and that was her parents’ disapproval of her marriage to Scott.

Lynn continued to work for the attorney until the birth of their first child, a son named Scott Jr. Lynn was a great mother; after all, she had helped raise all eight of her siblings.

3

T he third member of their group was Lucinda, or Lucy, as they called her. Lucy moved to their town with her divorced mother and her mother’s new, much younger husband, Jake. Lucy was an only child, and they all lived in a trailer house like Dee’s family. They were also building a home.

It didn’t take us long to realize Lucy was also really smart. She soon was making the top grades in the class, every class! Lucy was a real doer and always willing to help someone if they were having trouble with their class work. Lucy took the hard courses: all the math and science she could squeeze into four years of high school. And of course she aced them all.

Lucy was average looking: very fair, blonde, and blue-eyed, a bit on the plump side—but, oh, what a wonderful personality. Everyone loved her. Lucy had the wisdom of an adult. Kate always felt Lucy’s brilliance was of benefit to Dee because it was always hard for Lucy to watch someone struggling with their studies. Dee would always work on Lucy’s hair, and this was a real plus for Lucy. She always had the most recent trends and hairdos, thanks to Dee.

When Lucy was sixteen, her mother became pregnant. This news was a real embarrassment to Lucy. Her mother was in her early forties, and somehow this seemed unacceptable to Lucy. When the baby finally arrived, it was a little boy, and they named him Jack. We all thought Lucy’s attitude would change when the baby arrived. But we were terribly wrong. When little Jack was six months old Lucy’s mom was pregnant again. This was the final straw as far as Lucy was concerned. Totally unacceptable!

They sang in the church choir, and Kate could remember Lucy coming to church on Sunday morning so upset because her mother had wanted to sleep late and Lucy was to care for little Jack. Lucy did not want to help with the baby or, for that matter, help build the house her folks were working on.

It was apparent to Kate that Lucy had some anger issues. Lucy liked to socialize, be around people, laugh and have a good time. Kate remembered her saying, If they want to have babies let them take care of the babies, I don’t want to!

Fortunately for Lucy her biological father had promised she would get to go to college. He would see to it financially and Lucy was literally counting the days until high school graduation so she could get enrolled in college. By the time graduation arrived the second baby brother had arrived.

When graduation was over Lucy’s real father paid for her to move to the town she planned to live in and attend college. Lucy got a summer job and lived in school housing. She was making new friends and loved her job and could hardly wait for school to start.

Kate remembered Lucy writing how much she loved her new life. Kate could sense the new found joy and peace in her letters.

In the fall Lucy was in her element, starting in college. By mid-year she had met a Jimmy Dean sort of a guy named Les. He was handsome, a smoker, motor-cycle-riding, fun kind of guy according to Lucy. She had not dated much in high school and this thrill a minute fellow set Lucy on a completely different path. By the following summer they were married and Lucy dropped college. She got a job with the US military in St. Louis, Missouri - Les’ home town.

In time Lucy was promoted to a job requiring some travel. She was required to assist and travel with her boss.

Kate still kept in touch by letter. Lucy wrote about how exciting her life was; how she adored Les and all the complexities of her job.

During the first couple years of their marriage, Les fell asleep driving to his sister’s wedding, rolling their car. They experienced a terrible crash. They both were hospitalized for weeks. Their car was totaled. This set them back physically and financially.

They barely got back on their feet when Les parked his car and opened the door not looking for oncoming cars. The car hit him as he stepped out, breaking both his legs. Les was hospitalized for several months with his injuries. There was additional financial damage to the marriage.

During this ordeal Les lost his job. Les