Indigo Doves

By Marie Masters

Successful Indiana realtor Jacob Bildburg flips houses for a hefty profit. But none has turned his world upside down like the two hundred-year-old property at 126 Rosemund Drive.

An unfortunate accident takes him on an odyssey through the stories of a group of wayward women and the broken souls who lived at the address during the American Civil War. He becomes obsessed with discovering the truth behind the original thick beams and strangely vaulted ceilings. Thanks to his unlikely narratorwho has a rare, innate talent for vividly revealing the buildings deepest secretshe gets a firsthand account of a poignant example of wars ugliness juxtaposed with true beauty.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 16, 2017
• ISBN: 9781524581787

Marie Masters

Marie Masters wrote her first real estate article for a nationally recognized Midwest newspaper two decades ago. So began a lifelong interest in performing home restorations and wondering about the stories behind the studs and drywall. In her debut fiction novel Indigo Doves…journalist, memoirist and college writing professor Masters combines a love of storytelling and changing old into new. The result is a narrative following the transformation of an emotionally bereft young man, who learns to live out loud based upon history’s silenced but mystically reignited voices.

Book preview

1

Splat!

42260.png

T he crash was like ramming into a spongy brick wall—somewhat forgiving and moveable yet stubbornly solid with mass.

The hasty young driver must have bumped his head because his subconscious tuned into some mystic frequency. He momentarily glimpsed an old-school apron-covered dress and some woman’s hazel eye closing as another opened, bright blue.

It wasn’t an actual person I saw in my periphery, right? Naw, no way. He’d seen a wisp of black hair and felt delicate, rattling bones smack the side of his car. Probably a cat.

Jacob jerked back. Son of a … fuckin’ bitch, he stammered. There was no time to wait for the police. He only looked away for a second—to hit home on his GPS and get out of Horacevale. All this for that pile of crap?

Oh, that was it. The place he’d seen before the collision had tinged his fleeting thoughts Victorian. He wasn’t delusional, just hurried. Now he really hated the property where he wasted the last half hour. He was so far off his path; now he’d never make it in time for the showing with Jon and April Kirkwood. It took three months to get the indecisive couple committed enough to see this one listing.

But when Sheila said, "You have got to see this place," he had trusted her.

He always thought Sheila was a friend. They got their real estate license the same year and then contractor certification and established separate territories. They sometimes swapped clients to keep within the boundaries they set so neither would inhibit the other’s sales. Occasionally, they met up at Johnny Bahama’s for a drink and to brag about how many properties they were moving. He wanted to take their after-hours meetings further, but she never let him close enough. She always had something or someone waiting across town. That was fine with him; she was a little overweight anyway. He chronically had to bite his tongue or risk telling Miss Realtor of the Year that when she squeezed herself into those cheap suits a size too small, she resembled a human sausage. She looked fifty, not her real age of thirty, which was his dating-age endpoint.

As for the ancient building—not even close to being a house, Sheila—it had been impossible to see it from the road. Scraggly bushes obscured the lane leading to what amounted to an oversized box. Robust maples and oaks shot up their branches above the second-story roofline. The gravel drive seemed endless. And when the building finally did come into view, it was the dullest design he’d ever seen. It had none of the architectural accoutrements hinting at any particular vintage, 1800s or otherwise. Its lack of character was further degraded by placement on a completely flat lot. At midday, the monolith cast an unimpressive rectangular shadow on a cinder driveway. Despite its bland appearance, there was something compelling about its unrelenting presence amidst the overgrowth. He couldn’t make up his mind if it begged to be torn down or given one more chance to redeem its hasty, too-square construction.

Every building he had passed while driving through the one-street town was similarly dilapidated. The full length of Rosemund Drive needed a makeover. Throwbacks to the 1960s, Horacevale, Indiana’s most recent heyday, each storefront bragged a picture-window showcase. Once a five and dime. Shoe store. Jewelry cases. Now a sub-sandwich shop. Antiques dealer. Wallpaper showroom. Businesses had changed many hands, many times.

It had been stifling in the car that July day with high sun piercing through the tinted windows. So despite the establishment’s cheesy name, Jacob stopped at Floyd’s Homemade Ice Cream Parlor. As he tugged open the shop’s heavy glass door, his hand braced on the glossiness of numerous layers of white paint that had transformed the original brick into a marshmallow-colored facade with cherry red trim. A bell tinkled, probably for the first time all day, followed by the whir of the air-conditioner as the shop’s only ambiance.

Inside, the original owner, Mrs. Floyd, ninety-seven on her last birthday, had been sitting board-straight in the chair behind the counter. It was her new occupation, occasionally blinking displeasure at her granddaughter Autumn doling out gooey concoctions in genuine glass containers. Sugar cones cost money—and those damn samples! Not a single spoonful got by the silent sentinel. Autumn constantly reminded the grumbling older version of herself that things weren’t like they were during the Depression. Today’s customers expected freebies.

As Autumn loaded up Jacob’s cone, the former ice cream diva and her younger DNA double argued back and forth, merely by rolling their eyes and deep-sighing. Grudgingly, the girl with the honey hair and slender but strong fingers took back half a scoop to satisfy granny’s cheapness. Jacob winked at the defeated girl. He threw down a twenty for a cone costing less than four dollars. Keep the change. The old lady ignored his generosity.

Driving with one hand, holding the cone with the other, Jacob had passed numerous storefronts sitting knuckle-to-knuckle tight like fingers in a clenched fist. The only exception was the sorest thumb at the end of the block, the one Sheila said he absolutely had to see. The property was left off Rosemund, the main street that tied into Indiana’s Route 304 a few hundred yards farther on. Maintenance was a thing of the building’s extensive past. A thick tangle of ivy had long ago reclaimed the deacon’s bench on the porch; the wood had gone full circle back to its natural, unvarnished patina.

As his vehicle had rolled to a stop next to it, Jacob saw a full-wall advertisement that once touted Galbreith’s Hardware. Pitted by time and weather, the words All Your Household Needs still splashed across the building’s east side in a garish oxblood hue. He couldn’t wait to tell Sheila how the arrow pointing to Parking in the Rear was especially tasteless. Real curb appeal for clients. Good call, Sheila.

Jacob had exited his Hummer, more to stretch his legs than to cure any curiosity about the two-hundred-year-old abode. Critters and birds hiding in the small woods out back quieted. But once the fearful fauna dismissed him as a threat, they started up a cacophony of midsummer chattering again. He decided it was too late for refurbishment; the wild had wholly reclaimed the place.

Letting out guttural sounds with every succulent lick of Floyd’s rum raisin and paying little attention to where he stepped, Jacob had shoved the remaining nub of the cone into his mouth and put one foot on the half-moon porch. Immediately walking through a dry-rotted board, his foot had landed in the softness of sand below, and he dug it in to balance and steady himself. An indistinguishable brown creature scurried from underneath, fleeing fallen planks that jeopardized its former privacy. Jacob retrieved his leg from the jagged hole, carefully avoiding rusty nails. He stood on sturdier boards to survey the damage. His pants had taken the brunt; they were ripped but revealed only a surface scratch on his leg. The real pain would come when he bought a $1,000 replacement suit.

This place is a fucking obstacle course. He had made one, two leaps across solid boards. He jumped to the moss-covered flagstone path. Safe back on the sidewalk, he surveyed the building top to bottom. There was a terminally concave roof that would cost tens of thousands to rebuild. Rotting window frames all required replacement. When the slightness of a sparrow launching into flight caused the gutter to break free and crash to the ground, Jacob had seen enough. It was like being in one of those dusty, fake-looking sets in apocalyptic films. But if this place was going to self-implode, he didn’t plan to go with it.

A few hurried seconds down the drive later, and Jacob now found himself stymied in the intersection. During the collision, he had lurched forward and experienced that strange montage flash of some pioneer-type woman. He forcibly hit his chin on the steering wheel, but that’s all he could remember. He hadn’t passed out, had he? How he’d shifted into Park, he didn’t recall either. Make a U-turn as soon as possible, looped again from the silk-voiced but bossy GPS. He would actually have to unlatch the seatbelt and get out to see.

The girl sprawled lifeless on the pavement. She might have been mistaken for sleeping—if he didn’t fear worse. She was flat on her back, almost comfortable looking, until blood trickled from one nostril.

Hey, you all right? Hey, lady, you okay?

She wasn’t really a lady, more of an oversized girl in her zebra-stripe leggings and bright raspberry tee with Love emblazoned neon green across a flat chest. She was an indeterminate age, somewhere between fifteen and twenty-five. He gently slapped her pale cheeks, contrasted even whiter next to fronds of overdyed ebony hair splayed out behind her head on the pavement. He jumped back when more blood coursed out in tiny streams from both nostrils.

Oh fuck. He put his hand in front of her mouth. Weak puffs of air brushed his fingertips. Ah c’mon. You gotta be kidding me. He dialed 911.

As he paced near her supine body, he noticed the unmoving girl’s eerily clownlike grin. She remained deep in the same calm slumber even as EMS workers eased her onto the gurney. They listened for a heartbeat, clipped a pulse reader to her index finger, and collared her neck. Then driving off, sirens full-on and lights flashing, they glared at Jacob as if he had intentionally hit her.

It’s not like he wanted to be held up here—in this backwoods burg—for any amount of time. Judgmental assholes! She came out of nowhere. I never even saw her, he shouted.

This assertion sounded like an admission moments later when he told Officer Rodriguez what happened. You remember where she was coming from? Was she walking? Running? The officer took down Jacob’s every gesture.

The fact Jacob hadn’t even noticed her sounded harsher now. She hit me on the right side. Jacob pointed to the body-sized smudge from the front bumper to the passenger door. Hoping for pity and leniency from the officer, he ran a finger over a scratch running the full length of the quarter panel. I came out of these bushes, down that drive over there. Then I felt it. Blam! Right into me. See?

Waiting for Jacob to look him in the eye, Rodriguez noticed how young he was to drive a luxury vehicle and wear such a serious suit—maybe his late twenties. She ran into your Hummer?

That was how Jacob remembered it. But the swipe running from the front bumper to the passenger door told a different story.

Want to stick with that scenario? Rodriguez stopped scribbling and waited.

Meantime, Jacob pressed Max’s number dozens of times, but something blocked his mobile signal. Glancing up, he noticed a couple of mourning doves teetering atop an electrical pole. Eying the blood droplets dotting the ground below, the startled birds flew off. He’d never heard their call before, but it did sound like somebody crying.

He finally got through, and Max’s familiar Hey Jerk-off never sounded so good.

2

Gavels

42269.png

T here was no refuting it. Jacob hit her. At least he hadn’t fled the scene, and he kept pressing Max about this fact. Maybe, based upon his willingness to hang around, the case should be dropped?

Jacob scrutinized the lackadaisical girl sitting across the courtroom. She didn’t look twenty-three. Sporting her favorite black leggings and oversized forest green Purdue U sweatshirt, she appeared closer to thirteen or fourteen. She had been scraped and bruised, incurred a fractured rib. The hospital watched her overnight for a concussion. Otherwise, she was well as could be expected for Marinda Wedemeir.

Her father had filed the civil case, not the spacey girl who Jacob kept calling dozy. He asked only enough compensation to cover her medical expenses. No remuneration for anybody’s pain and suffering, including his own, which Jacob figured must have been tremendous with a daughter like that. Something definitely was off about her. She was slow talking and a little too happy all the time. Her father’s forgotten smile confirmed her mental malady.

Max used mild aggression to keep his client in line. He punched Jacob’s arm to bring him back to the gravity of the case. If you say one word … a single word about ‘coming out of nowhere,’ I’ll walk out, Max warned. It was marked a pedestrian crossing with humungous white lines a foot wide, for fuck’s sake.

Jacob Bildburg and Max Odoriccio finished law school together five years before. Since then, Max had developed a joyless demeanor and penchant for representing the downtrodden schmucks of the world. He made decent money doing it and managed to feel good about helping people. This overweening compassion now appealed to Jacob, especially since now he was that poor, unfortunate guy in the defendant’s chair. Real estate deals were one thing. He could handle mounds of paperwork and filings, but Jacob never considered himself a real lawyer. Pathos was not his strength.

Picking the right clothes for the hearing was more Jacob’s style. One of the best features of his penthouse suite was the double walk-in closet. On one side, he hoarded a dozen closing suits in various shades of charcoal. He paired these with a crisp white shirt to look classic and clean-cut. On the other side, he kept casual suits worn for client showings. Under these lighter khaki and grayish snug fits, he wore strictly black, so he looked slightly Las Vegas and thinner than his actual bulk, which he preferred to think was because of his excessive musculature.

He decided on the navy pinstripe. His mother would have approved of such an innocuous good-boy look. She spent most of her young life trying to keep Jacob within the lines. That might have been at least one reason she had only one child. The other was that she died when he was eight. Yeah, everything in its place and time, she would say to soothe her son’s constant anxiety and compulsiveness. Yeah, everything but her untimely death. It wasn’t right. He wondered if she would have been proud of his success; he had acquired so much and at only twenty-eight.

He had finished by accessorizing with a reddish tie and then added extra product to tame his curly mane. Despite this great effort to look polished, he strained in the mirror to see himself in the dimness of the travertine-covered bathroom only to see a smug OCD banker staring back.

What are you talking about? ‘Out of nowhere?’ You know I wouldn’t say something stupid like that. Jacob adjusted what now appeared to be a bright coral tie under the courtroom’s fluorescent lights. His nervous laugh was creepy even to Max.

Don’t worry. They already have that statement on the police report. Just don’t bring it up again, okay? And what are you wearing?

What do you mean?

You look like some greasy loan shark.

It’s conservative.

Does that suit even fit you?

Jacob removed the orangey pocket square and clumsily stowed it in his back pocket, instantly taking it out when it painfully wadded into his back. Even the wooden chair seemed uncompromisingly stiff today.

"Let me