Number Two Hearn

By Beverly Mimms George

Julie Sullivan is a young women’s historian who loves her life in Charleston, South Carolina.  She has just completed her graduate studies and is a respected member of the local university family.

Meriwether MacDonnel was a carefree teenager living in eighteenth century Scotland until she was traded to a total stranger and forced to accompany him to America. A chance visit to a ghostly period tavern binds Julie and Meriwether on a journey as one reaches out to the other from the grave.

Allow yourself to be transported from modern day Charleston to the hills of Scotland and back. Number Two Hearn is the story of two women who lived two worlds and two centuries apart, and the house which brought them together.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662448959

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Number Two Hearn

Beverly Mimms George

Copyright © 2021 Beverly Mimms George

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2021

This is a work of fiction. Unless otherwise indicated, all the names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents in this book are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental

ISBN 978-1-6624-4893-5 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-4895-9 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

It was one of the best meals she had eaten in a long time. Julie wondered as she left the quaint restaurant how she had missed seeing it during her years in Charleston. Number Two Hearn—no name, just the address. This will be the ideal place to bring the family to celebrate after graduation, she thought as she pulled her sweater a little more tightly around her in the cool of the early spring.

Julie

1

Excuse me. Excuse me. Julie elbowed her way through the throng of tourists attempting to crowd inside the tiny air-conditioned sweet shop and avoid the sweltering heat. Many of the locals avoided the market area on summer afternoons, but Julie found it exhilarating. She embraced her life in Charleston and allowed herself to be swept up by the sights and sounds and smells of the old city. She loved walking down the uneven cobblestone streets and gazing up at the deep, narrow houses with their earthquake bolts and side verandas. She enjoyed exploring the hidden alleys lined with huge live oaks draped in Spanish moss. She often spent hours wandering around the old cemeteries, reading the worn inscriptions on the weathered tombstones and allowing herself to feel the pain of the young mothers who had buried their children or of the wives whose brave soldier husbands had lost their lives in battle. In fact, there was nothing about the beautiful city that Julie had not grown to love during her time there.

Julie’s family had never appreciated her passion for history, and her decision to major in history in college was not one that they endorsed.

You need to earn a degree that actually leads to a job, her dad warned repeatedly.

Times are getting hard, and you need a skill, not just a diploma, cautioned her mom.

Julie figured she had heard it at least a million times. A minor in secondary education and a teaching certificate had pacified her parents somewhat, but they would have preferred that she had followed the path of her brother who studied engineering or become a nurse like her sister. Julie was who she was. She was not an engineer; she was not a nurse. Julie was the daughter who would spend hours in the reference section in the county library pouring over old pictures and documents from times gone by. Julie was the daughter whose most-prized possession was a box of old scrapbooks purchased at an estate auction. Julie was the daughter who lost herself in historical novels while her friends were losing themselves in Judy Blume books. Julie was… Julie was… Julie was just different.

Dating was not something that Julie did a lot of in high school. She had the obligatory date for homecoming and the prom, but she had very little interest in the types of activities that excited her classmates. Football games were the highlight of fall weekends in the small Southern town where she was raised. Central High! Fighting Cougars! Go, Blue and Gold! Even the girls who did not know a touchdown from a first down donned their blue-and-gold finery on Friday nights and pretended to care what happened on the freshly mown and painted field. Hoping to catch the eye of one of the football players and receive an invitation to go for a milk shake at the Flame Drive-In after the game, each one would smile and yell and shake her pompoms at the appropriate times. Not Julie. She went to the games, all right, because her brother was a defensive end (whatever that meant), and her sister was one of the pompom-shaking cheerleaders. Julie was happy when the team won, but a loss did not signal the impending end of the world for her as is seemed to do for the rest of her family. She would usually excuse herself when they gathered in the family room after the games and mentally replayed every play, questioning the calls of the referees, the decisions of the coaches, and the skills of the players.

College was a welcome change from the stereotypical Southern small-town life that Julie knew. After shunning the advice, suggestions, and finally pleas from her family to attend one of their fine state universities and study something practical, Julie enrolled in a small liberal arts college three states away from the blue-and-gold football Friday nights. Her parents’ threats not to pay for her education unless she went to a real college fell upon deaf ears. When she received a scholarship award letter, four years’ tuition, room, and board, Julie was suddenly transformed in their minds, or at least in their conversations, from the different daughter to the daughter whose good grades and excellent study habits had earned her a full ride to a prestigious college. Whatever! She knew that her parents were telling their friends that she was planning to be a teacher when they were asked what she was studying, but the three-state buffer somewhat lessened the aggravation as she embraced her new life as a college student.

It was near the end of her junior year that she met Tom—Thomas Graham Sullivan III—sophomore finance major, fraternity man, campus heartthrob, and oddly enough, defensive end on the football team. She had noticed him sitting near the back of her Southern Studies class; it was hard not to notice him. Her stomach did a flip, and her heart sank a little when the professor assigned them to be partners for a research project—Julie Woritz and Thomas Sullivan. Julie hated partner projects. She would rather do her own work in her own way and earn her own grade! There were two types of partners as she saw it: the ones who were not interested in learning anything about the subject matter and only wanted a grade good enough to get by, and the ones who thought they already knew everything and were not interested in anything she had to say. She wondered which group Thomas Sullivan would fit into. At any rate, it was not going to be pleasant.

He waited for her outside the door after class.

I’m Tom, he said. It looks like you’re going to be stuck with me for this project.

His friendly nature and the flash of a beautiful smile surprised Julie. Maybe this won’t be so bad after all, she thought. And she stammered, I guess we’re stuck with each other. I’m Julie Woritz. They swapped phone numbers and made arrangements to meet in the library on the following evening.

The thought of the study date consumed Julie’s mind the next day. Why did she have to be stuck with Mr. Big Man on Campus? Everybody knew who Tom Sullivan was, and nobody knew who Julie Woritz was. She wondered how he felt about being assigned to the quiet girl whom he had probably never seen outside the classroom and probably never even noticed inside the classroom. She almost felt sorry for him as she ran a brush through her long dark hair and set off to meet him.

The study date with Tom was nothing like Julie had imagined it would be. Actually, it was not a study date at all. She arrived to find Tom standing outside the library holding two plastic cups of sweet iced tea and smiling that amazing smile. I thought we might enjoy working together better if we get to know each other a little bit first.

Julie was not sure if he was hitting on her or whether he really wanted to get to know her; but before she knew what was happening, she was seated on the wall outside the library swinging her feet, sipping sweet tea from a red Solo cup, and clinging to Tom’s every word. He told her that he was from the state capital where his dad was an attorney with political aspirations. His mother had taught school before Tom was born but had left her job to be a stay-at-home mom.

She spent most of her time working with various nonprofits, though. She loves those charity functions, he said. Tom’s parents had wanted him to play football for State, their alma mater, but things had not worked out that way.

I was never quite the athlete they wanted me to be—not quite big enough, not quite fast enough, and, to tell the truth, not quite dedicated enough, admitted Tom. His parents had tried to hide their disappointment when the only football offers for Tom came from smaller colleges, trading in their dreams of box seats in a huge stadium for seats on the metal bleachers in the parents’ section at a liberal arts college. He told her how he had been red-shirted his freshman year due to a dislocated shoulder sustained in summer practice.

It’s not a bad thing, he said, not really, because now I get to go to college on the five-year plan. No need to rush into real life as I see it. My folks come to all the games now, and I think they’re finally proud of me. Tom laughed, but Julie thought she sensed just a bit of sadness behind those laughing eyes, as though he believed he wasn’t quite measuring up to their expectations.

Tom listened attentively as she told him about her family and how her parents had hoped she would study something other than history. Unlike your folks, mine have never set foot on this campus except for freshman move-in day. They’re proud of me in their own way, but I don’t think they take what I’m doing here very seriously. They’re pretty involved in their lives back home. As long as I stay out of trouble and keep my scholarship, they’re happy.

Julie and Tom had a wonderful time—two self-proclaimed disappointments sitting on the library wall drinking sweet tea and forgetting that they were supposed to be working on a project for class.

The Southern Studies project was accomplished in a few weeks, but not in the same way as Julie’s other partner projects had been. There were frequent study dates with very little studying, and by the end of the semester, Julie and Tom were inseparable.

Senior year flew by. Julie immersed herself in her studies but never so deeply that she could not find time to spend with Tom. Sometimes they would catch a movie or go out to dinner, but most often they would stroll hand in hand around campus or meet for coffee between classes. Football weekends brought an excitement that Julie had never experienced before, and she was proud to sit with Tom’s family in the parents’ section of the bleachers at the games. The brothers of his fraternity were welcoming and friendly to Sullivan’s girl, and Julie found herself actively engaged in a social life she had only previously observed. Julie loved everything about her new life, and Julie loved Tom.

Graduation was bittersweet. Hearing her name, Julie Suzanne Woritz, summa cum laude, seemed almost surreal. She had done it, and she had done it with flying colors. Her family came into town, and her parents beamed with pride as they admired the gold seal on her diploma. Her sister embraced her warmly. You always had the brains in the family.

It’s a shame I got all the looks, teased her brother as he gave her a hug.

Tom stood a short distance away as Julie’s family crowded around, but finally he stepped to the center of the group and gave her a hug of his own. Congratulations, sweetheart, he said as he handed her a bouquet of red roses and kissed her lightly on the lips. Julie blushed as she sensed the eyes of her family on them.

Mom, Dad, everybody, this is Tom. Tom, meet my family. Tom was the Southern gentleman he had been taught to be. He shook hands with her father and brother, said all the right things to her mother and sister, and quickly charmed the entire Woritz family.

I can’t believe we’re just now meeting you, said Mrs. Woritz, a little embarrassed at their lack of involvement in Julie’s college years.

Sweet, charming Tom again knew what to say. I feel as though I know you, he assured her, taking her hands in his. Julie speaks so lovingly of her family.

The politician genes in him are showing, thought Julie to herself. His father would be proud.

They all spent a wonderful afternoon together, and Tom joined the family for dinner at one of the nicest restaurants in town to celebrate Julie’s accomplishments. There were toasts and laughter and congratulations, and Julie was on cloud nine, as they say in the South. It was Dad’s comments over dessert that brought her crashing down to earth.

So, Julie, what now? He answered his own question. I guess you’ll be moving home. I hear old Edward Jacobs is finally retiring from Central, so your timing will be just right. With your good grades in high school and that gold seal on your college diploma, you’ll be a shoo-in for his position. You can be teaching history at your alma mater in less than three months! How about that?

Julie almost choked on her wine. She reached under the table and squeezed Tom’s thigh, and he placed his hand on hers as she tried to regain her composure. She took a deep breath and began to speak. Well, Dad, I haven’t made any plans yet. I mean, well, Central’s fine, but I’ve been gone from home for a while, and I’m not sure I want to go back. I’m not certain I would fit in after all this time. I just don’t know what I want to do.

Well, it’s high time you decided. That diploma is not just for hanging on the wall, you know. It’s time to get out there and start making a life for yourself—earn a living and get some benefit from this high-dollar education. This position at Central is not going to wait on you to lollygag around. Times are tough, and jobs are hard to come by in case you haven’t heard, especially for history majors. Jacobs’s retirement is coming at just the right time, but you are going to have to do something about it—and soon.

Mom put her hand firmly on his forearm and spoke up to rescue Julie. Art, she’s just graduated today. You don’t need to plan her whole life right now. The icy look she cast to her husband completed her statement, and the conversation changed to lighter topics; but Julie was relieved when the waiter brought the check and her parents said their good-byes and left for their hotel.

Later that evening, as they held hands and walked across campus, Tom breached the dreaded subject again. "Your dad sure knows how to ruin a party, but, you know, he really has a point. I mean you did graduate, and I guess that means you do need to get some sort of a job. You could stay around here, I guess, but they seem to want you to go back home. You probably should leave what with that job coming open and all, but you can’t leave! I mean… I mean…what are you going to do?"

I know, Tom. I mean, I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it. She took her hand out of Tom’s and started twisting her hair nervously. I’ve worked so hard for this day to come; and now that it’s here, I just want it to go away. Why can’t things stay the way they are? I don’t know what to do. I just don’t know what to do. Julie bit her lip and fought away tears as she thought of leaving school, leaving Tom.

But Tom had two more years of school, and they had no plans for the future. Not really. Sure, they had made little references to living happily ever after, usually after they had seen a sappy movie, and almost always dismissed with a joke by one or the other of them. The fact was Julie and Tom had no formal commitment, and Julie didn’t know where to go from here.

Tom put his arm across Julie’s shoulders, and they completed their walk. Neither spoke a word, but each knew what the other was thinking. When they arrived at Julie’s apartment, they kissed good night, and Julie let herself in. She didn’t invite Tom to come up, and he did not suggest it. She just needed to think. She just needed to think. She just needed to think.

Julie’s phone rang early the next morning, startling her as she reached over to answer it. Her parents had a late-morning flight, and she had promised to meet them for breakfast before they left.

What time is it? Did I oversleep? It had been a fitful night, and she was groggy and confused as she answered the call. Hello.

She did not expect to hear Tom’s voice. Julie, it’s me. I’m out front. Can I come up?

Julie glanced at her reflection in the mirror as she went to let Tom in. Her eyes were puffy and red, and her hair was tangled from tossing and turning on her pillow. She briefly considered combing it, but figured she couldn’t look any worse than Tom sounded. She was right. He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek and said, We need to talk.

Julie thought about the irony that he was the one saying the phrase most often attributed to women, but somehow it didn’t make her smile. I haven’t slept all night, he started. You can’t just pack up and leave town, but I have absolutely nothing to offer to make you stay. I have two more years in this place. I’ve tried all night to come up with a plan. Even if I give up football, I can’t possibly graduate in a year. Damn five-year plan! My dad will disown me if I don’t graduate, and how on earth would I ever earn a living if I quit now? I just never thought about you moving home after graduation. It never crossed my mind that you wouldn’t be here. I can’t imagine…

Julie finally had to raise her voice to get a word in the middle of Tom’s rant. Tom, stop! Calm down and listen to me. I don’t know where I’m going or what I’m going to do, but I do know that you are not going to quit school and go anywhere. I haven’t slept much either, and I’m just as upset as you are. This is supposed to be one of the happiest times of my life, and I’m furious. I’m mad at my parents for assuming that I would just put all of this behind me and come home to teach history in my old high school. I’m mad at you for assuming that I would stay here and do God knows what. Mostly I’m mad at myself for drifting merrily along and assuming that things would just take care of themselves. I’m not stupid. I knew everybody else was interviewing for jobs and sending out résumés, but I didn’t care. I was too busy living the best year of my life to worry about what would happen when it was over. Just like that damn Scarlett O’Hara I kept thinking I’d worry about it tomorrow. Well, tomorrow is here, and it’s hitting me like a bolt of lightning. Don’t make this about you. You have two more years of college. Your plans are laid out. You get to keep on going to school and playing football and hanging out with your friends and doing all the things we love. I’m the one who…who’s screwed. It was then that the tears came. There were no more words. Julie cried, and Tom held her and said nothing until the phone rang again.

Julie was able to compose herself on the drive to the airport restaurant where she met her parents for breakfast. Strong black coffee and a slice of dry toast were all she