Happy Thanksgiving. Here's a free novella

I may pin this later, but in the meantime help out by bumping as you can

The world is changing, Emma thought as she topped the mountain and gazed down at her hometown nestled in the valley. In the ten years since her last visit, when she returned home to bury her mom in the cemetery behind the Baptist church, the small town of Stillwater had more than tripled in size. She pulled the car onto the gravel shoulder, ignoring the frustrated honking of the passing motorists, and stared. She’d come home to soak up the slow pace of small town life and nurture the seed of an idea for a new novel, but now she wondered if she should just turn around and go somewhere else.

Her eyes explored the surrounding mountains covered in cell towers, antennas, unknown webs of steel reaching into the sky and a newly constructed pyramid-shaped glass building. The reflective structure sat overlooking the town on Morris Hill and she could see no signs or logos to give a hint of what business resided inside. She looked down into the valley again and sighed, the fields and forests surrounding the town were now cluttered with houses, condos, restaurants and stores. The meandering river once lined with old majestic trees was crowded with shops and housing almost reaching to the foothills where the water grew rough and disappeared between two mountains.

I should just turn around, she thought again, but then she put the SUV in gear and pulled back into traffic. “I can’t just leave,” she muttered. “I want to go to the cemetery and see mom. I want to see Jasper and at the very least I have to get the management company to rent out the house again.” She sighed deeply and felt a small knot of anxiety expand and retract in her abdomen.

When she left Stillwater fifteen years earlier it had only contained two traffic lights, one outside the elementary school and one at the intersection in the middle of downtown, now as she gazed down the newly widened highway she saw one light after another. The old tree-lined, two-lane where she learned to drive had morphed into a six-lane divided highway with the typical corporate logos marring the view. Orange barrels lined the shoulder and it appeared the construction and expansion was ongoing.

She saw an exit sign announcing that Main Street was just ahead and pulled into the far lane while cars sped past off towards more national chains, condos and unnamed structures. Emma took the downtown exit, the speed limit reduced to 25 mph and she had an opportunity to observe the changes in her hometown. The houses lining Main Street were the same and most were in better condition than she remembered, new paint, siding and perfectly manicured lawns had replaced the well worn houses and overgrown lawns of her memory. No bicycles, big wheels or Tonka trucks littered the yards and she glanced at the in-dash clock and briefly wondered where the children were that should be returning from school.

She felt an odd nudge in her brain when she saw that even the old Simpson place held a manicured lawn, new paint and a colorful tin roof. She slowed and read the white, decorative mailbox that spelled out “Simpson” in delicate calligraphy. The Simpsons had been well known around the town when she was a teenager. She went to school with the boys, Stuart and Todd, and they had been drinkers, potheads, hell raisers and a couple of her best friends. In those days the front yard of the house had been nothing but dirt, weeds, oil stains and an array of cars in various stages of repair. Mr. Simpson hadn’t held a job since he’d returned from the Vietnam War and he spent his days drinking and fixing cars under the big shade tree in the front yard. Emma took another look at the house, now transformed into a showpiece, and shook her head, muttering, “weird”, under her breath.

She pulled to the red light and saw on the opposite corner that what had once been Becky’s Diner, which served the best hamburgers she had ever tasted, was now Hang Man’s Bar. “A bar in Stillwater? Wow.”

When she was a teenager the only place to get alcohol was at the bar across the county line, it had been owned and operated by the grandfather of her high school boyfriend, Jasper. The place didn’t even really have a name, just a lighted sign in the window that declared Beer in fluorescent red and Jasper never seemed to have a problem getting alcohol for he and his friends. She smiled for a moment remembering the wild crowd she ran with in high school, glanced back at the Simpson’s house and felt an odd lightness in the top of her head.

The light turned green and she drove slowly down Main Street. Handfuls of pedestrians were here and there and a few cars were parked at the curb, but the bustle she remembered from her youth was gone. Although the buildings were the same, the businesses she remembered no longer existed. The old drug store was a bar called The Bitter End and the stationary store had been replaced by a massage parlor. The department store where she had purchased her prom dresses was now called Exposed and the manikins in the windows wore barely there lingerie and leather pieces she’d only seen worn by stereotypical gay characters in bad movies.

The usual franchised fast food chains and coffee shops filled the other buildings and with the exception of the beauty salon where she had gotten her first perm and the funeral home that handled her mother’s burial, it seemed every other business had changed. The hardware store was a new age shop, the auto parts place was an adult bookstore and the library was now a bar called The Rage. She stopped at the red light, looked across the street at the Baptist church where she had spent every Sunday morning and Wednesday evening from the age of ten to eighteen and felt the hair at the nape of her neck stand at attention.

A car honked behind her and she glanced up to the green light hanging above. She pulled forward, parked at the curb and looked back at the church. The whole building looked different, as though the front of the building had been moved. She slid the keys in her pocket and stepped from the vehicle. She stood by her car studying the changes and wondered why anyone would cover the front of the church and enclose the parking lot with a ten-foot tall brick wall, essentially blocking the view of the town. She crossed the street and read the small metal sign placed in the brick. “When did it change from Baptist to Universalist?” she muttered, following the wall until it ended. The new façade came into view and she stood feeling completely turned around - the front of the church was facing exactly opposite of where it had when she was a child. “They moved the freaking steeple? Why in the hell would they move the steeple?” she asked softly and turned to look at the cemetery. “And why have the front of the church face the cemetery?”

Dumbfounded, she looked back and forth between the church and the cemetery, and then walked along the small, paved path connecting them and stepped through the new and ornate gate into the graveyard. She stopped just inside the gate and turned back to look at the front doors of the church, they lined up perfectly. How strange, she thought and then went to search out her mom’s grave. She found the site and sat on the concrete bench her mother had placed there many years ago to visit with the Lott family. The landscape crew kept up with the grass so there was nothing much to do but stare at the graves, her mother’s, and her mother’s family that Emma hadn’t known and wouldn’t have known if they had lived.

She never knew what to do when she visited a cemetery, so after a few minutes she stood up to leave. “I love you, mom,” she whispered and made her way back to the gate.

“Emma! Emma Lott! Is that you?” She heard a familiar voice call out just as she was about to step through the gate and turned.

She studied the man walking through the cemetery towards her and then recognized the way he moved. “Jasper?”

“Sure is. Damn, you look good. Give me a grope.” He grinned and opened his arms.

Emma laughed and hugged him. “What are you doing here?”

“Oh, I like to check on the family from time to time.”

“Your family?” she asked. “Mom and Dad Mathews?”

“Yeah, them and Grandpa.” He nodded sadly.

“Jasper, I’m so sorry. I had no idea.” She reached out and touched his arm.

“Thanks,” he said, taking her hand and looking into her eyes. “It’s strange to see you in town, haven’t seen you since Mrs. Lott’s funeral. You back for good?”

“I doubt it.” She shook her head. “Sure has changed since the last time I was here.”

“You don’t know the half of it.” He let go of her hand, leaned against a tree and lit a cigarette. “It’s not the same place.”

“I noticed. I’d planned to come soak up some small town for a new book, but there doesn’t seem to be any of that left. Never thought I’d live to see the day of bars on Main Street.”

“I’d heard you became a famous writer,” he said, smiling through the smoke and looking at her in much the same way he had when they were younger - as though he wanted to tear off her clothes.

She smiled, remembering their courtship; he had been her first lover. “Hardly famous, but making do. What are you doing these days?” she asked, taking note that he was still as attractive as she recalled. Although the long hair pulled back in a ponytail and the tattoos covering his arms were new additions, it only added to the slightly dangerous demeanor that had captured her attention back when they were teens.

“Running Grandpa’s bar and trying to stay out of trouble, but that’s not so easy to do around here these days. Luckily, I also inherited Grandpa’s house, so at least I’m out of the county,” he laughed softly under his breath.

“What happened to your parents house?” she asked.

“Sold it after they died, now you have an apartment building next door. Guess you haven’t been home yet.”

“No, I just pulled into town, the church freaked me out so much I had to stop. It’s hard to believe a place can change so much in a decade. What the hell happened to the church?”

“It’s a long story, but they ran off Pastor Weeks about seven years ago, hired a new pastor and all this happened.” He waved his hand towards the new front entrance of the church. “Things are weird here now, Emma. Come on up to the bar and we’ll talk. My visits to town get shorter and shorter, strangeness abounds here in Stillwater these days, it ain’t the same place it used to be.” He dropped the cigarette in the grass, snubbed it out with a well-worn boot and leaned forward, kissing her on the cheek. “Good to see you, sugar. And a word of advice - if you need to go out at night go in your car, it’s not safe to walk the streets around here any more. And don’t drink the water. Come up to my house to get your water, I have a spring, or buy the bottled stuff. You remember where Grandpa lived, right?”

“Yeah.” She watched him walk to a well-used truck in the new parking lot on the far side of the cemetery. When she was a child that land held trees, picnic tables, a swing set and outdoor grills and she briefly remembered uncountable picnics she had attended there in her youth. If they moved the parking lot over there, what’s behind the huge brick wall? She stared at the doors of the church for a moment and then finally, pushing the confusion to the back of her mind, she walked slowly to her car.

One thing I've learned today is that I am a terrible record keeper, lol. Took me forever to find a copy of this novella in my records.

If anyone is actually reading this, give it a bump and I'll add more.

No not really.
If it hadn't been us it would've been another group.
Lol

Happy Thanksgiving to you!!