Page 9 of Mountain Freedom
“I’m glad to hear it,” I said, hoping with all my heart it was true. “Tell him I said hi, will you?”
“I will,” she promised.
I headed toward the door, practically counting down the minutes until I could crawl into bed to sleep for at least tenhours. But my ears perked up when I walked by a table and overheard a conversation between two town locals, Larry and Gus. Both were hotheads with a reputation for trouble, all in the name of keeping town the way they liked it.
“Yeah, you heard right,” Larry drawled, nodding. “Can’t believe she has the nerve to show her face here. I thought we had run that family off for good.”
Gus nodded his agreement. “Takes some gumption for sure.”
“Gumption? Ha,” Larry scoffed. “I wouldn’t call it gumption. She’s probably just like her mama. Remember how that woman used to walk around holding her head up high, like none of us knew the truth of what she was? If her little girl is coming back all high and mighty, she either don’t know that family ain’t welcome here, or she does and she’s showing up anyway. That’s not gumption. That’s just pure arrogance.” He pointed his finger at Gus. “Somebody’s going to have to put her in her place and let her know we don’t abide by people like that here in our town.”
I stopped at the cream and sugar station, pretending I needed to stir up my tea so I could continue listening. Who were they talking about? I hadn’t heard of anyone new moving to town, much less someone who would cause a controversy.
“Aw, come on now,” Gus said. “She ain’t responsible for what her daddy did. Or what her mama did, neither. She was just a kid when all that went down. They wouldn’t have offered her the job if she was that bad.”
“I don’t like it,” Larry said, disagreeing. “In the end, kids always turn out like their parents. What’s that saying? The apple don’t fall far from the tree.”
I winced, knowing he likely said the same thing about me behind my back. Most people in town had accepted me despite who my father was. Larry and Gus hadn’t.
“I just don’t like having another Bell in this town,” Larry continued. “They’re all bad seed, if you ask me. Best to root them out before they get started here again.”
At that, I almost dropped my cup.Bell.
Allison Bell was coming home to the mountain.
The next morning,I drove straight to the station and dropped my laptop on my desk before heading to Greg’s office. I knocked on his door and waited for him to invite me inside.
“Come in,” he called out, not even looking up from the papers in front of him until I took the seat in front of his desk. “Oh, morning, Jackson. Hey, great work yesterday. Hope you got some good sleep last night. What’s up?”
“Got a question for you.”
“Shoot,” he said. “And where’s my coffee?” He nodded at the cup in my hand and smirked.
“Sorry,” I grinned. “Your wife told me you’re supposed to be cutting back.”
He groaned and rolled his eyes. “Yeah. She thinks I’m”—he raised his hands in air quotation marks—“under too much stress and that reducing my caffeine might be good for my nervous system. Next thing you know, she’ll be trying to get me to take up painting or meditation or something.”
“She loves you,” I said with more than a little envy. Greg and Janet loved each other deeply and shared one of the most beautiful relationships I’d ever seen.
“She does.” He grinned. “And I love her. More than life itself. I even love her enough to cut back on my coffee, which as we both know is a hell of a lot of love. But you said you had a question for me. What’s up?”
“Have you heard anything about someone with the last name Bell moving to town?” I was almost afraid it wasn’t true. Afraid he’d tell me it was some other Bell moving here and not Allison.
He frowned and scratched his head. “Bell. Hmm. Sounds familiar.” He dropped his pen on his desk, and nodded, remembering. “Yeah, yeah. I remember now. Allison Bell. Doctor. The mayor mentioned her to me last week. She’s taking over Doc Rogers’s old family practice.”
My heart nearly jumped out of my chest. My thoughts were moving a million miles an hour, torn between excitement about her moving back and anxiety about what she might face when she got here.
“Why?” he asked, narrowing his eyes. “What do I not know?”
I shook my head. “Hopefully nothing. I heard a couple of men talking about it in the coffee shop last night. Did the mayor tell you Allison’s originally from the area?”
Greg shook his head. “Nope, didn’t mention it.”
“He might not know,” I said. “Allison was a kid when she lived here. Her family lived next door to me.”
“Really?” Greg gave me a piercing look. He knew I had grown up in a trailer park known to house some of the rougher residents of Rosemary Mountain. “And she’s a doctor now?”
“Apparently. Her mom ended up leaving her dad when Allison turned thirteen. Just packed up in the middle of the night and was gone.” I could still remember it like it was yesterday. How empty and dark life felt with her gone. How in a single moment, the only sunshine in my life had disappeared.
