Dandelion Wishes (Harper's Mill Book 3) Read online

  For Kim, who wanted another visit to Harper’s Mill.

  © Summer Donnelly, 2016

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products 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.

  Any trademarks, service marks, product names or named features are assumed to be the property of their respective owners, and are used only for reference. There is no implied endorsement

  Prologue

  Mandy Jones couldn’t decide which hurt worst – her pride or her feet. Probably her feet. She’d lost a shoe about an hour ago and had wound up taking both of them off for the rest of the walk home from the Trestles, the local high school hang out.

  Naturally, her pride hurt, too.

  The legacy of each generation of first born Light boys was heavy, indeed. Between women, petty crimes, or a deep-seated anger, not one of them was any good. Somehow, in Dix’s case, it had passed right over his older brother Jim and had settled firmly on his seventeen-year-old shoulders. Of course, the fact that he was her boyfriend – no EX-BOYFRIEND, emphasis definitely on the EX– didn’t help.

  She was done with this stupid town. Her path took her past the Race’s Fruit Stand and her eyes narrowed. She was done coming up against the Old Families of Harper’s Mill. But most of all, she was done with stupid boys who didn’t appreciate a girl who loved them.

  No more. Her next boyfriend was going to be a nice guy. Sweet. Hard working. And totally not a descendant of any of the Old Families. She hated them all with a hot hate of a thousand ghost peppers.

  She stumbled past the gas station for the only pay phone left in the dinky two-bit town and called the only number she had memorized.

  “Hello?”

  “Marie,” she began, hoping her sister was in a good mood. “Can you come get me? I’m at Chip’s Market.”

  There was a pause. “I thought you had a date tonight?” Marie asked, but Mandy could hear the background noises of her sister getting up and looking for her shoes.

  “Yes, well. Dixon Light is a jerk,” Mandy declared.

  “I could have told you that,” Marie said and Mandy heard her sister’s car start. Good. At least she wouldn’t be stranded here much longer.

  “Well, my next boyfriend is going to be a nice guy. A gentleman,” Mandy declared. No dumb guy from a nowheresville town like Harper’s Mill was going to toss her aside!

  “A gentleman, huh?” Marie asked. “I’m almost there. I take it you’re at the pay phone?”

  “Yes,” Mandy grumbled. “I threw my cell phone at Dix’s head and it broke. Daddy will have to get me a new one.”

  “Almost there,” Marie said. “Now, who is this next great love of yours?”

  Mandy frowned and tossed a long blonde curl off her face. “I don’t know. I ran into Brick Hamilton at the Breakfast Club the other day. He’s been crazy about me for years,” she said. Okay. That was stretching the truth a bit, but her sister didn’t have to know that. “Maybe him.”

  “You can’t date Brick,” Marie said.

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s taken,” Marie said. “Everyone knows that.”

  Mandy frowned.

  “Does he know that? Because I still have Brick’s voicemail and he definitely asked me out to dinner.”

  “No. It’s just something everyone knows.”

  “Who is he supposed to be taken by?” Mandy asked.

  “Violet Race.”

  Mandy huffed a small laugh. “Even better,” she said. “I get an actual gentleman and I tick off Violet Race. Perfect.”

  Chapter One

  Brick Hamilton stared blankly at the carburetor he was rebuilding for the 1968 Dodge Charger sitting in his father’s shop. He loved fixing things. He loved working with his hands. But too often he found his mind wandering and his hands losing focus. There should be more to life.

  More to his life, at any rate.

  What did a man do when his eyes were on new horizons but his heart was lodged in front of Violet Race’s house?

  He thought of the texts he had been exchanging with Mandy Jones and a combination of guilt and tension rose in his broad shoulders. He knew it wasn’t fair. There was no way he could fall in love with Mandy when he was in love with Violet. But then again, he really didn’t pick up on the idea that Mandy was in love with him.

  Mandy was fun. Flirty. The kind of girl you could take out and not think about forever. He was young. He wasn’t ready for the forever that Violet represented. Violet Race had captured his heart since they were toddlers, but the driving need to explore the world rode Brick hard and he had no intention of not exploring the world.

  Harper’s Mill was a magical town, full of mystery and intrigue which had been settled by seven sisters. Followed by accusations of Satanic possession and practicing witchcraft, they were driven out of every town they’d settled in before arriving in New Jersey. After observing the seclusion the valley brought, they had declared this section of the Kittatinny Valley region of the Great Appalachian Valley as the

  Violet was a Race, a direct descendent of the original sisters. She was as grounded in Harper’s Mill history as the very soil itself. He couldn’t imagine asking her to leave, even for a few years. Violet was the girl you brought home to your parents. She was the girl he would marry. The woman who would one day wear white for him.

  Just not today.

  Plans swirled and formulated in his mind. How could he approach her? How to talk to her? Would she even be interested in a long-distance relationship?

  His hands worked with delicate precision as his mind wandered and explored. He was young – as his dad would say, as young as he’ll ever be again. But he was also older than he had ever been and knew, deep in his soul, he needed to see the world outside of Harper’s Mill.

  He cleaned up his workstation and washed his hands, taking extra care to clean all the grease from beneath his nails. He ran his fingers through his short brown hair and took a warm washcloth to his face and beard.

  “Dad, I’ll have the carburetor ready for the Dodge tomorrow. Mom asked me to stop by Ray’s Hall. She’s having problems with the soundboard and asked me to take a look at it.”

  Richard Hamilton wheeled out from under the car he was working on. “You taking the truck?” he asked.

  Brick nodded. “Yeah, going to wash it. Head out to the theater to help Mom. I have a date with Mandy Jones later tonight.”

  Richard’s eyebrow lifted. “Mandy?”

  “Don’t start, Dad. It’s not serious, but I’m lonely. You know why I can’t date Violet. Not yet, anyway.”

  “You’re underestimating Violet,” Richard said. “Tell her your plans. Let her decide. Treat her like an adult, son. She won’t appreciate you making these types of decisions for her.”

  Brick shrugged, letting his dad’s words roll off his shoulders. It was for the best. He was sure of it, he thought as he climbed into the old blue Ford.

  Twenty minutes later, he pulled the ancient blue truck into a parking place in front of the old vaudeville theater that capped off Main Street. The previous owner of Ray’s Hall had died a few years back and his out of town heir had let it fall into a bit of disrepair. Gossip and speculation had run rampant at every dinner table in town while the town worried about its future. There had even been talk about petitioning the reclusive Harper family into stepping in and buying it. Eventually, though, Baldwin Realty put it up for sale. His parents had bought the old building and his mother had fallen in love with the idea of restoring it to its shining prominen
ce on Main Street.

  It still needed a lot of work, but Gloria Hamilton was a determined woman. She showed old movies on Saturday nights – his mother was crazy about anything in black and white. Every Christmas, she pulled out all her old favorite movies and showed them all December long.

  Her latest idea was to upgrade the sound system enough to accommodate live local music on Tuesday nights. The owners of the Fire Box, the local steak house, had already agreed to a cross-promotion. He smiled. His mom loved the old building. Her history. Her stories. Her future.

  Brick was surprised to see David Nguyen working on the electrical box. “Hey, man. I wasn’t expecting anyone but my mom here. David, right?” They hadn’t been actually introduced, but new faces stuck out in Harper’s Mill. David had lived in Harper’s Mill a little more than a year after his discharge from the Navy.

  Brick internally snorted with amusement. Harper’s Mill was so tight-knit that anything less than “since the founding” was considered a new face.

  The older man nodded. “You can call me Nuge,” he said with a grin.

  “I’m Brick,” he said, formally introducing himself. “Is the electrical on? Mom asked me to check out the sound system.”

  Nuge nodded. “Yeah, actually, there are a bunch of headsets over there,” he said with a nod of his dark head. “Could you take them down to the stage? I want to start testing and labeling them. Your mom asked me to see what still worked and what may need replacing.”

  Brick put on one of the microphones. “Seriously, I have to ask. How did my mom wrangle you into helping?”

  Nuge laughed, nodding as the sound came over loud and clear. “I was over at the Breakfast Club having a cup of coffee and talking computers with Spence.”

  “You guys met in the Navy, right?” Brick asked.

  Nuge nodded. “Yeah, I decided to live here after he got back together with his high school sweetheart,” he said. “Their kids needed an uncle.”

  “That’s great, man. I’m sure they appreciate it.”

  Nuge shrugged. “Anyway, when your mom overheard I did tech work for my high school production of The Music Man and declared I needed to learn to set up her soundboard.”

  Brick slowly rotated through the microphones. “Mom can be persuasive where this old theater is concerned. It’s the reason my dad’s family settled here.” When the testing and labeling of microphones was complete, the two men continued on with the lights.

  “There’s a box of lightbulbs. Do you want to replace bulbs or work the board?” Nuge asked.

  “We’ll switch,” Brick said, taking the seat behind the board.

  They settled into silence punctuated only by brief conversations about changing out bulbs and applying fresh labels to the light board.

  “This stage brought your family here? You guys aren’t part of this Old Families I keep hearing about.”

  Brick shook his head. “No, my great grandmother worked the vaudeville circuit. She sang, danced, anything to be on stage. Her final performance was here. Part of my bedtime ritual as a kid was to hear the story of the night she first stepped foot into Harper’s Mill. Family legend is that she just knew she had found home. She and her husband bought one of the old Victorian houses in town in the 1930s and lived there until they died.”

  Nuge was quiet for a moment and Brick felt his spine tense with anticipation. It was always like this when someone new came to town. The questions. The curiosity. The inevitable Hardy Boy-itis of trying to solve a town shrouded in mystery.

  How do you explain that maybe there was a mystery and maybe there wasn’t? He had lived here his whole life and still didn’t know anything. Whether there was a mystery or not was all up to the individual. Some chose not to see it and lived quite happily in their bubble. Some chose to embrace the town and its odd residents. Curiosity was dissuaded and side tracked. No one had ever come close to dissecting, discovering, or examining in microscopic detail the inconsistencies that made Harper’s Mill unique.

  “How does it work?” Nuge finally asked, his dark eyes catching Brick’s. “Why is it different here?”

  “Is it? Very different here?” Brick asked, and not just stalling for time. Except for a few family vacations he had never been out of the area. Even with New York City and all it had to offer a mere hour’s drive away, he had only been there once. He genuinely wanted to know – was Harper’s Mill so very different?

  Nuge nodded, slowly. “People know you here. Or know someone who knows you. In some ways, it’s like living on a stage. Your neighbors may not see the live show, but they will certainly hear the reviews.”

  “I like that analogy. That’s small-town life, I guess.” Brick nodded. “You grow used to it. They say that about actors, don’t they? They don’t see the cameras anymore, and that’s what happens here. And it’s not a cruel, waiting to see you fail kind of paparazzi. More like a bunch of grandmothers who worry about you and want to make sure you’ve eaten enough.”

  Nuge laughed at the comparison.

  “So, Emma.”

  “Evans?”

  “Yes. Can you tell me about her?”

  Brick bit his lip, contemplating his options. “How about a little quid quo pro?”

  “Information for information?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you want to know?” Nuge asked, his broad shoulders tensing with anticipation.

  “I’ve been looking into the Navy,” Brick said slowly, his gaze meeting Nuge’s. “Did you like it?”

  Nuge sighed and his shoulders noticeably relaxed. “For the most part, yeah, I did. The first four years is really just about showing up on time and in the right uniform. If you can do that, you’ll be fine. Did you take your ASVAB yet?”

  Brick nodded. “Yeah. I studied and got a pretty decent score. This has definitely been on my mind for a while. Not sure my parents will approve but…” He sighed heavily. “That’s partly why I need to go. To grow up. To see some of the world. I love Harper’s Mill, but there has to be more in life, right?”

  “It’s a growing experience for sure,” Nuge agreed. “There were hard moments and heartbreak, but I met my real brothers, there, too. Now, about the elusive Miss Evans?”

  “Her personal story is for her to tell,” Brick said slowly. “And maybe I wasn’t fair to you. I’m not even sure I could do the Evans family justice. They’re complicated.”

  “That’s an understatement,” he laughed. “She told me she knows things.”

  Brick nodded. “Okay. Yeah, I can confirm that. The Evans family has been around since the beginning,” he said. “Her father is a direct descendent of the original group of sisters. In a twist, though, the power of knowledge isn’t kept with the male. It’s like he’s the carrier or something. It’s both a curse and a blessing, I guess. If the single male marries correctly, and he always does, his daughters inherit the Evans gifts. His daughters wind up carrying the knowledge. But it’s more than just the knowing,” Brick said. “For example, growing up, most of us town kids never even went to a doctor. We didn’t even have a doc before Dr. Callen moved here about ten years ago.”

  “Town kids?”

  “Yeah, you know. Town kids. Like, not the Academy Brats,” Brick explained. He waved his hand in the general direction of the private high school that overlooked all of Harper’s Mill.

  “You guys didn’t see a doctor?”

  “No, one of the Evans ladies treated us all. Essential oils and home remedies always did the trick. Emma doesn’t use that gift, though. Maybe Amy. Maybe one of the younger girls.”

  “What about the brother?”

  “Thorne? No. As a male Evans, his job is to marry and continue the line.”

  “The daughters don’t get to teach their daughters?” Nuge asked.

  Brick shook his head. “No, but they teach their nieces.”

  Nuge looked up. “That doesn’t even make sense,” he said.

  Brick nodded. “Welcome to Harper’s Mill.”

&nbs
p; Violet

  The June morning dawned with bright promise in the small mill village of Harper’s Mill, New Jersey. As the glare of early morning sun hit the bed, Violet Race blinked with awareness. She had purposefully left her curtains up to greet dawn at first light, far preferring nature’s alarm over all others.

  She loved the small railroad and mill town that had been settled almost two hundred years ago by John Ignatius Harper. Harper, the seventh son of a seventh son had married the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter. Rumors and myth collided and lived side by side in Harper’s Mill. Some thought the sisters were witches or demons. Others thought they were strangely blessed by God. A third camp didn’t know and preferred not to think too deeply about the origins of their town.

  Whatever the truth was, Harper had had a gilded touch which led him to a fortune which rivaled even the Rockefellers. Whether through magic or ruthlessness, his descendants established and continued to live and work in Harper’s Mill.

  Although she was related, the Harpers were not where Violet’s line ended. Of all the Old Families who had settled the region so long ago, Elijah and Edith Race shared in the rhythm of the earth and sky. They shared an intuitive knowledge of seasons and crops; moon and sky; earth and ocean. It was that gift they had given to their descendants.

  Violet reached for her phone, scrolled through her overnight messages, and was caught by one from her best friend, Amy.

  Amy was an Evans and somehow, just like her own family could grow anything in the fertile New Jersey soil, the Evanses knew things.

  Stay strong. It was time stamped at 2 am.

  Violet grumbled, knowing Amy was still sound asleep but sent the message anyway. That’s it? I need more than that!!

  Violet sighed before climbing out of the majestic four poster bed her parents had given her for her sixteenth birthday and put on her gardening clothes – jeans, T-shirt, boots, and sunscreen. Lots and lots of sunscreen. She tied her long strawberry blonde hair into a messy bun and raced down the steps.

  “You’re up early, honey,” her mom greeted her as she entered the sunny kitchen. Violet hugged her mom, her head resting momentarily on her shoulder.