Touching Stars
When is a family no longer a family?Gayle Fortman has built a good life for herself and her three sons as an innkeeper in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. She has even maintained a cordial relationship with her ex, charismatic broadcast journalist Eric Fortman, covering with the boys for his absences and broken promises.Luckily Travis Allen, her closest neighbor, has been a loving surrogate father to the boys and her own best friend. Then, on the eve of oldest son Jared's graduation, Eric returns, having nearly lost his life in Afghanistan. Worse, he has lost his way and his courage, and needs a place to recover.Gayle realizes this might be the last chance for her sons to establish a real bond with their father, and offers him a summer at the inn and a chance to put things right. Gayle and Eric are all too aware that their onetime love and attraction are still there. But can the pieces of their broken lives be mended, or are they better laid to rest
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EMILIE RICHARDS
Touching Stars
Thanks to the knowledgeable staff and volunteers
of the Office of History & Archaeology of the Maryland National Capital Park and Planning Commission, particularly archaeologists Heather Bouslog and Jim Sorensen, who invited me to dig for a week at the site of a local Civil War encampment. Thanks also to Don Housley, Jim Owens and Vivian Eicke for so patiently answering my questions and making sure I didnât destroy any precious artifacts along the way.
Thanks, as well, to the staff of the Surratt House
Museum in Clinton, Maryland, for including me on the John Wilkes Booth Escape Route tour led by notable historian Michael Kauffman. The facts, so well presented along the way, became fodder for my fiction.
And last, thanks to all the contributors to
Glimpses of the Past in Shenandoah County, published by the Woodstock Museum, Joseph B. Clower, Jr., editor. Their reporting of a local Civil War legend inspired the historical portion of this novel.
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
Chapter 36
Chapter 1
Gayle Fortman knew a number of things for certain, but three were at the top of her list. One, that life could spin out of control unless she spent all her waking hours nudging it into place. Two, that even sternly administered nudges couldnât deter fate. And three, that if fate could not be nudged, cajoled or outrun, the only other possibility was to turn and face it squarely.
But she didnât have to smile.
Gayle wasnât smiling now. This morning no one was nearby, so she had no reason to pretend she was anything but worried about what fate had in store for her.
Eric Fortman, the man to whom sheâd been married for seven years and divorced from for twelve, was coming home. Eric, the father of three sons who, through the years, had seen him more frequently on their television screen than in person. Eric, her first and only love, who still managed to make the men who volunteered to take his place pale in comparison.
Eric, who had faced fate head-on, nearly died from the experience and was now in need of the family he had abandoned.
A lump formed in her throat at that thought, and she reached for the coffee mug she had set on a table at the terraceâs edge, grateful as the steaming liquid dissolved this one lump of many that had resided there for the past weeks.
From an ash tree at the edge of the clearing, a bird trilled a sunrise serenade, untroubled at the lack of a larger audience. Maybe the bird, an old companion, understood one of the other things of which Gayle was certain. If she jumped out of bed in the mornings and hit the ground running, she would fall flat on her face. So every day, alone on the terrace that overlooked the North Fork of the Shenandoah River, she stood with a cup of coffee in her hands and watched as dawnâs artistic fingers drizzled copper and platinum on the rippling water.
When midsummerâs humidity, fueled by dewdrops and river mist, sucked the breath from her lungs, or when treacherous sheets of ice glazed the fieldstones she and Eric had so carefully laid, she stood here. Dawn was the time when she gathered her thoughts, murmured her prayers, dreamed her dreams. She wasnât rich or self-indulgent, but she gave herself these precious minutes of solitude before she headed into the kitchen of Daughter of the Stars, the bed-and-breakfast inn she owned and operated, to begin her day in earnest.
Except that this morning, with so much to sort out and prepare for, it seemed she wasnât alone after all.
Surprised, Gayle stepped forward and squinted into the pearly light. The inn sat high on a slope, protected from waters that rose and fell according to the whims of the river gods. But when the Shenandoah raged, the low water bridges that skated back and forth over the snaking length of it were quickly submerged. Gardens planted in the alluvial soil washed downstream, and river became a verb. Everyone within miles of the North Fork understood what it meant to be rivered in.
The river was behaving this morning, but the same could not be said about a certain family member. Gayle slammed her coffee mug on the table, then she started down the terrace steps at a brisk trot. The only thing that kept her from yelling her youngest sonâs name was the knowledge that a shout this close to the house would wake her older ones.
âDillon,â she muttered under her breath. âDillonâ¦Arthurâ¦Fortman.â
The boy in the boat didnât hear her, nor had she intended for him to. He was oblivious to everything. What could he hear inside the shabby rowboat tethered to the willow that grew at the riverâs edge, except the singing of the current, the slapping of gentle waves against the sides of the boat?
