Linda Hall - Shadows On The River

Most of the time, I can follow my mother’s advice when she says, “Some things, Alicia, are best left buried.” But tonight, it all came back to me. I aimed the remote at the television screen and cranked up the volume.

There had been a death. His personal accountant or lawyer, someone named Paul Ashton. Somehow I knew in my soul that Larry Fremont had killed that man. And if I would admit it to myself, I knew my insomnia, this locking of all my doors and windows, this habitual looking over my shoulder, went back twenty-five years to when I watched Larry Fremont throw my best friend off a bridge. And then laugh about it.

He had killed once and had gotten away with it. He has killed since. He would kill again. And I was terrified of him.

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When people ask award-winning author Linda Hall when it was that she got the “bug” for writing, she answers that she was probably in fact born with a pencil in her hand. Linda has always loved reading and would read far into the night, way past when she was supposed to turn her lights out. She still enjoys reading and probably reads a novel a week.

She also loved to write, and drove her childhood friends crazy wanting to spend summer afternoons making up group stories. She’s carried that love into adulthood with twelve novels.

Linda has been married for thirty-five years to a wonderful and supportive husband who reads everything she writes and who is always her first editor. The Halls have two children and three grandchildren.

Growing up in New Jersey, her love of the ocean was nurtured during many trips to the shore. When she’s not writing, she and her husband enjoy sailing the St. John River system and the coast of Maine in their 28-foot sailboat, Gypsy Rover II.

Linda loves to hear from her readers and can be contacted at Linda@writerhall.com. She invites her readers to her Web site, which includes her blog and pictures of her sailboat: http://writerhall.com.

Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times? Jesus answered, I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.

—Matthew 18:21–22

A special thank-you to Pamela Benoit Scott for all the information on ASL sign language and deafness and for great insights into the deaf culture.

A second thank-you goes to Jan Donovan-Downs for all of the information on childhood deafness.

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

EPILOGUE

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.”

Matthew 18:21–22

The girl checked the time on her pink wristwatch and looked back at the front door of the school. Tracy, her best friend, should have been here by now. The girl sat down on the stone embankment and swung her legs hard, hitting the backs of her calves against the rock in a steady rhythm. No. She was wrong. Tracy wasn’t her best friend. She used to be. Then Tracy got to be friends with the popular girls.

And then today happened.

“I have a secret to tell you,” Tracy had whispered to her after lunch.

So surprised, all she could manage was a quick “Okay.”

“I’ll get my mother to pick us up. We’ll go to my house and I’ll tell you. I’ll even show you my diary.”

“Okay.” The girl tried to keep the eagerness out of her voice.

“We can be friends again.” Tracy had smiled at her, that big, broad smile of hers and the girl dared hope that they could go back to being the kind of friends they were in elementary school, best friends, sharing secrets, knowing everything about each other.

“Don’t take the bus home. Just wait out front by the rock.”

“Okay.”

But Tracy hadn’t shown up. It was late by now. All of the school buses had long since pulled out and she was alone in the front of the deserted school. It was hot and clammy and she was beginning to feel sick to her stomach.

From her perch on the rocks she watched two teachers leave, figures in the distance who didn’t see her, the woman holding her skirt down against the warm breeze as she carried an armful of papers. She could hear them laugh from here. There were only two more days of school left before summer vacation and it looked as if the teachers were just as happy to be free as the students.

She looked back at the door. Maybe she should go inside and phone Tracy’s house. She checked her wallet for dimes. But what if during the time she was inside making the call, Tracy’s mother came?

So she waited.

A little while later she wondered if she should go into the school and see if anyone was still in the office. Maybe she should call her mother.

But her mother wasn’t expecting her and probably wasn’t even home. She’d phoned her mother at lunch to ask if she could go to Tracy’s and her mother had seemed pleased. Even though she had never told her mother her problems with Tracy, her mother knew.

“You go,” she had said on the phone. “Go and have a good time. I’ll use the time to run some errands.”

The girl spent the rest of the afternoon smiling. Tracy would soon be back in her life. And in a couple of weeks there would be church camp. With Tracy as her best friend again, it would be fun.

As she sat and sat in the blistering sun, her shirt stuck to her back in the heat, she finally came to the only conclusion she could—Tracy had played a trick on her. Tracy was probably at home with the popular girls and they were all laughing at her. She could imagine them, even now, sitting cross-legged on the wooden slats of Tracy’s sundeck drinking lemonade and calling her a loser.

The girl jumped down from the embankment and felt a tear at the edge of an eye. Angrily she wiped it away. She looked down the empty street for a long time deciding whether to walk home. That meant about a mile along the hot road until the main part of town with its stores and the drugstore her father owned. She could stop there, she thought, and wait for him and get a ride home, but she’d have to hang around in the back until closing time. And that would be like forever.

No, what she would have to do would be to walk right through town, turn left for half a mile until she came to her street. She’d have to walk fast past Tracy’s house. She didn’t want to give her the satisfaction. She let out a sigh, shifted her book bag, and started walking, the black pavement hot through the bottom of her sneakers.