Reunion (standard:drama, 1987 words)
Author: Maureen Stirsman	Added: Oct 02 2006	Views/Reads: 3174/2137	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
These are the first pages of my new mystery novel. Reunion is a story of a family, a bag of money, where it came from, and what happened to it. Follow the sisters as children, from the picnic grove, to the cabin many years later, where the mystery comes

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

couches had been re-covered recently in a blue and green plaid. Bright, 
yellow pillows were scattered on the couches and the floor. Yellow 
flowered cushions decorated the wicker chairs. It was a lovely, warm 
welcoming room with a new look on old, familiar furniture. 

Arlene and Patsy sat on one of the sofas, Emily on the other and Margo
and Georgia settled into the rocking chairs. “Mama always sat in that 
rocker. Do you remember, Margo?” Georgia asked. “Remember how she put 
the granny-square afghan around Emily and rocked her the night she fell 
out of the tree?” 

“What were you doing up there anyway? You were supposed to be in your
room,” Arlene asked with a laugh. 

Emily smiled. Mama was such a comfort. She could still smell the sweet,
flowery, familiar scent of Mama's bath powder. She never berated her 
for climbing the tree. She just wiped her forehead with a cool 
washcloth and held her and hummed until Emily was calm. Mama was like 
that. 

Emily had fully expected to be a mother herself, but it never happened.
Emily shook her blonde curls and touched Margo's hand, “Mama was always 
kind.” 

They listened to the old records, “String of Pearls”, “You are my
Sunshine”, “South of the Border”—and remembered. Arlene poured Earl 
Grey into Mama's china cups, that Margo had thoughtfully brought. Mama 
was proud of her collection. Each daughter had given her a special set, 
and various friends had added to it over the years. Arlene passed out 
pale blue, linen napkins and handed a cup to each sister. 

Patsy took the fine china cream-colored cup with forget-me-nots painted
on the side and stirred in a spoon and a half of sugar with a little 
squeeze of lemon. That is the way Mama took her tea, with a small 
squeeze of lemon. Patsy said, “Mama was kind. She never left me when I 
was so ill.” 

  Click the button below to send the text      OPTION 3 - email you“Yes,
and now you are a physical therapist. How exciting for you to work in 
the clinic with Ed!” Patsy and Ed never had children and for the most 
part she felt her life fulfilled with Ed, her doctor?husband, and her 
own career. But, there had been times when deep in her heart there was 
a longing. Now, it was good to be with her sisters and drink from 
Mama's china cups. 

The Howard sisters sat and talked and laughed and drank Earl Grey until
someone said, “I smell the lasagna.” Patsy and Emily had driven 
together from their homes near Atlanta and brought all the food, 
including tonight's dinner. Ed insisted on preparing the pasta. “Since 
I can't be there, at least I can prepare the first meal,” he said. When 
they had first talked about a reunion, they decided that this time it 
would be just the sisters. 

After the dishes were back in the cupboard, still in the same places
Mama had so neatly organized, and everyone was unpacked, they settled 
in around the fire again. Emily said, “Wait, I have something in the 
car I want you to see. Margo brought the cups and saucers. I brought 
something too.” 

She ran to the car and carried back a big, cardboard box tied with
string. Georgia said, “I'll get a knife.” 

She held the knife in one hand and the taut string in the other, but the
string proved stronger than she thought and the knife slipped. Blood 
dripped from her thumb onto the new, blue pants that she had made. 
“It's nothing,” she said, wrapping a hanky around it and mopping at the 
spot with a wet washcloth. However, a stain remained in the new pants. 

When they were assured she was all right they crowded around as Emily
took out the first of four photo albums. She handed one to each of the 
sisters. They were neatly labeled according to year in the familiar 
Palmer-method hand. Faded, blue ink on the once white paper was a 
testimony to Mama's precision writing. Each album was dated and labeled 
and snapshots neatly pasted in by little, black corner protectors. 

Margo said, “This has to be the first, 1921. These are the photos of
Mama and Daddy's wedding.” The pictures started with that wedding day 
with Mama in all her white, bridal glory beaming for the camera. Her 
parents, Gramma and Grampa Archer, the only pictures the Howard girls 
had of them, were in this album. Daddy's parents also smiled at the 
camera. This was a happy match, planned and approved by the parents of 
bride and groom while they were yet teenagers. The Howards and the 
Archers were old friends and they were happy with Anna and Arnold's 
marriage. Today their great grandchildren don't understand how a 
marriage like that could work, but strangely enough it did. And—Anna 
and Arnold had a good and happy life together until his death in 1953. 

Anna never quite recovered but managed to carry on after a fashion in
the only way she knew, living for her church and her family. She had 
finally given up and quietly faded away twenty-one years later in her 
own bed with her border and old friend, Yolanda, downstairs preparing 
her breakfast. 

After Mama died the sisters made more of an effort to communicate
through letters and telephone calls. 

There in the album were the pictures of the house where they were raised
at the top of a long hill in Atlanta, the schools and church they 
attended, and the cabin. 

Finally after much exclamations of “Look at this. Do you remember that?”
they decided to all look at the same book and they crowded around while 
Margo turned the pages. The memories—the memories came flooding into 
the room like a strong fog. They went through each book, talked, 
reminisced, laughed and cried until they had studied all the albums 
thoroughly. 

Emily picked up the one labeled 1939-1942 again and reopened it. She
looked at her baby pictures and mentioned there were fewer pictures of 
her than of Margo. Margo said, “All parents are like that. They take a 
mountain of pictures of the first baby and are too busy with that child 
to take as many of the next.” They all agreed that was true. 

The pictures of the big, white Victorian house in Atlanta where they
were raised stood in black and white on the black pages. One showed 
Daddy outside on a ladder putting up Christmas lights and the Christmas 
tree standing in the window as a sign of festivities to come. It was 
good to see the house again but somehow it was the cabin that was home. 


Patsy sat down beside Emily and looked at the pictures of them as
children, dressed in church clothes smiling for the camera. There was 
one of them in play clothes. Georgia, Arlene and Margo were standing 
around Mama's chair holding a quilt and picnic basket, ready for one of 
their lunches in the grove. Mama held Emily on her lap. Patsy stood by 
her side holding onto her apron. 

Patsy said, “Was that the day?”
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