Steel Glances (Rocky Mountain Novella Series #1) by Rory Chambers
Steel Glances
Rory Chambers
Copyright Porterlance Books 2013
All rights reserved. Except for the use in review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to the actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Other Books by Rory Chambers:
Dangerous Reunion (Book 1: Class of ’92 Series)
Surviving Las Vegas (Book 2: Class of ’92 Series)
Secret Obsessions (Book 3: Class of ’92 Series)
Class of ’92 Series (All 3 Books)
Steel Glances (Book 1: Rocky Mountain Novella Series)
Identity Crisis (Book 2: Rocky Mountain Novella Series)
Legally Comatose (Book 3: Rocky Mountain Novella Series)
Mountain Novella Series (All 3 Books)
www.PorterlanceBooks.com
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Steel Glances
Rory Chambers
Chapter 1
Although it was a beautiful autumn day, it felt more like spring as Kristen Casey walked down the sidewalk. The only real difference was that the trees had shed their normal shades of green for more bold and brilliant ambers, oranges and reds.
Kristen passed an elderly couple who gave her a sympathetic smile, which she politely returned. It was odd that a place so beautifully landscaped couldn’t be more appreciated by its visitors.
The lawn had all been freshly mowed and the scent of fresh-cut grass was in the air. Kristen found herself transported briefly back in time to when she was in elementary school. She would walk from her father’s house everyday to school. For a short-cut, she would cut through an apartment complex where at least twice a week, they were cutting their grass. The smell, to her, meant that spring had arrived. Towards the end of the school year, she would always be so restless because all she wanted to do was be outside, where she could enjoy all that nature offered her. She’d give anything to be that naïve, playfully restless girl once more.
But, she wasn’t a little girl anymore. She was twenty-eight, and had learned the hard way that life wasn’t just full of sunshine and rainbows. And nothing demonstrated that better than where she was right now. Even though she was surrounded by sunshine, a bright blue sky, freshly mowed lawn and well manicured topiaries, she was also surrounded by pain and sorrow. Kristen looked around. She had a habit of reading the names and messages on the carved pieces of stone. She could only imagine how many lives were affected by all of the names before her.
“I’m here, Dad,” she said as she placed the flowers she had been carrying next to her recently deceased father’s headstone. It read:
THOMAS J. CASEY
BELOVED HUSBAND AND FATHER
BORN MAY 25TH, 1958
DIED AUGUST 10TH, 2013
For a little while, Kristen just stood there. She was trying to feel her father’s presence. She concentrated with her eyes closed to see if maybe she could notice a shift in the wind or anything that would tell her that he was there and aware of her visit. As much as she wanted to find something to grab a hold of, she noticed nothing out of the ordinary.
As she got ready to speak, tears began to form. She wiped them away, wondering why she was crying. It wasn’t as if she had never experienced death before. She could barely remember a time in her life where she hadn’t mourned over the loss of a loved one. But, this was different. This was her father. And, she knew why she was crying. It was because she loved him. He had been there through everything for her. He had worked hard to help her whenever she needed him. He put her through college and helped her through her divorce. Every memory she had involved him somehow. He was her rock, and now he was gone.
“Daddy,” she began after scrubbing the tears out from under her eyelids and off her face. “How are you?” she asked before laughing. He was dead…that’s how he was. It was a habit, though. Since he had gotten older, she always asked him how he was doing when they talked on the phone or met for lunch. She had been worried about him…mostly about him being lonely.
Since he retired, she constantly urged him to get out more. “You should join a club or something,” she would suggest, but he would always complain that he was too old and too tired to meet new people. “Well, you can’t just spend the rest of your life in the house…cutting yourself off from everyone and everything.”
“I’m here, out and about, at lunch with the only person that matters, aren’t I?” he would answer with a twinkle in his eye that would make Kristen laugh.
There were so many memories, but she would trade all of them just to have her father back again. “I miss you,” she whispered, no longer caring if the tears flooded down her face.
She never considered herself to be a crier. In fact, she was often told by the men she dated that she was too strong and independent…almost unfeeling. They never understood that she was just trying to protect herself, but that was fine with her. She didn’t need them…any of them. She wouldn’t settle for any man that would try to change her. If there was one thing her father always taught her, it was that she should always be true to herself. “Never be ashamed of who you are, honey,” he told her as she and her husband split up.
She and Kyle should never have gotten married, anyway. They were just out of high school and thought they were madly in love with one another. In truth, neither really knew a thing about the world, or how hard it was to be in it…away from the nest and all the protection being a minor living at home brought with it.
It didn’t take Kyle long to cave under the pressure of working to support a family. He would come home in a bad mood and they would fight, constantly. After a year of trying to make it work, Kristen decided that it wasn’t the right life for her and filed for divorce. In spite of his behavior during the marriage, Kyle was hurt and accused her of seeing someone else. By the time the divorce was final; the two people that had once been best friends and so madly in love were no longer spoke to one another. And, it was her dad that was there for her. That gave her the strength to make the hard call. That gave her the strength to be true to herself.
There were so many things she had wished she had gotten the chance to say to him before he died. She had never even thanked him for making her the person that she was. Although it wasn’t the same, she wanted to tell him now.
“Dad, you raised me from a little girl into the woman I am now, and I never even thanked you for that. I know I wasn’t the most cooperative girl in the world,” she began. As a teenager, Kristen wasn’t always the easiest to get along with. For a while, she resented her father’s intrusions when it came to boys she liked. He was never the dominating, overbearing type, but did want to know what was going on with his little girl. But, she didn’t see it that way. She saw it as an invasion of her privacy. A privacy that she held onto dearly. More than a few arguments were started just because he asked her if she were going to a dance with anyone, or got a valentine from a boy. At the time, she felt justified. It never occurred to her at that time that he could ever die and she would feel guilty and ashamed of her behavior. But, he did die, and she did feel ashamed. She knew he had never held her
Kristen thanked her father for being such a good Dad and told him how much he had always meant to her. She was only sorry she wasn’t able to get him and her mom buried next to one another.
Kristen’s father knew he would never be buried next to his late wife. She had passed away many years ago, at a time where he wasn’t able to purchase the plot next to hers. He was just out of college and still struggling to pay back loans and make a life for his family. Although Kristen’s mom, Sara, worked, she did so as a pre-school teacher. It didn’t pay much, but she loved what she did and that’s all that mattered to Thomas. When she died, though, there was only enough money to give her the burial she deserved. Over the years, he had saved money, always intending to buy the plot next to Sara’s but by the time he had saved enough, it was gone. There were people already buried on both sides of his wife.
The one time Kristen and her father discussed it, he was adamant that he didn’t want his wife and Kristen’s mother moved. “I would love to rest beside her until the end of time,” he explained, “but that’s just me being selfish. She’s at rest and should stay where she is. Besides, I’ll be with her in Heaven.”Kristen tried to focus on that…her mother and father, together in Heaven. She imagined they were together, in each other’s arms, smiling down on her and for a split second she didn’t feel so alone.
She had spent the better part of two hours talking to her father. Even though she knew her fiancé, Adam, would be coming over for dinner, she couldn’t tear herself away from the cemetery. Somehow, to her, leaving meant that she was saying goodbye. That was something she hadn’t been able to bring herself to do…not at the funeral and not now.
As if nature and her father were in collaboration to help Kristen with the healing process, the skies that had been so blue with barely even a fluffy cloud in sight when she arrived were now dark and grey. Without any warning, a loud crack of thunder bellowed as the Heavens opened up and released a torrential downpour.
Still reluctant to leave, Kristen gasped as the sound of the thunder scared her. “I love you, Daddy!” she yelled to be heard over the storm and then ran for the sidewalk. It was only the third time she had been to the cemetery and with the heavy rains, she could barely see. She only hoped she was going the right direction.
By the time she made it to the parking lot, Kristen’s baby blue silk blouse was clinging to her chest. It and the suit she was wearing were both ruined. She stood under a tree for cover so she could get her key fob out and unlock the door to her car, but the tree provided little cover. The wind was blowing the rain at an angle and Kristen couldn’t see anything. As she fished around in her purse, she could tell it was quickly filling with water.
Kristen felt almost overjoyed as she clicked the button and saw her car’s headlight flash, signaling that the doors were now unlocked. She made a mad dash for the car and got inside in record time. She didn’t care that her clothes were dripping wet and probably ruining her car seats. She was just thankful that she was out of the storm.
“Come on, come on,” she said as she urged the car’s heater to warm her up. She had been listening to a jazz station while driving to the cemetery, and as she started the car, one of her father’s favorite songs was playing. It was probably just a coincidence, but she decided to see it as a sign. A sign that her dad was with her and still looking out over her.
Kristen sat in the car, singing softly along to the old standard that was playing on the radio and remembered how her father used the very same song when he first taught her how to slow dance.
He had moved all of the living room furniture in their large, Victorian home out of the way to provide them with a spacious dance floor. “I can’t do this,” a young and embarrassed Kristen laughed as her father first instructed her on where to place her hands.
“Yes, you can,” her father urged. “Just look me in the eyes.”
After stepping repeatedly on her father’s feet, Kristen finally got the hang of it. As she listened to the melody coming from her car’s speakers, she could almost feel her father’s hand in hers, twirling her around on their scuffed living room floor.
The song ended and the heavy rain began to slow. When it was safe to get on the roads, Kristen glanced once more at the cemetery and promised her father that she’d be back soon to visit him again.