January 2015

EUGEENA PATTERSON is not happy about her next-door neighbor, Louise Hopkins, being sent to live in a nursing home. Without her fellow neighborhood watch buddy, Sugar Creek isn’t the same anymore. In fact, life after retirement has become a whole new adventure of exploring social media and blogging.

While she tries not to meddle into her adult children’s lives, Eugeena can’t help but dish out relationship advice.  Eugeena’s own budding romance with Amos Jones has her emotions in upheaval. Is she really finding love again as she turns sixty?

When a stranger reveals a stunning secret about Louise’ past, Eugeena questions if the young woman’s claim is for real or if she is a con artist? Roping in Amos for help, Eugeena digs up a few skeletons from her elderly friend’s closet. When Eugeena stumbles upon a long forgotten murder case, she realizes the layers of a long dormant secret still have the potential to be deadly.

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From Chapter 1…

The afternoon sun shone through the window casting a glare across the television screen so I couldn’t tell what Louise was watching. As I turned towards Louise, I stopped in my tracks and frowned. A young woman was standing on one side of Louise’s bed peering intently down at her sleeping face. My first thought was maybe the young woman was a nurse, but she was definitely not wearing scrubs. I couldn’t tell if she was wearing a bright pink shirt or a dress over what appeared to be striped leggings.

She seemed older than my youngest child, Leesa, who had recently turned twenty-two.  I didn’t think she was near the age of my sons, late thirties to early forties. I guessed she was between twenty-five and thirty.

My first thought was something certainly wasn’t right about the woman being in Louise’s room. Did she have to go through security out there at the front desk, and if so, who was she? Perhaps she was a volunteer. Whoever she was she hadn’t noticed I’d walked in the room. I cleared my throat. “Honey, do you work here?”

The woman jumped backwards away from Louise like she’d been caught doing something she had no business.  Her honey-colored skin appeared flushed. A colorful scarf was wrapped around her naturally curly hair, pushing it to the top of her head like a crown. She reminded me of one of the singers my daughter liked, Alicia Keys.

For some reason the woman kept walking backwards, and she bumped into the small table behind her. She stopped as if to steady herself and stuttered, “No, I don’t work here.”

This woman was acting way too nervous for me. Louise had ended up in a nursing home due to being attacked by a young person she and I had befriended this past summer. I couldn’t go through this again.  I moved into the room, closer to Louise’s bed. “Then what are you doing here in this room? Are you looking for somebody?”

The strange young woman looked over at Louise and then back at me. She bit her lip and tugged on her hands behind her back like my five year old granddaughter.  Using my teacher voice, the one I had once used for seventh graders when they’d were trying to be grown in my classroom, I commanded, “Miss, you better explain yourself and do it fast. I’m going to have to call security on you.”

She pulled her hands from behind her back and waved them in front of her. “No, no don’t do that. I don’t mean any harm. I just wanted to see her.”

“Louise Hopkins? You wanted to see her?” I pointed towards Louise who seemed to be knocked out to the world, oblivious to the conversation between me and the young woman. “Why?”

I could hear that woman’s gulp clear across the room before she finally stammered out. “I wanted to meet my grandmother.”

Uh, yeah right? The Louise Hopkins I had known all these years didn’t have any grandchildren.  Who did this child think she was fooling?

January 2015
Tymm Publishing LLC
ISBN-10: 0-9894153-4-1
ISBN-13: 978-0-9894153-4-7