The Caskets -- When Doves Fly Excerpt

In case you missed it, here's one of my favorite scenes from When Doves Fly, my debut #histfic novel set in a Colorado gold rush town in the 1870s.

If you want more, it's available on Amazon in ebook and print!

*  *  *  *  *

 

The caskets lay side by side. Charlotte stood in the parlor doorway, a doll dangling from one hand. She had tried to make herself enter, but her feet wouldn’t move. The black crepe over the windows rippled like ghostly shadows. A glimpse of pallid skin peeked from each coffin.

 

What if they wake? Maggie, their cook, said people sometimes came back to life to claw their way out of their caskets.

 

Charlotte wanted to touch them, to check for life, but a vague fear stopped her. She stayed rooted, cold bare toes on the threshold, eyes fixed on the open boxes, waiting for the children to move.

 

If only Mother would come down. Then I could go in.

 

Charlotte had tried to rouse her mother, but her parents’ door remained locked, and no one answered. Only weak cries had come from the room in the two days since Peter and Cecilia died.

 

Mother had fallen sick, too, but the cholera kept her bedridden for just a day. She’d devoted the next two days to nursing Peter and Cecilia—Charlotte had felt fine. In her delirium, Mother blamed herself for taking the children to the fair, but Charlotte had been the one who pestered until she agreed.

 

If I hadn’t, Peter and Sissy wouldn’t be in caskets. Once a middle child, now an only.

 

After they died, Mother locked her door, and Charlotte hadn’t seen her since. Maggie had arranged the wake and the coming funeral but went home sick—was it only the day before?—after assuring Charlotte that Papa would return home from his business trip any time. Charlotte waited all night, but Papa hadn’t come.

 

Something moved in Peter’s coffin. Charlotte’s eyes widened, and she squeezed Dolly’s arm. A fly drifted from the casket and landed again. She relaxed and released her breath. And waited.

 

The back door banged open. Charlotte didn’t move—she couldn’t. Her limbs had turned to stone.

 

“Eliza!” Papa’s voice rang in the silence. “Maggie?” Footsteps clattered on the wood floor until he reached the hall rug. “Charlotte! Where’s your mother? Why are the drapes …?”

 

His hand fell on her shoulder.

 

She tried to speak, but her cracked lips only trembled.

 

A sick moan came from him, and he pushed past her into the room with the caskets and flies. He bent over the bodies and groaned.

 

“No, no, no,” he chanted. “Peter … Sissy … not both ….”

 

Tears stung Charlotte’s eyes.

 

Papa whirled on her. “Where is your mother?” More a roar than a question.

 

Her body shook. Why is he angry with me?

 

He ran past her and thundered up the stairs. Banging on a door. “Eliza … Eliza!” More heavy footsteps, and he jerked Charlotte by the arm. “Is your mother sick? Where is Maggie? Or Cooper?” He bent, eyes wild, and shook her until her teeth chattered. “Charlotte, answer me!”

 

Sound came from her mouth, but no words.

 

Shoving her aside, he raced upstairs. Yelling and rattling the door as Charlotte collapsed in the parlor doorway.

 

“Papa?”

 

The hall remained quiet. She fell asleep crying, clutching Dolly close.

 

 

 

 

 

A Door to the Past

I put the bullhorn to my mouth and closed my eyes as I recited a prayer in my head. Sweat dampened my collar, and the ulcer eating away at my stomach burned a hot lump in my belly. I had to make him listen—without telling him what I really wanted him to know.

 

“Mr. Richardson! We can stay out here all night, and you can stay in there. But whether it’s five minutes, or five hours, or five days, won’t make a difference. It won’t change anything. Come on out so we can talk.”

 

The door mocked me with its silence. No response came back, just as I knew none would. I studied the pattern of grime on the white paint around the door handle, where the hand of a mechanic had left greasy evidence of his daily life.

 

Bob Richardson had spent the last forty years living the same day, over and over. He got up in the morning and ate the same breakfast of grits, sausage, and coffee. He went to work at Reddy Automotive and fixed cars. He came home, read the paper while he ate his Hungry Man TV dinner, watched a few shows, and went to bed. Grocery trips happened on Wednesdays, to catch the market’s double-coupon day. The barber down on Franklin Street cut his hair every third Saturday without fail. His routine didn’t change one iota from the age of twenty-six to sixty-six.

 

Until yesterday.

 

Yesterday, Mr. Richardson bypassed Reddy and drove to the other side of town. He parked in front of the home of a Mrs. Thornton. He walked to the door and knocked. When the woman of the house—Estelle Thornton, a plump but buxom widow of sixty-two—answered the door, he lifted a shotgun and blew a hole through her abdomen the size of a dinner plate. Then he drove home and locked his door. When we arrived, he yelled out to us to stay away because he had guns and wasn’t taking calls.

 

As a detective, and the only trained negotiator in our department, my efforts to communicate with Mr. Richardson with a bullhorn were nothing out of the ordinary. We responded to a dozen of these kinds of incidents every year.

 

This time was different, but I was the only one who knew that.

 

Last week, I’d received a letter from a stranger. Mrs. Estelle Thornton had written to tell me she was my biological mother. She explained she had married too young and wasn’t happy. When she found out she was pregnant, she left her husband without a word about the pregnancy, got a divorce, and put the baby up for adoption. I had known I was adopted since I was nine, but I hadn’t looked for my birth parents until last summer. I submitted paperwork to the adoption agency, and they said they’d forward it to my mother, and she’d respond if she wanted.

 

I waited. For six months I waited without hearing a thing, wondering who she was, if I looked like her, why she’d given me up. I’d figured she decided she didn’t want to connect with me. That hurt, but I had come to accept it.

 

Until last week.

 

Mrs. Thornton’s letter also stated the name of my birth father, which she hadn’t given the adoption agency. One Robert Richardson, last known address at 845 Denmark Street, apartment C.

 

My eyes touched on the tarnished brass letter tacked to the door, and I blinked back the sting of tears. I had a pretty good idea why he snapped. She’d said she sent him a letter, too.

 

“Mr. Richardson…please,” I swallowed to suppress the catch in my voice, “put down your weapons and come out.”