Cover

Everyone loves the ladies of Covington!

“A pure charmer, a rich Southern tale about love and loyalty.”

—Bookpage

“As cozy as a cup of tea and a favorite cat, the latest in the Covington series will delight fans…. Fans of Jan Karon and Ann Ross will enjoy these gentle novels.”

—Booklist

“A must-read for women of all ages.”

—The Tampa Tribune

“Genuinely inspiring…. The reader can’t help but be moved by the ‘ladies’ and their progress.”

—Library Journal

“Ms. Medlicott is attuned to the nuances of Southern life, and draws her characters with affectionate understanding and an inspiring message of self-acceptance, courage, and survival.”

—The Dallas Morning News

“A winner…. The three ladies inspire by forming a community in which they thrive and find new careers and loves, all with dignity and autonomy.”

—Publishers Weekly

“A heartwarming adventure.”

—San Jose Mercury News

“Medlicott captures small-town life and…presents a charming story.”

—Chattanooga Times/Free Press

“There’s never a dull moment.”

—Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“[A] charming story of small-town life. Wholesome and appealing.”

—Booklist

“A beautiful story to warm your heart and nourish your soul.”

—Freshfiction.com

“I have always enjoyed Joan Medlicott’s books. The characters stay with you long after you finish.”

—Jude Deveraux

“Settle back in a comfortable chair and enjoy your visit to Covington, a town rich with charm and character.”

—New York Times bestselling author Debbie Macomber

“The ladies of Covington sow seeds of courage and community that bloom throughout this small mountain town and deep into the heart of every reader.”

—Lynne Hinton, author of Friendship Cake

“The issues…are as fresh as tomorrow’s news. Medlicott’s prose is warm and quick. These three women, in their widows’ might, inspire us with dignity and confidence, humor and affection.”

—Robert Morgan, author of Gap Creek

“Proof that a woman’s life begins, not ends, at a certain age, that men are nice to have around, but women friends are indispensable. A satisfying, warmhearted look at friendship that endures.”

—Sandra Dallas, author of Alice’s Tulips

“Her characters are so real that I began to miss them as soon as I closed the book. From the Heart of Covington is a book that is inspiring and easy to love, one that shows us the true meaning of friendship, family ties, and grace.”

—Silas House, author of Clay’s Quilt

“What a pleasure it is to meet the ladies of Covington once again. Their courage, humor, and wisdom, and their sensible, loving regard for the seasons of life and of nature, are gifts for us all.”

—Nancy Thayer, author of The Hot Flash Club

“Come sit on the porch for a while with three unforgettable women. Bravo, ladies of Covington, I love you all!”

—Rosemary Rogers, author of A Reckless Encounter

Also by Joan Medlicott

The Covington Series

The Ladies of Covington Send Their Love

The Gardens of Covington

From the Heart of Covington

The Spirit of Covington

At Home in Covington

A Covington Christmas

Two Days after the Wedding

An Unexpected Family

Other books

The Three Mrs. Parkers

Come Walk with Me

Title Page

Copyright

Pocket Books A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2009 by Joan Medlicott

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Medlicott, Joan A. (Joan Avna)
   Promises of change / Joan Medlicott.—1st Pocket Books trade paperback ed.
    p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-8000-3
ISBN-10: 1-4165-8000-X

1. Older women—Fiction. 2. Retired women—Fiction. 3. Widows—Fiction. 4. Female friendship—Fiction. 5. North Carolina—Fiction. 6. Domestic fiction. I. Title.
   PS3563.E246P76 2009
   813’.54—dc22         2008029348

Dedication

To my daughter, Paula, in appreciation
for her kindness and patience

Acknowledgments

My deepest thanks to Attorney Marsha Shortell, formerly victims’ advocate for the Asheville Police Department, for the significant information she provided on recognizing and avoiding scams and scammers.

My heartfelt appreciation to John Cowart, LCSW, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Center at the Asheville Veterans’ Hospital in Asheville, NC. He opened my eyes to a very important and heart-wrenching issue that will affect an entire generation of veterans and their families.

1

The Homecoming

Amelia Declose settled into her rocking chair on the front porch of the farmhouse she shared with Hannah Parrish and Grace Singleton. Gathering her shawl about her, she knotted the ends across her chest. It was early morning. A glorious sunrise wove its magic across the mountains, slashing the sky with flaming orange. The celery green of new leaves on shrubs and trees and the chirp of a baby bird in a nest artfully camouflaged in a shrub near the porch filled her heart with pure joy. There are days when one feels glad to be alive, and today is one of those days.

Amelia’s mind drifted back years ago to when she, Hannah, and Grace had met in a dreary boardinghouse in Pennsylvania where the owner, the dour Olive Pruitt, restricted the use of the kitchen and refused to allow a wonderful cook like Grace to bake a cake or make a pot of soup.

They had taken a risk, trusted one another, pooled their emotional and financial resources, and moved to a rundown farmhouse in rural North Carolina that Amelia had unexpectedly inherited, and in so doing had revitalized their lives. Here, Amelia had discovered a talent for photography. Hannah’s skills and love for gardening had resurfaced, and Grace’s kindness and wisdom found their outlet in volunteer work with children and in creating a community of friends and family.

Amelia’s finger traced the rim of the delicate china teacup. The human spirit takes comfort and solace from quite ordinary things: cows milling about in a pasture, a comfortable chair like this, the tinkle of wind chimes.

A cup of tea with her friends on this porch and Sunday dinners with their ever-increasing surrogate family were now among the happy routines in her life. Even winter, her least favorite season, had become more bearable, with its hot cocoa topped with tiny marshmallows, long hot baths, and snuggling beneath her down comforter. And best of all, Miriam and Sadie were a part of her life—her unexpected family.

Her attention was drawn to a taxi that entered Cove Road, slowed, turned into Max’s driveway across the street, and pulled up to his farmhouse. The short, heavy woman and bearded man who disembarked and plodded up onto the front porch reminded Amelia of Russian immigrants in a movie she had seen recently on late-night television. Several large suitcases were deposited on Max’s front porch, then the taxi rolled away.

The man helped the woman to a porch chair, then walked briskly to the front door. Something about him seemed vaguely familiar. She watched as the man carried the luggage into Max and Hannah’s house, then assisted the woman from the chair, and Amelia realized that the woman was very pregnant, not fat. The front door closed behind them and light flooded the downstairs windows.

Max’s son and his wife?

Could it be Max’s son and his wife? No, they live in India. Hannah would have said something, would have been there to greet them. After all, she is Max’s wife, even if she lives with Grace and me most of the time.

Shadows moved across Max’s downstairs windows. Who were they? It was Saturday, Hannah and Max’s private day. Max would never invite anyone to visit on Saturday.

Hannah usually stayed at Max’s on Friday nights, but she had been here last night. Grace’s companion, Bob, and Max had come for dinner, and they had all played Trivial Pursuit and talked about getting a dog. Grace had wandered into a shop in Asheville and seen a puppy she’d fallen in love with and been sorely tempted to bring home.

“Why would you want the mess of raising a puppy? Get an older, house-trained dog from a shelter,” Hannah had said.

“Oh, don’t do that. Get a dog from the Compassionate Animal Network. Their members raise the dogs from puppies,” Bob said. “I think you’d find they’re well socialized, too. When you get a dog from a shelter you have no idea what you’re bringing home.”

There had been much talk, but nothing had been decided.

Now Amelia’s mind returned to Max’s guests. Max and Hannah’s Saturdays were sacrosanct. Either they drove into Asheville for brunch and to the farmers’ market for fresh fruit and vegetables for both their households, or they sequestered themselves at Max’s house.

“What do you do all day?” Grace had once asked Hannah.

“We turn off the phones and just hang out.” Hannah had given Grace a shy smile. “We eat leftovers and ice cream, read, watch old movies, things like that. Once, we sat all day and sorted through old photos that we’d been meaning to put into an album. One thing we do not do is discuss our work at Bella’s Park.”

Across the road, the lights in Max’s downstairs rooms switched off. Amelia went inside, placed her teacup in the kitchen sink, then climbed the stairs and knocked on Hannah’s bedroom door. “You awake, Hannah?”

“Come in, Amelia.”

Hannah sat on the edge of her bed, one foot shoved into her bedroom slipper, the other foot twisted, wiggling under the bed in search of the other slipper. Amelia bent and retrieved it for her.

“Ever notice how shoes, especially slippers, are never where you put them when you go to bed? I think they walk about while we sleep,” Hannah said. “It’s odd.”

“What’s odd is that there’s a strange man and a very pregnant woman at Max’s. I was on the porch when a cab deposited them at his front steps. The man opened the front door and walked right in.”

Hannah hastened to the window, which overlooked Cove Road. “I don’t see anything or anyone, and there’s no light in Max’s bedroom.” She reached for the buttons on her pajama top. “I’ll go right over.”

“I’ll go with you,” Amelia said. “Meet you downstairs.”

At the front door, Amelia handed Hannah a mug of black coffee without sugar, and they started across Cove Road. Hannah unlocked the front door, then flipped on the foyer light. There sat three large suitcases.

Max’s heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs, and seeing Hannah, he smiled. “I was just about to phone you. Guess who’s here?”

Hannah shook her head. “Who?”

“My son, Zachary, and his wife, Sarina, have come home from India, and she’s about to have a baby.”

Hannah was uncertain that she had heard him correctly, but there he stood, beaming and happy. “Zachary, here? But…I thought…?”

“Yes, I know. He said he hated Covington and would never come back, but life is unpredictable.” Taking Hannah’s arm, Max urged her toward the kitchen, Amelia following. There Max sank into a chair and ran his fingers through his hair. “Sometimes things don’t work out as planned. They’ve been through hell, from what they’ve been telling me.”

“What kind of hell? What’s happened to them?” Hannah slid into the chair across from Max. Amelia leaned against the wall and waited for his reply.

“You know her people are Hindus. Well, it seems there was an issue about a mosque being built on what was considered a Hindu holy site, and this triggered hostilities on both sides. The mayor, a Hindu, was ambushed and killed by God knows who, which led to the looting and burning of a prominent Muslim businessman’s home. After that, it degenerated into a free-for-all.

“Sarina’s brother-in-law, the accountant, was shot and wounded in the leg on the way to his office. They think it was a random shooting, but it’s crazy over there, Zachary says, and everyone suddenly has a gun. Sarina’s entire family and all their servants have fled to their home in the south. Just as well, it seems, for after they left, one of their stores was torched. Sarina’s baby is due next month, and they felt they’d be safer here until the turmoil gets straightened out—if it ever does.”

“How frightening to live in a world like that,” Amelia said. “People shooting other people, burning property.”

“After the Twin Towers going down, I wonder if we’re much safer, or if safety is just an illusion.” Hannah shook her head.

“I think of India as a peaceful country, and Hindus as tolerant of all religions,” Amelia said.

“This Muslim/Hindu hatred has taken root in many parts of India,” Max said. “No one knows where it will lead. Zachary did the right thing. Sarina will have the baby here.” Satisfaction showed in his eyes.

Hannah knew Zachary had been hardheaded in expressing his dislike of Covington. He had been cruel and had rejected his father and his father’s business, and had hurt Max deeply. Max had buried the hurt, and despaired of ever seeing any grandchildren. Had Max told Zachary that she and Max were married? If he had, what had been his son’s reaction? Hannah did not trust or like Zachary, and she was certain that if his reaction had been positive, it was not sincere.

An uneasy feeling settled over her. Their pleasant lives were about to be cast into confusion.

Hannah looked at Max. “Have you told Zachary that we’re married?”

Max shook his head. “There’s been no time. Sarina was exhausted, traveling this late in her pregnancy. She collapsed when we got her upstairs. The fright and the stress of it all, leaving her family and home, the trip—it was too much for her. We got her into bed, and Zachary took her up some chicken soup. If she relaxes and falls asleep, he’ll be down, I imagine.”

Max reached across the table and lay his large hands over Hannah’s. “You’re trembling. Now, don’t you worry, sweetheart. We’ll tell him about us as soon as he comes down. How can their being here affect us? We’ll go on with our lives just as we have been.”

“Do you really think so?” Hannah asked.

“I’m sure of it. They’ll stay until the baby comes, then in a few months they’ll move on to a city.”

“Don’t be too sure of that. Things change.” The knot in Hannah’s stomach began to hurt.

2

A Loss of Function

Through her open windows, Grace heard the slam of a car door. She had been up most of the night worrying about her health. This particular bout of insomnia started weeks ago when her internist had advised her to see a kidney specialist.

“Your blood work indicates there may be a slight problem with your kidneys. Nothing serious, but we need to check it out,” he had said in a voice that Grace considered much too casual for the information it imparted.

The nephrologist had been young, pleasant, and patient. He had taken a thorough history and drawn a crude rendition of kidneys and arteries on a notepad. He explained that high blood pressure, compounded by diabetes, could, over time, adversely affect one’s kidneys. “I’m going to have my nurse set you up for a sonogram to see if there’s a blockage in the arteries that go to your kidneys.”

Grace’s mind snapped shut. Blockages sounded ominous. “And if there’s a blockage?”

“If there’s a restriction of blood flow to your kidneys, we’ll go in and clean out the arteries. It’s a routine procedure these days,” he replied and smiled, but his smile had not reassured her.

Grace remembered Bob’s heart attack several years earlier and his angioplasty, a surgical procedure to clean the plaque from a blood vessel to his heart. Bob had made light of it, saying that he had felt absolutely nothing. But the prospect of a probe snaking through her arteries terrified her, and when the young doctor suggested the possible “procedure,” Grace felt weak and had had to clutch the cold metal arms of her chair for support. The nurse had walked her from the office to her car.

Later, when she told him, Bob said, “Now don’t you go worrying yourself silly while you wait to have that sonogram.”

“How can I not worry? I’m scared out of my mind.”

The more she learned about diabetes—how serious, how dangerous it was, how it could affect her eyes, feet, everything in her body—the more upset she became. These days, even after seeing the nurse-dietician at the hospital, she hardly knew what to eat or how to cook and found it increasingly hard to get a grip on a whole new way of thinking about food. And exercise! The doctor said that was very important. She walked some, but the length of Cove Road was hardly what he meant, and when she signed on at a gym, all those fit young women leading other fit young women in aerobics or yoga made her want to never return, and she had not.

“It’s going to be all right.” Bob ran his hand across her arm in a gesture he probably considered soothing but that, at that moment, had annoyed Grace.

The sonogram had been painless, so when her doctor said that the test revealed no arterial blockages, Grace relaxed, until she heard his next words.

“But what we found is that your kidneys are functioning at forty-four percent of capacity.”

The doctor had perched on the edge of the examination table. A chart of kidneys, bright with veins and arteries, hung like a photograph on the pale gray wall behind him. The seriousness of his words bounced off Grace’s consciousness. Had Bob not accompanied her to his office, Grace would have denied the truth, as she was wont to do.

“If you were twenty-seven years old,” the doctor continued, “I’d be concerned, but since you’re, what?”—he checked her chart—“seventy-two…”

“Why are my kidneys functioning at only forty-four percent?” she had asked.

“We all lose kidney function as we age. I’m not worried, so long as we keep that function at forty-four percent. Your new blood pressure medication will help protect your kidneys.”

But at night, lying in bed, Grace wondered what else was silently deteriorating deep within her body. She prayed and tried unsuccessfully to meditate and visualize herself whole and perfect and wondered if her efforts were too little too late.

It was Amelia’s, and then Hannah’s hurried footsteps in the hall, and the closing of their front door, that roused her from self-pity and from her bed. Grace grabbed a robe and hastened downstairs, hoping to catch them, but too late. Through their kitchen window she watched her friends enter Max’s house, and for a moment she considered following them.

But Grace needed breakfast and her medication. If she waited too long in the morning, her blood sugar dropped, which resulted in a weak, slightly nauseous feeling. Gone were the days of well-sugared morning tea and coffee cake. Instead, she topped a thin wheat cracker with two slices of Swiss cheese and poured a small glass of skim milk. She carried the cracker and milk into the downstairs guest bedroom, settled into the glider rocker, and flipped on television to the house and garden channel. Whenever she was alone and the room not occupied by a guest, she breakfasted in this lovely room with its large windows and view of the shady hillside behind the house. Somehow it helped compensate for the less than satisfying change in her diet.

The room faced north, which was good, for glare bothered her eyes. It always had, even in childhood, when she’d started to wear glasses. Grace had recently visited an ophthalmologist, who checked her yearly for retinopathy, another possible serious side effect of diabetes. To her great relief, he had assured her that her eyes were fine. No change in her prescription, but he had suggested darker lenses, which she had gotten.

Whatever’s keeping Amelia over there? she wondered. And why is Amelia intruding on Hannah and Max’s Saturday? Then Grace’s attention went to Design on a Dime, a makeover show that never ceased to amaze her—what could be done with so little money—and she did not hear Amelia until her friend entered the room.

“Grace. Didn’t you hear me call you?”

“No. I didn’t. Look at that room.” Grace pointed at the television. “They’re showing the before-and-after pictures. Marvelous what they’ve done, don’t you think?”

“Oh, shut that off. I have really big news for you. Guess who’s come home?”

Grace clicked off the set. “Who has come home?”

Amelia’s carefully plucked eyebrows arched. “Zachary and his very, very pregnant wife, Sarina, that’s who. They arrived about an hour ago. I was sitting out on the porch having a cup of tea, just enjoying this glorious spring day. They came by taxi with lots of luggage. But until we went over there, I hadn’t a clue who they were.”

“Didn’t Zachary declare Covington anathema?”

“Sure he did, until the Muslims and Hindus over in India started shooting at each other and burning homes.”

Grace’s hands covered her mouth and her gasp, then fell to her lap. “That happened in India, where they were living?”

Amelia nodded. Her face was flushed, and she literally quivered with excitement. Rarely did she have the opportunity to be in the know and to break exciting news to her housemates. She told Zachary’s story to a wide-eyed Grace.

“I can hardly believe this.”

“Every word of it’s true,” Amelia said, thinking that if Hannah had imparted this information, Grace would have believed her right off the bat.

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