The Bootlegger's Wife: A Love Story Read online

  The Bootlegger’s Wife

  A Love Story

  Terri Lee

  Copyright © 2014 Terri Lee

  Capricorn Publishing House

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means or stored in a database or retrieval system without the prior written permission of this author.

  This story is a fictionalized account of true events. Though names, dates and places may have been changed, dramatized or invented for the purposes of storytelling, you may rest assured, dear reader, that the love is real.

  Cover Design: Nicole Spence Of Cover Shot Creations

  Author photo Courtesy R. Mueting

  Please visit my website: www.terrileeauthor.com

  Thank you,

  to my very own

  Francis Joseph and Frances Elizabeth Louise

  whose epic love story

  filled my young heart with hope.

  I never would have found the courage

  to chase after my own love story

  if you hadn’t already led the way.

  How wonderful to have a band of brothers

  along for the journey

  cheering you on, as you chase your dream.

  Though the words seem so small,

  I offer them with all my heart.

  Thank you.

  With a special nod to:

  My Son, Rex: I wrote this story for you. Never forget that it’s your story, too. Hold it close to your heart, then pass it on to the next generation.

  Gail Choate: How do I thank a best friend who champions my every cause? Your trusted opinion and critical eye helped my manuscript to shine in the early days, when I was still feeling my way. For your unwavering belief in Frances, and in me, you are forever, my Lucy.

  Erin Fenske: Thank you being a tireless cheerleader and for lending Sophia to me. I hope that you will find that I have taken very good care of her.

  Andrew Fenske: My wonderful Techno Guru, who is always there when I cry for help.

  Scott D. Southard, my editor: Thanks for holding the flashlight so that I could see the answers. They were already there,

  I only had to coax them out from the dark corners.

  And

  Mostly

  My darling husband, Rex: You have put up with more nonsense during the writing of this book than anyone should ever have to endure. You are my rock, my hero and the leading man in my favorite love story.

  Table of Contents

  PART ONE: SUMMER 1919

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY ONE

  TWENTY TWO

  PART TWO

  TWENTY THREE

  TWENTY FOUR

  TWENTY FIVE

  TWENTY SIX

  TWENTY SEVEN

  TWENTY EIGHT

  PART THREE

  TWENTY NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY ONE

  THIRTY TWO

  THIRTY THREE

  THIRTY FOUR

  THIRTY FIVE

  THIRTY SIX

  THIRTY SEVEN

  THIRTY EIGHT

  THIRTY NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY ONE

  FORTY TWO

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PART ONE

  SUMMER 1919

  ONE

  “Frances, there you are.” Lena Durant’s voice pierced the din of conversation and landed on the back of her daughter’s neck. The sound caused an involuntary shudder to roll down Frances’s spine.

  The entire house was alive with activity. The familiar sound of worker bees in their frantic dance around the queen. Frances skipped out of the way as one of the hired servers for this evening’s party whizzed through the entry hall carrying a platter piled high with tempting treats. She had hoped to escape unnoticed in the midst of the fray, but she should have known better.

  Two large urns appeared to have sprouted legs as they filed past. Their mop heads of blue hydrangeas bobbed in nervous acquiescence to the shrill voice in the background barking commands. And Frances was reminded that her mother was capable of managing an attack on several fronts at once.

  “Good grief, what are you doing wandering around daydreaming? People will be arriving in less than an hour and you haven’t even begun to dress. Get upstairs.” Lena waved excitedly, an attempt to hurry her daughter along.

  “I thought I was dressed,” Frances said.

  “You are not wearing that tired old thing. Everyone has seen it.” Lena didn’t bother to look at her daughter as she directed several young men with folding chairs through a set of French doors.

  “No one will notice what I’m wearing. You know everyone will be looking at you. This dress is perfectly fine.”

  Lena sighed and Frances knew she was bracing for another argument. “No, you do not look fine. Really Frances, can’t you go along with me, just once? Why does everything have to be a battle?”

  “Because that’s what we do best.” Frances shrugged. She wasn’t trying to be difficult. Really, she wasn’t. The truth of the matter was that the two of them had been locked in a nineteen-year battle with no clear victor.

  “Not today, please. My nerves can’t take it.”

  Frances could barely contain the eye roll as her mother demanded surrender by invoking her nerves. They stood, always at the ready. In actuality Frances knew that Lena had nerves of steel, and the only time she protested otherwise was when it was convenient to silence someone else. Usually Frances. Her mother lived for this summer house party, and though she might have been a bit frazzled, attending to all the last minute details, the wilting southern belle was an unconvincing act.

  “Are you suggesting a cease-fire?” Frances stared at her mother open-mouthed.

  “You are the most insufferable young woman I have ever known.”

  “And Lena fires the first shot. Once again the proposed peace talks go down in flames.” Frances extended her arms as she addressed the imaginary crowd.

  “Wear the new dress I hung on your closet door,” Lena said, ignoring her daughter’s taunts. “And don’t call me Lena.”

  By now Frances had started the long climb up the stairs to her room.

  “Are you listening to me?”

  The drumbeat accompanied Frances’s silent march as she moved with a straight face and back.

  “Don’t ignore me when I’m speaking to you,” Lena said raising her voice another octave.

  Frances had learned long ago that the only way to survive was to ignore most of what her mother said. Lena was still making her case when Frances closed the door to her room. Something about an ungrateful child drifted up the stairwell. She leaned against the heavy door and hung her head. She had only been home from college for a few days and it was already too much.

  ***

  By the time Frances came downstairs the party was in full swing. The sounds of laughter floated through several sets of French doors opened wide for guests to flow freely from room to room and into the gardens. The annual summer party festivities at Greenfield were anticipated events for the privileged set.

  The reveling was spread throughout a long weekend. Brunches, tennis matches, and events at the lakeside. Endless rounds of mingling with cockta
ils in hand before the final evening drew everyone in white coats and filmy gowns to the dance floor erected on the lawn under the summer stars.

  As Frances stepped off the bottom stair onto the polished marble floor, a young man with a tray of champagne glasses careened around the corner narrowly avoiding a collision. Cheeks aflame, the waiter sputtered.

  “Excuse me, miss. I’m so sorry.”

  Frances noticed the beads of sweat on his upper lip. She couldn’t help but take pity on this band of temporary servants hired for the event. They were always so nervous in their starched white shirts and coats, and unfamiliar with the layout of the house, in constant need of guidance.

  “Why, thank you very much.” Frances nodded as she relieved the startled waiter of one of the glasses. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed Foster, frowning.

  “What?” she asked, an unsuccessful attempt at innocence.

  Foster said nothing but his look was enough to make Frances feel the need to justify her actions. Andrew Foster was the butler and prided himself on a level of professionalism hard to come by in this changing world. He was a relic left over from another era, but to Frances he was a teddy bear in an impeccable suit. She had managed to wriggle her way past his impenetrable shell in those first few moments when she made her howling entrance into this world. On more than one occasion he had been her safe port in the storm. And Frances would claim that sometimes it felt as if he was more family than her actual relations.

  “If I’m forced to mingle and be polite and smile at all the same old questions asked by the same, tired people, then I must have something to fortify my nerves.” She batted her dark lashes at Foster and was rewarded with his indulgent smile. She knew he adored her and the feeling was mutual.

  Taking a deep breath, she prepared to step into the fray. Moving out onto the manicured lawn and surveying the sea of guests in their summer whites, she had to admit it would have been a captivating scene to anyone else.

  The crowd was in better spirits than ever this year. The war was over. It was the war to end all wars. The war that would be known as the Great War until the next Great War came along. As always, war would exact its price in the only currency it understood: the sacrifice of brave and beautiful young men cut down in the prime of their youth. For too many of them there would be no more summer parties and carefree days at the lake. They had breathed their last, far from home, in fields with foreign names few could pronounce.

  But Frances could hear it in the sound of the laughter, and in the bubbly conversations around her, people were ready to throw off the gray cloud of the last few years. It was time to laugh again.

  “My, my…if it isn’t little Frances Durant.”

  Frances’s thoughts were interrupted by a shock of white hair attached like wispy bits of cotton candy onto a pink scalp.

  “Hello, Mr. Grantham. How are you?” She leaned toward his good ear.

  “How old are you now?” Mr. Grantham squinted over his glasses.

  “I’m nineteen.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.” She wondered how long this could go on. “I just finished my first year of college.”

  “Well, I’ll be.” The old gentleman rubbed his chin with a bony finger. “Why…I remember —”

  Frances knew it was best to cut him off at the pass before he got a full head of steam. “Excuse me, Mr. Grantham, but I see my mother is looking for me. Nice to see you again.” Only the tiniest bit remorseful, she dashed off before he had a chance to respond. Knowing she would be trapped in more of these conversations in the next few days, she would not feel guilty for seeking an occasional escape route.

  As she threaded her way among the party goers, she nodded and smiled to acquaintances and longtime family friends. The crème de la crème of Vermont society was in attendance. Not to mention some of the celebrated darlings of New York, who made the annual pilgrimage for the official opening of the season.

  Frances spotted her mother holding court at the far end of the lawn surrounded by several of her gossiping friends. The ladies had their heads bent close together. Lena looked up long enough to catch Frances’s eye and frown. In spite of her frown, Lena was still beautiful. Her hair was swept up in a casual chignon and the sunlight was a willing accomplice as it danced among her pale blonde strands. On the far side of forty, she could still command attention.

  Lena adored New York City and all that it had to offer. But coming home to Vermont allowed her to remind those who had once dismissed her just how far she had climbed. Frances knew that for Lena there was no better revenge than coming home, the small town girl made good. Although Frances couldn’t know about the voices in the back of her mother’s mind that taunted and whispered, “Who does she think she is? She’s only little Lena Miller.’ Frances saw the results of Lena’s insecurities, the steely determination to dazzle her guests. Unfortunately, the dazzling required a little more effort each year. By God, they would talk about Lena, but for all the right reasons.

  Though Lena had not been born into the life which she felt she deserved, she had held her beauty in her hands like a sacred ticket to her destination. Every so often her carefully guarded mask would slip and she was caught in a candid moment. In those fleeting seconds, when she would toss her blonde head back and laugh for the sheer joy of it, she was incandescent. And it was easy to see how she could have captivated a young man’s heart. Sadly those moments were few and far between. Now Frances turned away with a frown of her own, remembering her grandmother’s admonition: Beauty is as beauty does.

  Speaking of her grandmother, Frances spotted the matriarch of the family sitting in a wicker chair under a large white tent at the far end of the lawn. She grinned to herself noting that her grandmother would have been the best dressed woman at the party if this were still the Victorian era. Then again, grandmothers were rarely on the cutting edge of fashion. She made her way over, sneaking up behind the older woman and placing her hands over her grandmother’s eyes. “Guess who?” she whispered.

  Marguerite Durant reached up and felt Frances’s petite hands and said in her lilting French accent, “Oh I would know those hands anywhere. It’s Mary Pickford.”

  Frances giggled at their long running game. Somehow with her grandmother she could always be silly. “No. Guess again.”

  “Then it must be Charlie Chaplin.”

  With this, Frances laughed out loud. “It’s me, grand-mère” She came around to face her grandmother and planted a kiss on her check.

  “Ah, it’s mon petit cherie.” Marguerite said. Though she had lived in Vermont for more than fifty years, she would always be Canadian at heart. She took every opportunity to speak French, the language of her lineage to her son and his children, determined that they should embrace their heritage.

  Frances had heard the stories regarding Marguerite’s reluctance to move to the United States but Paul Durant had been quite persuasive. With a nose for business he proclaimed America was going to be the land of opportunity and he wanted his only son to be at the front of the line. So the little Durant family made the bold move of putting their toe over the border. They landed in Vermont, which was as far as Marguerite intended to go.

  Frances pulled a chair up close and settled in. “What are you doing out here all alone? Are you hiding from Lena too?” She teased.

  “Non. I was just looking for a little peace and quiet in the shade,” Marguerite said.

  “What’s the matter, Gran? Are you not feeling well?” Frances studied the older woman’s face with concern noting that the deep set brown eyes had lost some of their light lately. “You look a little tired.”

  Marguerite reached over and tucked a stray curl behind Frances’s ear and smiled as she patted her granddaughter’s hand. “Yes, my darling girl, I am a little tired. You must remember I am very old.”

  Frances would hear none of it. “Nonsense. You aren’t very old. You have dozens of years left in which
to spoil me.” Frances laughed, but there was a lump in her throat all the same. They sat holding hands in their comfortable silence as Frances struggled to reject the specter of worry that had tapped her on the shoulder. The two of them were quite a pair. An image of before and after. Marguerite had once enjoyed the same dark strands of beauty that Frances now wore twisted and knotted at the back of her neck. But the years had run off with their luster and in their wake, was left only a silver streaked memory.

  After a while Marguerite broke the silence. “Cherie, do not worry about this old woman. You must go help your maman attend to your guests, before you get into trouble.”

  “Too late. I’m always in trouble.” Frances grinned. Marguerite shook her head, but her smile gave her away. Frances smiled too, secure in the knowledge that they shared a common enemy.

  “You are too beautiful to be arguing all the time.”

  “What does one thing have to do with the other?”

  “Maybe nothing. I just do not like to think of you being unhappy.”

  “I’m not unhappy.”

  “I think perhaps you are. You are restless in your soul.”

  Frances turned away from the penetrating gaze, in case Marguerite really was able to read her thoughts. “No. I’m just… young.”

  The old woman cocked her head at her granddaughter, unconvinced. With a sigh, Frances pulled herself up to a standing position. “Alright, I’ll go. But I’ll be back to check on you in a little bit.”

  “I will be here,” Marguerite said with a tired smile.

  Frances took her time as she meandered among the guests, working her way over to her mother.

  “Thank you for finally showing up,” Lena whispered as she caught up with Frances at one of the buffet tables. She drew herself up tightly and the words barely had room to escape her pursed lips. “You’ve been missing for hours. And I see you chose not to wear the dress I set out for you,” she said, all the while managing to smile and wave to her guests. It was always amazing to Frances how much her mother could spit out between clenched teeth while wearing a dazzling smile. Perhaps she had been a ventriloquist in a former life.

  “It didn’t fit.” Frances shrugged.