Author: Linda Loegel

Chapter One
July 2010

	Shelley was exhausted.  As a middle school history teacher, she wasn’t used to this kind of manual labor.  Taking a quick break to rest, she put down the hammer she’d been using and wiped a damp lock of red hair from her face, leaving a dirt smudge in its place. A glance at her hard-working husband, Tony, made her smile. Tony returned the smile, accentuating his deep dimples. Those dimples still made her heart flutter. Shelley picked up the hammer and returned to her task, tearing down the living room walls of an old house.  This renovation had become a far bigger job than she’d anticipated. “You think we’ll ever finish?" she asked Tony. 
	Tony, thirty-two and six feet tall with brown wavy hair, grinned. “Eventually." That optimistic attitude was just one of the many things she loved about her new husband, but right now eventually seemed a long way off. And they had only five months to finish the renovation and move in or they’d be living on the street. Since their marriage, Shelley and Tony had been living with her parents, Mark and Shirley Fortier. Last month, her parents announced they were moving out of Connecticut and heading to Florida before winter so they would no longer have to put up with cold weather. That meant the young couple had to find a place of their own. Soon.	
	A few days later, they met with a realtor and signed papers transferring ownership to them of this old abandoned house in desperate need of TLC. A Handyman’s Special the realtor had called it. “It’s going to need a bit of work to bring it up to code.”
	“How much is a bit?” asked Tony.
	“Well, actually, quite a bit now that I think about it.  The walls are the old lath and plaster walls and have seen better days.  The furnace is old and I wouldn’t trust it if I were you.  It’ll run up your heating bills. You’d be better off putting in a new furnace. Besides that, a few nails here and there, a few new windows, and a fresh coat of paint and you’ll have a pretty good house for the money.”    
	Two years ago, the young couple met when the Fortiers wanted to add a back porch to their house. Tony Maguire was contracted for the job. Shelley had taken a glass of lemonade out to him to quench his thirst and that one simple act created an even bigger thirst in both of them. After the porch was completed, Tony continued to drop by to see Shelley and soon they were dating on a regular basis.  They married six months ago. 
	The day after signing a stack of papers for the house, Shelley’s doctor confirmed Shelley was pregnant. More than anything, they wanted to be settled into this house before their baby was born. Shelley, twenty-six, and slim for the time being, was eager to help her new husband turn this big old place into a home for them and their baby.
	Now, on a Saturday morning in July, they were working on the house so it would be ready for occupancy by November, before winter hit New England.  Shelley and Tony had worked since early morning knocking out walls in the living room where just a fresh coat of paint would never be enough to cover the damage inflicted by old age, no more than a touch of blush could make an old woman look twenty again. New walls were needed, but first some of the ancient walls had to be demolished, right down to the studs. The living room, dining room, and kitchen were the rooms needing the most attention. 
	Shelley looked at her watch; it was almost noon. She worked her way toward the kitchen, stepped over a pile of debris, and called over her shoulder, “Ready for lunch, Tony?”
	“You bet.”
	“I‘ll get us a couple of sandwiches from the cooler. And I think I saw some apples on that old tree out back.” 
	Tony coughed from the cloud of dust in the air. “Love of my life that would hit the spot right now!  How ‘bout a cold beer, to go with it?”
	“Coming right up." Shelley went to the back yard, selected two bright red apples, rinsed them off with melted ice from the cooler, and sliced them. Then, she set about making a place to eat--boards laid across sawhorses served as a makeshift table and two upturned paint buckets provided seats.  
	“Look what I found, Tony. Wild flowers from out back. The only thing I have to put them in is this empty nail jar, but don’t they look pretty?  Now we can eat in the kitchen as though we own the place.” 
	“We do.” said Tony, “At least the bank lets us put our name on the deed along with theirs. Tony made a sweeping motion with his arm to indicate the house and the piles of rubbish cluttering it. “This is all ours.”
	“At the moment,” said Shelley, “it feels more like the house owns us. Here ya go.”
	After taking a bite of her ham and cheese sandwich, Shelley grew quiet, lost in thought. 
	Tony nudged her.  “What‘s going through that pretty little head of yours?”
	“Remember what the realtor said, that according to the title search, this house was built in the mid eighteen hundreds by a man named John Willard?  Don’t you just wonder what he was like and who else has sat in this very kitchen over the last hundred and seventy years?”
	Tony smiled and flexed his broad shoulders. His sore muscles could use a massage right about now. “No, Hon, things like that don’t interest me in the least. You’re the history buff with the wild imagination. I don’t expect we’re going to learn much about this house except how to put our blood, sweat and tears into it. These walls aren’t likely to talk. While you finish cleaning up in here, I’ll get back to work. See ya in the living room. And I’m thinking Brad if it‘s a boy and Cathy if it‘s a girl.”
	“No. Larry if it’s a boy and Keisha if it’s a girl,” Shelley called back, a big grin on her face. This was a game she and Tony played, and would continue to play until they came up with two names they could both agree on.
	Shelley tossed the paper plates into the pile of debris, closed the ice chest, and wiped her mouth on her well-worn George Jones T-shirt. She gingerly made her way back to the living room, picked up the hammer, and attacked the plaster wall once again. 	
	She poked a hole near the floor and kept at it until she had half the wall exposed. With a pile of plaster rubble by her feet, she used the claw end of the hammer to pull on the nails until they came skreaking out of the lath strips. Something caught her eye and she knelt down for a closer look. Jammed between the partition boards lay an old piece of cloth. She picked it up and dusted it off. Although the article was faded and partially gnawed by mice, she saw that she held in her hands the remnants of a small homemade rag doll, its yellow yarn hair matted and tangled and the two button eyes missing. 	
	“Honey, look at this!  I bet it belonged to someone who used to live here!  I wonder how old it is.”
	Tony stopped what he was doing and came over to see. “Neat. You get the prize for finding the house’s first artifact." 
	“I thought you didn’t believe in history." Shelley laughed. 
	“I believe in it. I just don’t get all gushy over it, like someone I know." 
	Shelley gently laid the precious doll next to her purse as a reminder to take it home with her. Her children would join the long list of children who evidently had lived here at one time or another over the years.
	Tony donned a dust mask and climbed the ladder. “Hand me that sledge hammer, will you, Shell?" Shelley raised the heavy hammer up to him. Tony started pummeling the walls that were out of Shelley’s reach. As plaster and wood fell around him, he continued pounding until there was nothing left but the original framing. He looked around to make sure he hadn’t missed a spot and started down the ladder. Seeing something in his peripheral vision, he climbed up one more rung to get a closer look. 	
	“Hey, Shell, come here a sec.”
	Shelley walked over to the ladder. Tony climbed down and said, “Climb up and take a look at that exposed beam. Tell me what you see." 
	“B..but.” Shelley stammered.
	“Don’t worry, hon, I’ve got you. I’ll hold the ladder.”
	Shelley gingerly climbed to the top rung of the stepladder and focused where Tony was pointing. “I don’t see anything….oh wait… I do see something. It looks like… WM 1840... carved into the wood. Ohmigod!  The man who built the house must have done this!  Now what do you suppose WM means?  Wouldn’t you think that if his name was John Willard, it would be JW, not WM?" She quickly climbed down. “Don’t you dare finish that wall until I get the camera. Okay?”
	“Yes, ma’am."