Crooked River: A Novel

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Authors: Valerie Geary
two-story farmhouse with a wraparound front porch and rooster-red shutters. Wind chimes and hummingbird feeders dangled from the eaves. They’d bought the house and eighty acres right after they were married. The plan, Franny told me once when I asked her why she and Zeb lived all alone in such a big house, was to fill the extra space with kids, and eventually grandkids, and, if God saw fit, great-grandkids, but their first daughter died of pneumonia when she was still a baby, and their second daughter died, too, when she was older, after falling off a horse. Though they didn’t have any more of their own kids after that, they were foster parents for a long time, and Franny said all those kids had filled her heart with more than enough love to last until she died and then some. Besides, they had us now.
    I opened the screen door. The hinges squealed.
    Franny called from the kitchen, “Come in, come in! My babes from the meadow, come in!”
    Ollie and I took off our shoes and crossed through the living room toward the back of the house. Framed photographs cluttered the walls, the shelves and end tables, even the top of the piano. Here were pictures capturing nearly a century of well-lived life. A sepia-toned portrait of Zeb in a suit and Franny in her wedding dress, holding hands, heads inclined toward each other. Black-and-white and color photographs of so many children I wondered how Franny and Zeb remembered all their names.
    One photograph stood apart from all the others on an end table beside the couch. Taken three years ago, it was of Bear and Mom and Ollie and me bunched together on the front porch steps. Bear had his arm around Mom’s waist, and Mom had one hand on my shoulder, one hand on Ollie’s. Our smiles were silly and huge. Zeb stood by himself behind us, tall and straight and serious. It was Franny’s idea to take the picture. She’d said she wanted all the people she loved most staring up at her from a single frame. I stopped in front of it and brushed my fingers across all our faces.
    In the kitchen, Franny was busy plunging soft dough into a pan of hot oil, frying up her famous French crullers. The room smelled of warm cinnamon and powdered sugar.
    She smiled when we came through the doorway. “My beautiful girls.”
    Ollie went over and hugged her.
    “Papa Zeb could use a little help outside with the blueberries.” She kissed the top of Ollie’s head and pushed her toward the open sliding glass door.
    A few seconds later, I heard Zeb outside talking and laughing, carrying on a one-sided conversation. I wondered how much Bear had told him about Ollie, if he knew it had been almost five weeks now since she last spoke.
    Franny pulled a cruller from the hot oil and set it on a paper towel to drain. She said, “Papa’s been out there for nearly an hour. Won’t have any fruit for breakfast the way he’s been picking. Slow as molasses on a January morning, that one is.”
    Though we both knew she didn’t mind as much as she made it seem.
    “I still can’t get used to your new haircut,” she said. “Reminds me of a 1920s starlet.”
    I touched my bare neck. “It’s easier this way.”
    She nodded, gesturing to her own short hair, and then asked, “Your father back from his interview yet?”
    “What interview?”
    She frowned and wiped the back of her hand across her forehead, streaking her brow with flour. “He didn’t tell you?”
    I shook my head.
    Franny dropped another raw piece of dough into the oil. It sizzled and popped. “Maybe he meant for it to be a surprise.”
    “What’s he interviewing for?” I asked.
    She hesitated, pinching her lips between her teeth and squinting up at the ceiling.
    “Come on, Franny. Just tell me.”
    She let out her breath in a rush. “A janitorial position at the mill.”
    She lifted the golden brown cruller from the pan and continued, “That’s what he told Papa yesterday afternoon anyway.” She smiled at me, and I thought she looked a little

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