Goodbye Lucifer, Page 3

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  Melanie Walker Meljac, daughter of the same gentleman who, at this very moment she could see unlocking and entering the front door of Walkers Drug Store just across the street, had at twenty-one, and to the disappointment of many of Princeton County’s young bachelors, married her childhood sweetheart Karol Meljac the 4th. The happy newlyweds moved into the big rock house where Karol had been raised by an aunt. His parents and many other valley residents had been taken by a particularly virulent flu when Karol was only twelve.

  As fate would have it, nine years later, Melanie’s beloved Karol met a drunk driver at the curve in the road where Brandell Boulevard followed the bend of the river out of the valley, leaving Melanie heartbroken: a widow with two children. The ease with which death had slipped into her life became a constant fear and she clung to her children, not taking them out of the house for fear of losing them. Only with the start of Jilly’s first year of school had Melanie, begrudgingly, allowed either of her children away from her side.

  Finally, after a few years brought no further tragedies into her life, Melanie’s fears subsided. The passing of time soothed her wounded soul—her children’s laughter and the loving scolds of Karol’s Aunt Claudia healing the pain of loss. Eventually the big house on Meljac Lane and the little town of Brandell, West Virginia, became again for Melanie the happiest place on earth.

  A commotion from inside the house, and a loud, “Ow” from David, probably the result of a pinch from his sister, signaled the formal beginning of Melanie’s day. She smiled. Her brood had awakened. She finished the last of her coffee, stood and turned toward the mullioned double doors that opened from the veranda into the dining room. Behind her, the azaleas lining the edge of the veranda were just now beginning to bloom, but due to an uncommonly dry spring had not fully opened to display the brilliance of color that usually blessed the valley gardens this time of year. Before entering the house Melanie paused for a moment, glanced over her shoulder at the struggling buds, and closing her eyes imagined a morning rain bringing renewed life to the wilting foliage.

  Some of the folks of Princeton County, especially the old-timers who’d heard stories about the women of Brandell valley, wouldn’t think it at all strange that Melanie, as she walked from the veranda into the dining room, showed no signs of surprise at the sudden patter of rain on the azaleas behind her.