read an excerpt >>>
book details
cover detail
buy the book

RAVEN ROCK
Author: Mignon F. Ballard
2015 Reissue Edition
5.5"x8.5" Trade Paperback
Retail: $14.95US; 204pp
ISBN 978-1-62268-086-3 print
ISBN 978-1-62268-087-0 ebook
LCCN 2014957745

Chapter One

I knew I had found the town the minute I saw it. It was no prettier and no uglier than many other towns its size. But it was right. The trees were the right green. The sky was the right blue. The shaded streets were polka-dotted with sunshine. How could anyone be afraid here?
    A familiar sense of warning, like a gentle hand on my shoulder, came and was gone, so quickly I thought I must have imagined it. But I knew I hadn't. It had happened too many times before, and never without reason. I would have to be careful here.
    Raven Rock was just another mountain town, I told myself. I had no reason to believe my mother had ever walked these streets, climbed these hills, waded knee-deep in the asters that lined the fields.
    My mother, Maggie Grey. The unfamiliar words sucked the breath from me, left me gasping, as they had when I had first heard them two months before.
    I drove slowly past the faded red-brick courthouse with its towering clock face watching through the trees; past the postage-stamp park where a statue of a confederate soldier stared thirstily as sprinklers played among the marigolds in the late August heat. Few people were on the streets. It was after five o'clock, and the shops in the tiny business district would be closing for the day.
    The man at the gas station had said there was a motel on the other side of town, the lake side he had said. As I wound my way through the narrow lanes of homeward bound traffic, I felt a sense of loneliness, an urgent need to belong. I glanced at the motorist in the lane beside me, a neat, middle-aged woman with a sack of groceries on the seat next to her.
    Is that you, Mother? I thought. Is that you, Maggie Grey, rushing home to cook supper for your family? What about the one you abandoned? What about me?
    The woman returned my stare with a puzzled smile, and I forced myself to nod, pulling ahead of her in a swoop of speed. I was disgusted with my infantile fantasizing, disgusted with myself. I needed time; time to rest, to think; time to work things out with myself.
    The lake almost blinded me when I came upon it, a golden echo of the sun. Then the road curved away to the other side of the mountain and the Raven Rock Motel.
It was clean and simple, and certainly not overcrowded. Mine was only the sixth car there. The desk clerk didn't seem to think I was going off the deep end when I asked her about the biking trails. Since it was only five-thirty when I checked in, there would be several hours of daylight. Although I had brought my bike along with me, I hadn't had a chance to use it in weeks. I was almost like a child in my eagerness.
    The clerk reached for my key on a peg behind her. "Oh yes, there's a lovely trail around the lake. I expect you'll want to see the rock." She handed me the key with a smile. "That's where the town gets its name, you know."
    "The rock?"
    "Raven Rock. It's a great, huge, black boulder right at the head of the falls." She stretched her arms to encompass the small lobby. "Shaped just like a bird! You can't miss it. There are plenty of back roads around here too," she added, "if you mind the traffic."
    I thanked her and hurriedly tossed my belongings into my room, only taking time to change into jeans and a T-shirt. Tomorrow I would be the dignified young lady. Tomorrow I would look for my mother, and maybe a job. But today, with a fried chicken picnic boxed obligingly by the motel restaurant, I was going to explore Raven Rock.
    I felt light-headed as the pedals whirled under my feet, as if I had no body at all. I had almost become accustomed to these flights of fancy. They had been occurring more and more often since the beginning of the summer, when I had discovered that I was not who I thought I was.
    My life had always been planned for me, boring, maybe, but secure. I had been raised by loving, middle-aged parents, who tended to shelter me more than a younger couple might. My father had owned and managed The Sugarplum, a successful bakery, and after his death during my junior year in high school, the business passed to my mother and me. A few short months ago I had a home, a devoted mother, and a promising career ahead of me. Now I didn't even have a name.
    My front tire hit a stone in the road, jarring me out of my daze. I had decided to explore one of the winding rural roads before having my supper at the lake. Now the smell of the chicken, still warm in its box in my basket, made me look around for a place to eat. The drying cornfields on either side offered no shade, and the bull in the pasture ahead, no encouragement, so I decided to live with my hunger a while longer.
    I watched the dusty blur of the road beneath my wheels and felt the ache in the calves of my legs that comes from biking. But it was a good kind of ache that meant my muscles were adjusting to the exercise. It meant that I was a real person. Only real people feel pain and hunger. For a while I had not been conscious of these things. Bit by bit, I was coming back to life.
    The hard rubber bar grips were warm and smooth beneath my fingers. It felt right to touch something familiar and know it was a part of my life, like an old friend. Four years before, a girl named Henrietta Meredith had received the bike as a gift from her mother before starting college. Now there was no mother; there was no Henrietta Meredith. But the bike was the same.
    I had noticed that my mother was becoming frail during my senior year at the university, but she blamed it on a bout with the flu and long hours at the bakery. I spent my spring vacation working in the shop, and Mom had promised me then that she would see a doctor about her weight loss.
    She had called me just before graduation to tell me that she was going in the hospital for a checkup but would be out in time to see me receive my degree in journalism.
    She didn't come. Emmett Lieberman came instead. Emmett, Mom's partner and head baker at the store, was the closest friend my mother and I had. I couldn't remember when he hadn't been with us. I waited in the hot stadium after the ceremony, diploma in hand, searching for my mother's face in the host of people swarming onto the field. My classmates were seized up in a whirlwind of handshakes, hugging, and laughter, leaving me a lonely island in their midst. Then I saw Emmett, alone, and I knew there had been more to my mother's hospital visit than a routine checkup. She had waited too long for this day.
    "She asked me to come in her place, Henri, and to bring you home. She's waiting to see you." Emmett wrapped me in his kind, husky arms, and my tears overflowed on his only good suit, which he never wore to the bakery but which somehow smelled of strudel. His words were choked. "She wanted to come. She would have, you know."
    I knew. And I knew when I saw the sallow shell of my mother on the white hospital bed that I wouldn't have that part of her much longer. All she had left was love; it was there in her eyes, in her face. And she needed love as well as strength to tell me what she had to say. How difficult it must have been for her to say those words, words that would leave the world spinning one way and me another. I could see that she was struggling with herself, fighting for self-control. I kissed her forehead, stroking away a strand of soft, gray hair. The proper smell of florist's carnations and hospital linen sickened me. I wanted to run, to hide until this nightmare went away.
    "Henri," Mom whispered, forcing her eyes to meet mine. "My own little Henrietta, you'll always be mine, always . . . but I'm not your mother."

copyright ©2015 Mignon F. Ballard

To purchase from your local independent bookseller click here:

Purchase at amazon.com

Purchase at barnes&noble.com

Purchase at booksamillion.com:

NOTE TO BOOKSELLERS:
All Bella Rosa Books titles are available through Ingram, Baker & Taylor, Brodart, Follett, BWI, The Book House, Inc., Emery-Pratt, Ambassador Books.

Booksellers, Schools, Libraries, and individuals can also purchase direct from Bella Rosa Books. For quantity discounts contact sales@bellarosabooks.com .

Home    All Titles    Upcoming Titles    Submission Guidelines    Info Requests