Alice: Book Two of The Kelly Hill Series

  Alice

  Book Two In The Kelly Hill Series

  By Laura Gibson

  Alice

  Copyright©2015 Laura Gibson

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  This book is a work of fiction, names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For Kellcie.

  You inspire me.

  Chapter One

  February 1st, 2007

  Charleston, West Virginia

  Jane

  Jane Seymour stood in the middle of the bend on her running path, her black hair tied back and neatly underneath her winter cap that matched her turquoise jacket. Her pale blue eyes stared intently at something and she was visibly chewing on her cheek.

  Somewhere in the quiet thicket Jane knew the woodchuck was watching her. Waiting for her to pass by. They had played this game every morning for the past two weeks and Jane was more than happy to admit that it was the best part of her run. She would come along the bend and the woodchuck, whom she had begun referring to as Alphie, would scuttle back into the bushes where he felt more comfortable until she was was a measured three feet away before he peaked back out and watched her jog away with black suspicious eyes.

  This morning she hadn’t seen him move into the thicket, but she could feel him there, waiting. Jane paused for a second, talking to Alphie, her quiet voice breathy as her lungs worked at catching up. Jane tucked the black stray hairs back underneath her turquoise winter cap and readjusted her gloves, stretching a little as she went.

  “I bought a house.” She smiled into the bush, “It’s pretty nice. Rhett said we could adopt a pet.”

  Jane knew she still sounded like a foreigner and that was unfortunate. She hadn’t lived in her homeland for many years now, but her vocal chords seemed as though they hadn’t quite caught up with the program.

  Her mother had never lost her full thick accent and so Jane was thankful that at least she wasn’t that bad. At least she could pretend for a moment that she belonged here.

  “Maybe you could come home with me, Alphie.” Jane laughed at her own joke, the air she exhaled a whisper of white mist on the cold air.

  Jane had never been allowed pets before. Her mother avoiding the subject at all costs and, up until recently, she had only ever rented apartments that didn’t allow them. Something about pets being expendable messengers her mother would say, shaking her head and muttering curses in her native tongue. Jane always assumed she was just allergic and didn’t want to admit it.

  But now she owned her own home with her fiancé and she could finally get a tiny, furry creature to call her very own.

  Jane’s heart warmed at the very thought and she felt herself smiling, “I’m going to go look at dogs at the shelter tomorrow if you don’t come out, Alphie.” She tried to threaten the woodchuck into making an appearance, but it was to no avail. He was set on being stubborn that morning.

  Jane cleared her throat and shook out the shiver that wanted to rest on her spine before she turned to start jogging again, leaving Alphie alone. But as she counted the paces that signified the safe distance, she heard no rustling from the thicket. Jane stopped to look over her shoulder and Alphie wasn’t there.

  Jane felt her brow furrow and her lips push together in a thin line. That wasn’t right. That wasn’t what was supposed to happen. Where was Alphie?

  Jane couldn’t help herself thinking about the missing woodchuck as she went through the rest of her morning routine. Shower, do the breakfast dishes, sort Rhett’s laundry in the rest of the dirty clothes, wash the laundry, plan dinner, check the mail, respond to her brother if there was a letter, and paint. It was the same thing she did every day for the past few years that she had been with Rhett. He went to work as a detective on the police force and she stayed at home to further her creative genius, or whatever Rhett called it. But this time she was preoccupied with thoughts of Alphie and what had become of him.

  As the clock struck two p.m., Jane sat down in her almost barren studio and stared at the bright white of a new canvas. She held a paint brush in one hand and a paint pallette in the other. Slowly, she dipped the brush in the color named ‘azul’ and made a thin line that she knew would be the starting point of a woodchuck’s puffy body.

  Most painters loved the creativity a good studio gave them. She had gone into plenty of studios where everything was mismatched and disorganized. Shelves lined every wall and every inch was splattered with paint. But Jane preferred a more simple approach. Every surface of her studio was white, from the hard wood floors, to the walls, to the ceiling. She had one dresser that housed her supplies and even that was a brilliant white. Everything was clean, neat and simple, just the way she wanted it to be. It helped keep her wandering mind focused to the task at hand, focused solely on the canvas and the scene that she was trying to create.

  Almost timidly, Jane applied the color ‘eggplant’ as an offset to the brighter ‘azul’. She continued, her face close to the canvas until she felt as though she had reached just the right mixture of colors and feelings, her whole self consumed by her project, her mind never wavering from its fixed point.

  By six p.m., Rhett was getting home and Jane had produced half a woodchuck while also being able to fully avoid the fact that, for the second straight week in a row, a letter hadn’t come from her brother.

  “I’m sure he’s fine.” Rhett laughed at Jane’s concerns regarding Alphie’s well being as he ate the roast she had slow cooked for six hours in the crock pot, “This is really good, honey.”

  Jane made a face when Rhett tried to deflect from the loss of her furry friend and Rhett rolled his eyes, “Jane, he’s a wild animal, of course he’s not going to be there sometimes.”

  Rhett was the voice of reason in their relationship. He always had been. It was the easy pattern they fell into. Jane was able to wonder as free and as far as she wanted to and Rhett was always there, ready to pick her back up if she ever fell. Ready to let her know that it was okay to try again.

  Jane often thought of the first time she met Rhett and knew that was when she had fallen in love with him, even though she didn’t say it till much later. Till he had been professing his love for more than a month.

  She fell in love with his lopsided smile and his happy eyes that crinkled in the corners when he laughed. She knew he would get wrinkles there later, laugh lines people called them and she was just glad he wasn’t going to be cursed with the creases in his forehead that more disapproving people acquired in their old age, that she was more than likely going to sport as time went on.

  Jane swallowed and tried to right herself back in the conversation, knowing that she couldn’t get lost her thoughts like that anymore. Rhett had begun to point her lapses out to her and remind her that other people might think it was rude. She knew it was rude, but she didn’t really know how to make it stop. It wasn’t something she did on purpose, it just sort of happened.

  “But he’s always there.” Jane bit her bottom lip, knowing she was being childish; knowing this wasn’t really about the woodchuck.

  “I’m sure he’ll be back.” Rhett’s warm eyes smiled at her, trying to console her then, but Jane knew it was a wasted attempt.

  Jane looked down at her second hand china and noticed that her plate was ch
ipped in three different places. She sighed, things were sure falling apart fast. Maybe she would go to the mall that weekend and pick out some new dishes. She knew they needed them, and they could actually afford them now, which was a plus. Maybe they didn’t have to live this way anymore, borrowing things, shopping at flea markets to furnish their life. Maybe they could actually settle down and learn how to be a functioning family.

  Jane was sure of this, especially if they got a dog. People with dogs always seemed more happy than people without dogs.

  “Jane, did you hear me?” Rhett pulled her away from her thoughts. He was frowning, but it wasn’t a real frown. It was one of his almost frowns, the kind that meant he wasn’t actually upset with her, he just wanted her to take him seriously.

  “Yes.” Jane replied, smiling, knowing that she had completely missed that last sentence.

  “I was telling you that Alphie probably just went somewhere else, it is really cold out right now.” Rhett was being logical. Jane had no idea what sort of atmosphere a woodchuck liked, but she reasoned it probably didn’t like the cold.

  But then again, he had been there all through January, so maybe the cold didn’t bother him that much after all.

  Things didn’t just disappear without reason. People didn’t just go away.

  Aboard the Reliant

  Kaliningrad, Russia

  Kelly

  Kelly swallowed and could feel his feet shift nervously in the souls of his worn out shoes as he tried to stay warm on the deck of The Reliant, the large ship that served as the figurehead for Prescott International Shipping. His hands were buried deep inside the pockets of his navy blue peacoat and he could see his breath in the chilly morning air.

  He had come up to smoke, but had stopped himself when he saw that they were in port. There was something about smoking when others could see him that just didn’t sit right with him. They must have docked overnight while he was sleeping, Kelly thought as he rolled the unlit cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, wondering if the nicotine fix was really worth exposing his habit to other people.

  It wasn’t as if he wasn’t supposed to be smoking, his eighteenth birthday had been two months ago, and it wasn’t like anyone would really care, but he cared. He couldn’t help himself. It was in his nature to care about these things. Small things. Like the lingering after burn of cigarette smoke on his leather jacket. He didn’t want anyone to smell that. He didn’t want to be that guy. He had grown up with that guy. His father was that guy.

  Kelly studied the dock workers moving to and fro, doing their jobs in the most diligent ways possible. They looked harsh in the gray light of dawn, and Kelly wondered if they were. Here and there, the faint sound of Russian voices drifted up to him, but he didn’t understand their native dialect; he had studied Russian at Phillips, but it had never really stuck with him, or he had never really stuck with it. He breathed out another puff of smoke and wondered if his breath could freeze in the air.

  His eyes moved down to the thick railing that guarded him from falling into the sea and saw that, although days before when they began their journey that the railing was clean, it was now salt encrusted and appeared ages older than it was. Kelly could hear the gentle water lapping against the side of the sturdy ship and was half-heartedly excited to go on shore later that day. Only half-heartedly because he wasn’t sure what to make of the entire adventure still. On one side, it was a learning experience. On the other hand, the more obvious hand, it was a show at something that Kelly could never have.

  Ryan had asked him to go on the trip with him and his father and Kelly obliged, not because he wanted to but because he felt like it was a last ditch attempt at a friendship with Ryan. Now, watching how other people worked for the Prescotts, he was rethinking his decision entirely.

  Kelly Hill and Ryan Prescott were born cousins and therefore they were expected to have some resemblance of a friendship, but Kelly had never felt right standing next to Ryan. Like he was still the outsider in a world of socialites and high expectations. Of course, Kelly had to remind himself, he was.

  He wasn’t forgiven like his sister, for being born poor, and so he had to work for everything that he had earned. It was how he had been raised.

  Their mothers were sisters and had been close once but shifting economic sides forced them to grow apart. Not bitterly, but enough to make a difference in the lines that divided their families.

  After Mark Hill, the patriarch, Kelly’s father, lost his almost lucrative job, the Hills had packed up their entire lives and moved to Hartford, Connecticut. But after a few years of fruitless endeavours, they moved back to West Virginia, pretending as if they had never left.

  Kelly would never say it, but he had always felt more at home in Hartford than Charleston. The air tasted different there, a mixture of acceptance and freedom. Like a promise that he just wasn’t ready to keep. Unlike Charleston’s air, which tasted of bitter repression and everything he couldn’t have.

  He even had created friendships in Hartford that he refused to let go of as they all grew older. Friendships that he knew didn’t hinge on whether or not he made a lot of money or had all the right connections. They were just people over there. People with their own lives and their own families and they seemed to understand Kelly, or they understood Kelly’s circumstances at least.

  Kelly put his unburnt cigarette away as Ryan came up beside him, hands in his pockets, cheeks a bright rosy red from a walk around the deck before spotting his cousin.

  “Dad said we’re going ashore in like an hour.” Ryan kicked the side of the railing with a leather boot and kind of sighed. He sounded more discontented about the excursion than Kelly felt, but Kelly would never point that out. He couldn’t point that out. Because that meant that they would then have to talk about their feelings. And fuck feelings.

  Feelings just gummed up the works and made people get side tracked from the real matters at hand. Feelings were just unstable things that came out after too many beers and not enough carbs to hold them down.

  “Okay.” Kelly swallowed and cleared his throat, getting rid of the leftover thoughts that lingered there. “Sounds good.”

  “You okay, man?” Ryan was more intuitive than Kelly wanted to give him credit for.

  “Just tired.” Kelly shrugged and started to walk towards the dining hall to find some breakfast before he had step foot on Russian soil. He sighed, more internally than externally, and he hoped that Ryan wouldn’t pick up on his complete and utter apprehension at the idea of disembarking.

  Ryan fell into step next to him and continued to act like the Phillips graduate he was soon to be, all poise and prestige, not really giving one fuck about the fact that Kelly wasn’t in the mood that morning for any sort of small talk.

  “Yeah, I didn’t sleep too well last night either.” Ryan yawned, “Think there was some rough water or something.”

  “Patches, maybe.” Kelly rounded the corner, he had slept just fine, he just didn’t want to talk to Ryan that morning. Was that really so hard to understand? Couldn’t his cousin just take a hint?

  “Guess we’re meeting some weirdos today.” Ryan scrunched up his nose and grabbed a tray as they entered the small dining hall, getting in line ahead of Kelly.

  “Oh yeah?” Kelly also grabbed a tray and set it down on the silver shelf that ran the length of the buffet line, “What sort of weirdos?” If he was going to have to talk to Ryan he might as well sound like he was interested in what the kid had to say.

  “Taxidermists?” Ryan shook his head, “I think that’s what dad said at least. I guess they make hundreds of thousands of dollars just exporting stuffed animals.”

  “Not just any stuffed animals, Ryan.” Bill Prescott clapped on a hand on his boy’s shoulder and smiled, “The Volkovs have been in this trade for generations. They’re quite the name in their field.”

  Kelly had always respected and feared Bill ‘The Bull’ Prescott in the same light and nothing about this trip had c
hanged that.

  “How’d ya sleep, Kell?” Bill looked at Kelly like he was actually expecting an answer from him. That was the part that Kelly respected.

  “Oh you know, here and there.” Kelly made a face, keeping up with the story of being tired.

  Bill’s brown eyes looked thoughtful, sensing that Kelly was lying. That was the part that Kelly feared. The fact that Bill always seemed to know one way or another the actual truth of any matter. There were no secrets in the Prescott household and there never would be as long as Bill ‘The Bull’ Prescott lived.

  “It was hard to sleep last night.” Ryan cut into the conversation like a knife slicing butter, easily maneuvering Bill’s attention away from Kelly. “Was there a storm?”

  “No. No storm.” Bill laughed, “I slept just fine.”

  “Well, maybe if I had had two glasses of scotch the night before I could be saying the same thing.” Ryan sounded upset that his father wasn’t instantly agreeing with him. But that was more like Ryan than anything else Kelly had seen that morning. Always desperate for attention and moody when not satisfied.

  “You’re penalizing me for two glasses of scotch?” Bill lifted his greying eyebrows, causing his weathered forehead to crinkle, “Boy, you’ve got a lot to learn about being an adult.”

  Ryan shrugged, “I guess.”

  Kelly knew Ryan was still a little sore from the night before when Bill had chastised him for not understanding more about the need to oversee in the little parts of Prescott International.

  Ryan had made the ignorant statement of assuming that managers and others alike could hold down the fort while Bill played hands off owner back in the states, watching his business run smooth and clean for years to come.

  Bill reminded Ryan that his business wasn’t built on such foolish claims and that he needed to pull his head out of his ass.