Blood Loss_A Magnolia Novel Read online

  Cover and Interior book design by One of a Kind Covers

  BLOOD LOSS

  Copyright © 2017 Ashley Fontainne

  License Notes

  Although a portion of this book is based on a real crime incident, it is a fictional dramatization using a mixture of fictional and real persons regarding a true story and real events and was drawn from a variety of sources, including published materials, newspaper archives and interviews, in conjunction with the author’s imagination. For dramatic and narrative purposes, the novel contains fictionalized scenes, composite and representative characters and dialogue, and time compression. The views and opinions expressed in this novel are those of the fictional characters only and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions held by the real individuals, living or dead, of which those characters are based. Please refer to the Note from the Authors section for more details and links to the case of Maud Crawford.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors.

  Published by

  Also available in paperback and audio

  COPYRIGHT

  OTHER BOOKS BY ASHLEY FONTAINNE

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Epilogue

  NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  PICTURES

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  OTHER BOOKS BY ASHLEY FONTAINNE

  The Rememdium Series/Sci-fi/Post-Apocalyptic:

  Tainted Cure – Book 1

  Tainted Reality – Book 2

  Tainted Future – Book 3

  Tainted World – Book 4 (coming soon)

  The Magnolia Series (written with Lillian Hansen):

  Blood Ties

  Blood Stain (coming soon)

  Mystery/suspense novels:

  Night Court

  Whispered Pain

  Empty Shell

  Suicide Lake

  Number Seventy-Five

  Eviscerating the Snake Trilogy:

  Accountable to None

  Zero Balance

  Adjusting Journal Entries

  Paranormal/suspense:

  Growl

  The Lie – soon to be the feature film Foreseen

  http://www.foreseenmovie.com

  Dark Comedy:

  Marriage Made Me Do It (coming soon)

  Drug Addiction/Recovery:

  Ruined Wings

  Poetry and Short Stories:

  Fine as Frog Hair

  Ramblings of a Mad Southern Woman

  Stay up to date with new releases, movie news, and more! Sign up for

  Ashley’s newsletter at http://www.ashleyfontainne.com

  Prologue

  Camden, Arkansas – Saturday, March 2, 1957 – 10:00 p.m.

  The cold winter rain started out as sporadic drops when she left the inconspicuous home hiding dark deeds behind its walls. When she stepped off the bus on the outskirts of town (much to the dismay of the annoyed driver), the droplets morphed into a heavy downpour, along with a thick blanket of fog.

  Carolyn sighed and continued trudging through the secondary streets skirting the edge of town. The past thirty minutes were spent in a painful blur, each step slow while fighting to overcome waves of dizziness and nausea. She had no choice but to steer her sore body clear of the main thoroughfares of downtown Camden. Though not many, there were a few streetlights dotting the walkways, and even with the viscous fog coating the air, a moving body could still be spotted.

  It was Saturday night, the air frigid and the streets slick with water and a bit treacherous, yet some people would be out and about. War and Peace was headlining at the Malco Theater—a movie she had looked forward to seeing with Jefferson—and though unsure what time it was, Carolyn guessed it was close to 10:30 p.m. Those who’d attended the 8:05 p.m. showing would soon swarm the streets.

  She didn’t want to be spotted by anyone, preferring to keep the shameful action done to her body earlier a closely-guarded secret. She’d paid almost fifty dollars—an entire month’s pay—and would do whatever necessary to never let anyone else get a whiff of the dirtiness permanently etched inside her soul.

  Enough already knew, and Carolyn feared she was tempting fate by sneaking back home, but the pull, the overwhelming urge to be cocooned in familiarity, was too strong to fight.

  The wretched nightmare of what she did would follow her to the grave. Carolyn wrestled to tamp it down and tuck the memories away inside the deepest recesses of her mind. Though she didn’t have much of one, what little reputation she had would be ruined if ever discovered by some random townsfolk venturing out in the frigid weather.

  The thought of Miss Maud or even her strange husband, Clyde, finding out what their charge had done in the adjoining county made a shiver sprint up her back. And that is exactly what would happen if Carolyn didn’t remain carefully hidden. Camden was a small town full of grousing harpies with two-sided mouths—one for spouting virtues, platitudes, and Bible verses and the other for spewing vicious gossip about anyone and everyone. The venom-filled barbs didn’t care if the subject was a close friend, family member, politician, or clergy.

  Passing by the ostentatious sign that read Camden – Queen City of the South, Carolyn grimaced. There wasn’t anything stately or royal about the small town perched on a bluff overlooking the Ouachita River. The prosperity from the steamboat era had waned, giving way to the oil, gas and timber industry. The stench of rotten eggs filled the summer air from the paper mills at the edge of town. The only other businesses that flourished in the once humming town were the Grapette plant and Camark Pottery.

  “If only I’d been able to work at those places instead of the silly grocery store! If I had, perhaps I wouldn’t be in the situation I am now,” Carolyn muttered to herself.

  As she passed the old McCollum-Chidester House, made famous by being the headquarters of the Union soldiers during the Civil War, Carolyn scowled at the thought of damn Yankees stinking up the town.

  Keeping close to the shadows as she rounded the corner onto Greening Street, every inch of her body screamed for her to stop moving. She pushed on instead of succumbing to the temptation to rest. It was only a few more blocks to traipse across until she reached Clifton Street and crept inside the stately colonial she’d called home for several years. If she could make it around back without being detected, she could simply climb the trellis to her room and sneak inside. She’d seen Leah do it numerous times over the years, and it looked easy. Of course, Leah’s journeys up and down the trellis had been performed without a body wracked with pain.

  “They should have let me stay. I couldn’t help crying! Too much blood and pain!” Carolyn whispered to herself, breath expelling from her lungs in plumes of steam.

  The intense cramping in her lower regions made her bite down with force to keep the yelps of anguish inside. The near-frozen raindrops peppered her face like tiny shards of glass, turning the warm tears leaking from her eyes into cold dribbles.

  She should have been more pr
epared, asked Leah deeper, probing questions about the before, during, and after sections of the procedures, yet she didn’t. Ashamed, frightened, and overwrought with worry, Carolyn didn’t think about such trivial things like packing extra sets of hosiery, warmer clothes, an old pair of shoes to wear, or how she’d be in such agony hours after the abortion was completed. A wave of anger flourished inside her chest, yet not enough to warm her frozen soul and limbs. Leah should have told her what to expect since she’d endured the procedure twice.

  Leah gave off the air of a proper lady, playing the game in front of Mr. and Mrs. Clyde Crawford and all their friends, yet Carolyn, Cindy, and Claire knew the real Leah—the girl who frequented the dive bars the soldiers from Shumaker Naval Ammunition Base hung out at, including The Pines and The Rendezvous Club—was really a shady young woman with loose morals who made more money in one night than Carolyn made in two months.

  Leah had promised her things would be okay, that she could stay overnight with the “doctor” and his “wife” in case of complications, and the next day, she would feel fine while riding the bus back from the fake “visit to El Dorado,” looking for work and a place to live.

  No one would ever know about the pregnancy since Carolyn hadn’t started showing yet. Leah assured Carolyn with a lopsided grin and warm hand gently patting Carolyn’s knotted shoulder while lying through crooked, yellowed teeth stained from smoking cigarettes.

  She rued those mistakes with each rain-soaked step. The warm stockings she’d worn on her way to end the nightmare growing inside her belly were only trapping the cold rain against her fragile skin. Rivulets of clear liquid ran down her face, dripping off the tip of her nose, following a haphazard path down her torso and ending in her soggy shoes.

  An umbrella would have been welcome, yet it was another item her frazzled mind forgot to consider. The past two weeks were a blur of hysteria.

  Like a naïve fool, Carolyn assumed Jefferson would smile and offer a marriage proposal at the news of his impending fatherhood. That was not even close to what happened. Harsh reality balled up its fist and sucker-punched Carolyn square in the face, knocking her off the ledge of fairy tale and fantasy.

  Jefferson Osborne, Carolyn’s one and only lover, the man who’d worked beside her for months at the Piggly Wiggly after drifting into town with nothing but good looks and a hot car, freaked. Jefferson, who’d whispered snippets of undying love in the backseat of his souped-up coupe on New Year’s Eve, ran like a startled chicken.

  The husky words he’d spoken that melted Carolyn’s shields and led to a night of passion were gone, replaced by angry growls of Carolyn’s stupidity for getting “knocked up” and how he wouldn’t raise an “ankle-biter with the likes of you! You ain’t nothin’ but poor, white trash. Ain’t even got a family! No lineage, no nothin’!”

  Enraged and heartbroken, Carolyn shot back that Jefferson told her he’d left Pine Bluff and wound up in Camden to escape from the ties to his, as he put it, “worthless family” and had no right to criticize.

  Jefferson responded by slapping her in the face, and the relationship was over before really having a chance to grow. He fled town, and probably Arkansas, in the middle of the night. When he didn’t show up for work, the managers and other employees of the Piggly Wiggly offered consoling words like “Don’t worry, Carolyn, he’ll be back” or “Boys—they’ve got to sow their oats before settlin’ down” or even the occasional, “He was too shady, too wild. You’re better off with a solid, homegrown boy.”

  They were right.

  Carolyn considered herself a good girl, unlike Leah and the others. She never went with them to hang out with the rowdy soldiers—she’d developed a thick distaste for the men when they came into the store to shop. Jefferson was another story. He was good looking and somewhat rebellious—a small town’s James Dean. Every girl in Camden wanted him and Carolyn felt a burst of pride when he’d picked her as his girlfriend.

  Big mistake.

  What was said behind her back, whispered in hushed tones to eager ears, eyes dancing with delight while offering conjectured opinions about the demise of the relationship, was a different story. Carolyn had the misfortune of overhearing the stinging words one day as a group of employees gabbed in the stock room.

  She’d worked the rest of her shift in silence, refusing to add more tinder to the stoked fires of Grade-A gossip. Instead of taking the bus home that night, Carolyn had walked the entire way, letting the hot tears come hard and fast as the cold night air dried them away. When she arrived home, no one questioned the reasons behind her flushed, red face because everyone at the Crawford house assumed it was from the frigid air.

  They’d been way off base, just as she’d been about the father of her child.

  When it dawned on her Jefferson wasn’t coming back, Carolyn’s mind went into panic mode. Breaking down one night, she’d told her roommate, Leah, the awful news. Between sobbing and pacing around the small area they shared and called home, Leah offered a way out. Carolyn latched on to the lifeline as though she truly were drowning in the Ouachita River.

  She’d promised herself she wouldn’t cry, but no matter how hard she tried to keep them in, the tears continued to stream down her face. She wondered why God hated her so much. Miss Maud said the Lord loves everyone, but Carolyn had serious doubts. If some being truly existed in the stars above, why did he decide Carolyn deserved a life full of pain and misery? Hadn’t she already endured enough?

  More than anything, Carolyn yearned to curl up in a ball under a warm blanket and disappear inside dreams of her youth, yet she concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. She’d disciplined herself not to reminisce on the happy memories of childhood while awake. They were too heart-wrenching for the conscious realm.

  Unfortunately, the emotional impact of what she’d done overrode the mental shields she’d erected.

  Legally an adult for less than a month, it didn’t matter. Carolyn Singleton craved her mother’s calming presence—her warm spirit and loving, non-judgmental eyes. The urge to rest her weary head on the soft lap of the woman who’d given birth to her, raised her alone and gently murmured each night that “everything will be all right, my angel,” made a lump of salty tears press against her parched throat.

  Thirteen years hadn’t been enough time. Charlene Robinson Singleton, wife of Corporal Reggie Singleton, killed in combat in 1952 in Korea, tried her best to raise their only child alone. Three months later, body worn out from working two jobs, mind still processing the loss of her mate, and soul unhealed from the loss, Charlene’s heart took its last beat, leaving Carolyn Renee Singleton a ward of the state. She’d been a frightened wisp of a child surrounded by callous adults shuffling her around like an annoying toy until Maud Crawford appeared in the judge’s office, her stern face and tight red curls interspersed with flecks of gray, intervened, and offered “the poor child” a place to live and thrive.

  Ever since that day so many years ago, Carolyn Singleton grew up in a household reared by an elderly couple who were kind and gentle at times yet also strict. Chores were many and arduous, grades were expected to be high, and once graduation happened, a job secured and rent paid each week. Maud and Clyde told them the rules would shape and mold the wayward girls into proper wives later in life. They were “building the groundwork by removing the rough edges of their unpolished previous upbringings.”

  An ugly sneer pulled Carolyn’s lips upward. If the uptight Crawfords knew what their charges were really doing under the cover of darkness, they’d keel over from shock.

  Carolyn kept quiet and did as she was told, never once complaining. To keep from going insane, she counted the days until her eighteenth birthday, knowing she would be granted her freedom to leave.

  She’d planned on departing with Jefferson and starting a new life in a town full of less secrets and more anonymity.

  The steady thrum of pelting rain and the squish-squash, squish-squash of her footfalls were the only
sounds reaching her ears. She hated almost every aspect of living in such a small town, yet tonight, as she wound her way through the tangle of streets, she was grateful for the minimal population. She hadn’t seen one automobile in over ten minutes, which was a relief. Though chilled to the bone as the rain seeped through the threadbare clothes she wore, the rain seemed to have kept a major portion of the residents of Camden, which hovered near the fifteen-thousand mark, inside their warm homes.

  Tonight, the number had decreased by one.

  Carolyn shuddered at the memory of lying on the linen-covered table, probably once a place used to dine on traditional southern delicacies, letting a stranger probe and touch her in places only one other had before, causing immeasurable pain rather than pleasure.

  She shouldn’t have gone alone. Leah should have come along…offered her support. She’d considered telling Miss Maud initially yet decided she couldn’t stand another lecture about being a proper southern lady, one who holds her virginity up as a trophy to dangle at potential suitors. The elderly woman would always say, “A proper lady waits to offer the gift of her purity to a man worthy enough to value it.”

  Maud had been right all along. About everything. Carolyn felt a twinge of guilt for the bad thoughts about the woman earlier. Though stoic and tough, Maud Crawford was a good woman with a heart for the unfortunate.

  A sputter of fresh tears erupted from Carolyn’s eyes at the memory as she turned onto Clifton Street, eyeing the sprawling Crawford home shrouded in soupy mist. The memory of the first day she arrived and how overwhelmed and excited she’d been to call the beautiful place home made her chest ache.

  “Stop it. It’s over and time to move on. Get inside and warm up, rest, and then tomorrow, pack up and truly go to El Dorado. Leave this horrid town and never look back. No more chores. No more Clyde skulking around the corners, watching all us girls with his dark, unreadable eyes. No more standing on my feet for hours at the Piggly Wiggly. No more lectures from Miss Maud about purity and virtues.”