The Last Dance Read online

  The Last Dance

  Nan Ryan

  Copyright

  Diversion Books

  A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008

  New York, NY 10016

  www.DiversionBooks.com

  Copyright © 2003 by Nan Ryan

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

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

  For more information, email [email protected]

  First Diversion Books edition March 2015

  ISBN: 978-1-62681-741-8

  Also by Nan Ryan

  Wanting You

  Love in the Air

  C.C.’s Daughter

  Wayward Lady

  For

  Dick Kleiner of United Media

  Robin Kaigh

  Richard Curtis

  Aaron Priest

  Perry Knowlton of Curtis Brown, Ltd.

  Robert Barnett of Williams Connelly

  Irene Goodman

  Mel Berger of William Morris Agency, Inc.

  Thanks millions

  Chapter One

  The 7:10 from Rochester was right on time, and so was Post Office Champ.

  The big, silver furred husky waited alone on the train depot’s deserted wooden platform. Panting rapidly in the August heat and pacing back and forth, Post Office Champ kept watchful eyes turned northward. With the first faint sound of the approaching train’s whistle, Champ began to bark excitedly. Tail wagging furiously, he raced jubilantly forward to take up his designated post.

  The early-morning freight train did not stop in Colonias, New York. It barely slowed. It whooshed through the station with the loud rhythmic clickity-clack of wheels turning on the tracks and sharp piercing blasts from its steam whistle.

  In the open door of a rail car, four back from the engine, a short, muscular man in work clothes stood with his feet braced apart. In one canvas gloved hand he held a heavy leather mail pouch. His other hand was firmly locked around a steel stantion. As rail car and man reached the place where the barking dog waited, the man grinned, shouted a friendly greeting to the silver Siberian and tossed out the full mailbag.

  Champ pounced on the heavy pouch as if it were a juicy bone. Snarling, he clamped the bag firmly in his teeth, yanked it up, and wheeled about. He leapt down off the platform, rounded the tiny depot, shot across the street, and raced the two blocks to the Colonias’ white fronted post office.

  Miss Lucy Hart had arrived at the post office at exactly seven a.m. She immediately brought the folded American flag outside, unfurled it, clipped it to the grommets, and raised the stars and stripes up the steel flagpole.

  She went back inside, crossed the front lobby, and entered the small back room. She stepped up to the counter with its closed window, took a large stamp pad down from the shelf, and opened it. She pulled the cork stopper from a bottle of Parkers India Indelible, inked the pad, and restoppered the bottle. She picked up the cancellation stamp and rotated the tiny rotors until the present date was displayed on the wooden stamp’s face.

  A.M./Colonias, New York

  August 11, 1899

  A little shiver of excitement surged through her slender body.

  Only nine more days.

  The train’s whistle pierced the morning quiet. Miss Lucy lifted the small face of the gold cased watch, which was pinned to the bodice of her crisp white summer blouse. She glanced at the watch, smiled, and began counting down the seconds.

  Five. Six. Seven.

  Before she reached eight, Post Office Champ bounded through the open door of the lobby.

  “Good boy, Champ!” Miss Lucy praised enthusiastically, going to meet him and reaching out to give his big head a sound pat. “Such a good, reliable boy.”

  Miss Lucy followed Champ as he hauled the heavy mail pouch directly into the back room. Champ deposited his burden on the sorting table and then jumped up on Miss Lucy, putting his massive front paws on her full skirts, and barked a happy greeting to her. The postmistress laughed, leaned down, laid her cheek to the top of Champ’s head and stroked the soft underside of his warm, throbbing throat.

  Champ tolerated the demonstrative display for only a moment, then impatiently pulled free and marched pointedly to his empty food dish in the corner. There he sat down on his powerful haunches, turned his head, and fixed Miss Lucy with a baleful look. She knew what that look meant. She promptly gave him his treat.

  Each day of the week—save Sunday—the mornings began pretty much this same way for Miss Lucy Hart, the town’s postmistress, and Champ, the faithful mail dog. The big, beautiful husky, who belonged to the Western Union telegrapher’s young son, met the 7:10 train every morning, picked up the mail, and delivered it to the waiting Colonias postmistress. Then, while Miss Lucy sorted and put up the mail, Champ eagerly ate the breakfast goodies she brought him, smacking and growling with bliss.

  Turning her full attention to putting up the mail, Miss Lucy read the name on a long white envelope. Mrs. T.A. Rippey. “Number Forty-Seven,” Miss Lucy said aloud, inserting the letter in the box number forty-seven. “Milt Ledet,” she mumbled and stuck the penny postal card into box number sixteen. Janis Wright. Number Twenty-Two. The Reverend Timothy Clarkson. Fifty-One.

  Miss Lucy Hart had long ago memorized the number of each and every Colonias box holder. She identified half the people in town by their box numbers instead of their names. She’d look up and see a particular lady approaching the post office and think to herself, ‘Here comes Thirty-Two again; has she forgotten she’s already been here twice?’ Yesterday she’d seen a couple of men pass the office, laughing and talking together, and her first thought had been, ‘Good grief, Nineteen and Sixty-Seven back on speaking terms after the bloody fist fight they’d had down at the lodge last week?’

  Letters in hand, Miss Lucy cast a glance over her shoulder at the suddenly silent Post Office Champ. His plate clean, the contented Siberian husky was stretched out on the floor, yawning, settling down for a short, after-breakfast nap. Lucy turned back to the task at hand, humming softly as she worked.

  She had finished sorting and putting up each letter, leaflet, circular and postal card by ten minutes of eight. People were beginning to congregate outside in the post office lobby. Lucy could hear them greeting each other, checking the time, opening their boxes and looking anxiously inside for their mail.

  Lucy knew just how they felt.

  For the past three years, she herself had anxiously awaited Champ’s delivery of the mailbag with hope and expectation. How she had looked forward to those special letters…

  Shaking herself out of her pleasant reverie, Miss Lucy Hart raised the window of her caged cubicle and began the workday in earnest.

  It was after six p.m. when Miss Lucy lowered the flag, folded and boxed it, closed the grilled window, locked up, and left. Tired and hot, but in no great hurry to get to her empty house, she sauntered along the wooden sidewalk, stopping, as she had for the past several weeks, to admire a stunningly pretty dress in the front display window of Pauline’s Apparel shop.

  Lucy looked at the gorgeous gauzy white tulle gown with glazed eyes and watering mouth. She envisioned herself spinning about a spacious hotel ballroom in this one-of-a-kind summer white dress.

  Lucy Hart drew a deep breath, swept into the shop, pointed to the dress in the window, and said decisively, “I’ve made up my mind. I’ll take it, Pauline.”

  Pauline Simmons, the shop’s owner and the town’s most dedicated g
ossip, greeted Miss Lucy’s command with undisguised surprise and wry amusement. Shaking her head in disbelief, she cut her eyes meaningfully at the pair of well-heeled, matronly customers to whom she had been showing a new shipment of kid gloves. The ladies returned Pauline’s glance. They wondered, as Pauline did, just where the town’s postmistress would go to wear such an exquisite dress.

  Miss Lucy Hart knew exactly what they were thinking. Oddly, she derived a degree of pleasure from their puzzlement. It added to her steadily growing excitement. It had been a long time since anyone found her behavior worthy of speculation.

  “If you’ll just take the white tulle out of the window and box it for me, Pauline,” Lucy again requested, smiling and nodding to the two watching matrons. “Mrs. Poyner, Mrs. Barnes.”

  “Miss Lucy,” they responded in unison.

  As Pauline removed the white dress from the store window, Lucy made small talk with Mrs. Poyner and Mrs. Barnes, politely inquiring about their health and their families, knowing they were hoping she might disclose the occasion for which she needed the expensive white dress.

  She didn’t.

  She could hardly hide her glee at the fun of withholding the only information in which the ladies were truly interested.

  Miss Lucy was all smiles when she tucked the large box containing the new white tulle dress under her arm, bade them all good day, and left the store. Outside, she waved to them, positive they were watching and whispering.

  They were.

  “Whatever’s gotten into Miss Lucy?” Fredda Barnes spoke in a stage whisper.

  “I can’t imagine,” murmured Pauline, the shop owner. “She’s been coming in every day for the past few weeks. She’s tried on that white tulle dress a half dozen times, but I never thought about her actually buying it.”

  “A great waste of money if you ask me,” said Myrtle Poyner. “Where does Miss Lucy go other than to the post office, church, a weekly card game at the Harrisons, those spring and fall piano recitals she gives, and the Fourth of July and Labor Day picnics.” She shook her neatly coiffured head. “Mark my words, that fancy white tulle dress will yellow with age before it is ever worn.”

  There was a spring to her step and a smile on her lips as Miss Lucy Hart walked the four blocks to her home. On this warm August evening she felt uncharacteristically young, gay, and optimistic.

  She was fully aware that the expensive white tulle dress was an extravagance she really couldn’t afford to buy. By the same token, she couldn’t afford not to. It was such a beautiful dress. A special dress for a special occasion.

  A dress she might well get to wear but once in her entire lifetime.

  Chapter Two

  Miss Lucy reached the pristine white picket fence that bordered her small front yard. She pushed through the hinged gate, went up the flower-bordered walk to the porch and let herself inside the spotless, silent house, which was her home.

  Miss Lucy Hart had lived all her life in this same white frame house on this same tree shaded street in this same small Genesee Valley farming community. For the past two of those years, she had lived in the white house alone.

  The youngest of three children, Lucille had guessed long ago that she was neither planned nor expected. Her father, the big, gregarious, white-haired Steven Hart, had turned fifty before she was born. Her mother, Nell, was forty-four. It had been fifteen years since the birth of the younger of the two Hart sons. Paul was the firstborn, arriving in the spring of 1851. Louis came along in the summer of ’54. The couple gave up on having a daughter.

  Brothers Paul and Louis were gone from home before Lucille turned five years old. Her father assured her that she was the precious child of his heart, the pride of his life, the sweet comfort of his old age. A Civil War hero whose slight limp was a prized badge of honor, Steven Hart had been appointed by President Ulysses S. Grant to serve as the first postmaster of Colonias, New York.

  Lucille always loved spending time at the post office with her patient, indulgent papa. She was helping him put up the mail when she was so small she had to stand on a chair to reach the boxes. By the time she was twelve, she knew everyone’s box number and exactly how long it took for a letter to get from Albany to Colonias.

  When Lucille turned sixteen, her mother fell suddenly, seriously ill. Doctor Spencer, the attending physician, sadly predicted that Nell Hart would never regain her health. Steven Hart took his young daughter aside, smiled reassuringly at her, and told her that she was not to miss out on any activities because she had a sick mother.

  “Lucy gal, you’re not to be turning down any invitations to parties and such because of your Momma,” Steven Hart said to Lucy. “I don’t want you worrying or feeling obligated in any way because it’s not your responsibility. I’ll take care of Nell.”

  And he would have.

  But Steven Hart was killed instantly in a hunting accident less than a mile from home when Lucille was just eighteen. Her brothers lived in distant cities with families of their own. Paul was all the way out on the west coast of California running a land development company and raising four strapping young boys. Louis was down in Fort Worth working on a vast cattle ranch and struggling to support his wife and two baby girls. Neither brother could be counted on to share the burden. Their invalid mother, Nell, became Lucille’s sole responsibility.

  Young though she was, Lucille was appointed by President Benjamin Harrison to succeed her father at the Colonias post office. She became one of the United States’ first and youngest postmistresses. The story of her appointment made the New York Tribune. She clipped and saved the article.

  Stretched thin between her six day a week duties at the post office and the increasingly difficult task of caring for her ill mother, Lucille was left with precious little time for the fun and frivolous pursuits of her young, carefree friends.

  Soon party invitations stopped coming. Friends of both sexes quit coming to call.

  All but two.

  The vivacious, dark haired Betty Thompson was Lucy’s dearest friend. The two had met when both were just five years old and Lucy began taking piano lessons from Betty’s mother. They played together on Lucy’s very first visit to the Thompson home. By the time they started school, they were inseparable. They remained so ever after.

  The blond, blue eyed Rob Grant had been Lucille’s sweetheart since she was fourteen, he fifteen. He was patient for a long, long time. But finally, even he grew tired of waiting as the months turned into years. Rob Grant married Betty Thompson and the pair moved to St. Louis, Missouri.

  And still Nell Hart had clung tenaciously to life, totally dependent.

  Looking back on those lost years, Lucille felt no resentment toward Rob or Betty. Nor toward her mother. She loved her mother, she missed her still. But by the time Nell Hart finally gasped her last breath in the autumn of 1897, Lucille was twenty-seven years old and folks no longer called her Lucille or Lucy.

  She was Miss Lucy. The unmarried postmistress. The single lady. The spinster. The old maid.

  Of all the classmates with whom she had attended school, she was the only one who had never married. For the rest of her days she would be known as Miss Lucy. Aunt Lucy to her brothers’ children. Never would she be some man’s cherished wife. No sweet-faced child would ever call her mother.

  Still Lucille Hart was not a bitter, unhappy woman. She was extremely proud of her position as the town’s postmistress and took real satisfaction from her work. She had old and dear friends and acquaintances who liked and respected her. She had her strong faith in a merciful God, and numerous church activities. She had the piano recitals she presented for the young pupils to whom she gave lessons. She had a nice comfortable home, a nice comfortable life.

  But her girlish dreams of love and adventure had all but died. Somewhere along the way she had changed. Lucy was painfully aware that she was no longer the lively, spirited girl she once was. She had grown slowly, steadily more settled and sedate. Had become more cautious and care
ful. More practical and pragmatic.

  More of an old maid.

  Yet deep down in her heart of hearts, she desperately yearned for something more—for romance.

  The last summer of the century was also the last summer of Lucille Hart’s fading youth. On the last day of August she would turn thirty. The years and the chances for happiness were rapidly slipping away, so Lucille had decided it was now or never.

  She was planning—had been planning for months—a two week holiday at that fabled oceanside resort, Atlantic City. The hotel reservations had been made. The round trip train ticket to Port Hudson had been purchased. A cabin on the river steamer booked.

  On Saturday morning, the 19th of August, Lucy Hart would leave for Atlantic City where she hoped to find a dash of romance if only for a few days. A few nights.

  She hoped to fill these fleeting golden days with exciting escapades, the kind which would provide warming memories in her old age.

  A slight smile touched Lucy’s lips when, at bedtime that warm Friday night, she went to the tall mahogany highboy in her bedroom, opened the top drawer, and took out a neat stack of letters that were tied with a blue satin ribbon. The letters had accumulated over a three-year period. They were from a gentleman.

  A Mister Theodore D. Mooney.

  So far, Lucy’s relationship with Mr. Theodore Mooney had gone no farther than exchanged letters and books and foolish little gifts. The two had never actually met.

  Theodore D. Mooney was the postmaster in Cooperstown, Pennsylvania. Three years ago a letter, which should have gone to Cooperstown, had turned up in Colonias. Lucy had immediately forwarded the letter on to its rightful destination, along with a brief, personal note.

  In return she had received a missive from one Theodore D. Mooney, Cooperstown postmaster. A regular correspondence began. From his letters, written in a neat, small hand, Lucy had learned that Theodore Mooney was a bachelor, thirty-seven years old, who lived with his older, widowed sister. He enjoyed music, literature, art, and the theater.