We are thrilled to share with you that beginning today, CatholicMom.com readers will have the first opportunity to read the brand new novel Sweet Dreams, by noted Catholic author and CatholicMom.com contributor Katherine Valentine.  Join us each Monday for the next several weeks as we unveil a new chapter of this wonderful story!

Sweet Dreams – Chapter One

When the Lord has given you the bread of
suffering and the water of distress,
He who is your teacher will hide no longer,
And you will see your teacher with your own eyes
Your ears will hear these words behind you,
‘This is the way, Keep to it.’ Isaiah 30: 20-21

January, 1981

A sudden winter storm had dumped two feet of snow along the North Carolina mountain range that encircled the fashionable sub-division known as Shiloh Point. Emma turned the volume up on the television wedged in the corner by the fridge, fighting back a rising sense of fear.  Jerry should have been home hours ago.

The newscaster was reporting several accidents, from one end of the county to another. He stated that police and emergency crews were stretched to their limits and were advising people stay off the roads.

A kitchen timer went off. She threw on a pair of oven mitts and removed the last of fours cakes from the oven just as the screen flooded with pictures of a major accident on the interstate. A tractor-trailer had overturned, causing a massive pile-up. The photos were chilling. She moved closer to scan the screen, searching for a black Mercedes.

No, no…she mustn’t let her imagination go there. Jerry was probably one of those stuck in the long line of traffic caused by the accident.

She cast an anxious eye out the kitchen window. The wind was driving a steady wall of snow across an already frozen landscape. With the road conditions growing more treacherous by the hour, there was no telling when he might make it home.

Anxiety slowly morphed into anger.

He had promised to call when he landed, but being Jerry, of course, he wouldn’t have wanted to waste time, trying to find a phone even though he knew how she worried when the weather got bad. If he had called, she would have told him to stay put. Ride out the storm. There were dozens of hotels just outside the airport.

She turned her attention onto the icing for the Bailey’s Irish Crème cake. She had promised four cakes for the Friends of the Library cake sale and at the moment was grateful for the distraction. Baking always helped to calm her.

Suddenly the family room exploded in a round of raucous cheers. A mixing spoon flew out of her hand and rattled across the tile floor.

Their seventeen year old son, Benjamin and his friends were waiting out the storm, playing Super Nintendo. A thunderous victory dance followed along with shouts of ‘hi-five’.

“Hold it down, will you guys?” she shouted above the din, just as the phone rang. She ran her hands over her apron and picked up the receiver, hoping that it was Jerry.

“Smith’s residence.”

“Emma, thank God you’re home.” It was Jerry’s secretary, Patricia. “Is Jerry there?”

“No. In fact, I was hoping he’d call,” she said, taking down a box of confectioner’s sugar. “He’s probably caught on the Interstate. Have you seen the news reports? Traffic is backed up for miles. I hope he makes it home before dark. That’s when things really get slick with the ice.”

She opened the box and began to pour into a measuring cup.

“When he left on vacation last week, he told me that he would back this morning.  I thought he might have gotten home before the storm hit.”

“Vacation?”  Her hand jerked. Powdered sugar dusted the counter.

“He and Benjamin were taking a skiing trip.”

“Skiing trip?” She set the box on the counter. “Benjamin is here with me. You must have gotten things confused. Jerry is at a banking convention. Something to do with his department.”

It took her several beats, before she realized that Patricia had grown very quiet.

“Pat? Are you still there?”

“Emma, I don’t know how to tell you this… There is no convention.”

“No convention? I don’t understand.”

“Neither do we.”

Emma walked the phone into the dining room, out of the earshot of the boys.

Lowering her voice, she asked, “If he’s not at a convention then where is he?”

There were some raised voices on the other side of the phone. Patricia asked them to quiet down.

“Oh, Em, that’s exactly the question the executives here at bank want to know. That and the whereabouts of the two hundred and fifty thousand dollars that’s missing.”

For the next eight weeks, Emma lived two separate lives. In the one she shared with her son there was the calm, efficient, in-charge parental figure that insisted it was all a huge misunderstanding and that his father would soon return to explain everything.

In the other, she fought against a rising tide of panic and growing shame as first detectives and then the FBI arrived to ransack their home for any clues as to Jerry’s whereabouts, and to pelt her with questions, trying to disprove her insistence that she knew nothing.

But as hard as it was on her, she knew it was doubly hard on Benjamin. News had leaked out at school. Teachers eyed him differently. Friends began to make excuses about hanging out after school. Emma’s heart ached for the once confident young man who had now grown guarded, distance. If only she could turn things around, make them right. She vacillated between intense rage at feeling so impotent to help her son save face and red, hot anger over what Jerry had done.

Not only had he stolen a huge sum of money from his employer, he had left them alone, without resources. Both their checking and savings accounts had been emptied.

And just as important, he had left without warning. No explanation. He had just disappeared. Jerry had always made a very comfortable income, then why suddenly had he decided to steal? It didn’t make sense, until the bills started arriving.

Jerry had always taken care of their finances. And to be honest, it was something Emma was only too willing to let him oversee. When it came to facts and figures, she was hopeless. Seldom was her checkbook balanced. Besides, Jerry was the president of a bank. He knew all about those sort of things. It seemed logical to let him take care of it.

In fact, now that she looked back over the years, she realized that she had never paid any attention to matters of money or the stack of bills that arrived every month. Looking back, however, she realized that she should have.

Creditors began calling all hours of the night and day, demanding payments on overdue accounts. She requested past records, proof of what they said was owed. They were happy to oblige.

With a mixture of shock and rage, she read through the long lists of expenditures. Suddenly, she understood how they had afforded the expensive new cars; trips to the Islands; and the endless supply of gifts that Jerry had lavished on their son, including the new Mustang convertible that had arrived the week before Christmas.

When the smoke cleared, the amount of debt was staggering. Jerry owned a total of six hundred thousand dollars in credit cards, plus the mortgage on their home. That was another eight hundred thousand. And car payments for all three vehicles.

Finally, she understood Jerry’s sudden disappearance. Faced with a mountain of debt and no way to possibly pay it off, he had decided to simply leave. His way of coping with the financial crisis that he had created.

Hatred rose, canceling out any affection that she had ever felt for the husband with whom she had shared nearly two decades of marriage. Not only was he a thief, he was also a coward, leaving her to straighten out his mess.

Since their home had been mortgaged through Jerry’s former place of employment, and bank officials were none too moved by her repeated pleas for an extension on the foreclosure procedures. She had thirty days to vacate.

Then when she thought things couldn’t get any worse, a repro company appeared in the middle of the night and demanded the keys to their cars.

“If your husband calls, you let us know immediately,” said the heavily tattooed man with a gold front tooth and a gun strapped to his belt as he handed her his business card. He was not happy to discover that Jerry’s Mercedes was missing.

“If you hold back information, you’ll be abetting a car thief, and in case you don’t know, that’s a felony.”

Suddenly, she didn’t care if he were totting a gun. She was tired of being threatened when she had done nothing wrong. By the bank. The credit card companies. Even the unities had threatened to turn off the electricity if she didn’t come up with the five hundred dollars owed in back payments.

She walked right up to him and shouted in his face, not caring if the neighbors heard. Who were they anyway? Not one of them had offered a kind word. Instead, they hid behind curtains and snubbed her when they met on the street.

“If I knew where my husband was, I would have told the police. The car was in his name, not mine. I have nothing to do with its disappearance, so if you show up here again, I will have your arrested.” She was breathing fire. God, it felt good.

“Oh…if you should come across him, ask where he’s stashed the money from our joint accounts.”

With that, she walked up porch steps and slammed the door.

She tried to live without a car for nearly a week which meant that she was reliant on friends, many of whom were suddenly not available, or simply refused to answer her calls.

In desperation, she finally cashed in one of Benjamin’s college bonds and purchased a rusting, smoke spewing, gas guzzler that made sounds like a death rattle whenever she came to a stoplight. Benjamin blatantly refused to be seen in it and made Emma drop him off several blocks from school.

In the midst of this chaos, she felt duty bound to honor a commitment to bake a dozen pies for the local hospital’s fundraiser. Arlene’s husband, Dr. Ira Field was on staff there.

Fortunately, Emma had a pantry full of baking supplies because she certainly didn’t have any extra cash around to replace them.

“Where have you been?”  Arlene asked, eying the strange, rusting car parked by the curb as she positioned a large cart borrowed from the hospital cafeteria near the back fender. “I’ve been trying to get a hold of you for weeks,”

“In hiding,” Emma said, struggling to open the trunk. It finally gave way with a ear splitting screech.

“Does that have anything to do with Jerry’s disappearance?” Arlene never minced words.

Emma rolled her eyes and handed over a cake. “You heard.”

“It’s a small town. It feeds on gossip.” Arlene carefully positioned the cake on the first tier, then turned back for the next. “I’ve called you a half a dozen times. I thought you might want to talk, drink some wine, get sloshed, but all I got was the answering machine.”

“I’ve been out looking for work. Jerry cashed out all of our accounts.”

“That bum! May he rot in hell,” Arlene said with the vehemence of a true friend then she grew serious. “How’s the job search going?”

“It’s basically demoralizing. I was just turned down at the Piggly Wiggly. Apparently, I am not qualified to bag groceries.”

Arlene laughed and gave her a hug. “Don’t give up. You’ll find something. Meanwhile, I’ll keep an eye out. And if you run short of cash, I have my grandmother’s inheritance.  It’s just sitting there.”

Emma thanked her, although she knew in her heart that she’d rather die than take charity. Call it pride, or stubbornness, but Emma was embarrassed enough over the mess that Jerry had put them in. She was not about to further that embarrassment, by being a burden to the only friend who hadn’t run for the hills.

That was one of the hardest things about her situation. The deep hurt of having people that she had known for years (…even their kids had played together since toddlers) now treat her as a leper.  What were they afraid of? That their name might be sullied by association?   It filled her with a deep, gut wrenching sadness.

They finished loading the cart.

“How about parking this boat, then coming in and helping me setup? It might help to get your mind off things for a while.”

“Might as well,” Emma said, slamming the trunk. “Thanks. You’re a true friend.”

Arlene threw an arm around Emma’s shoulders and gave her a squeeze. “Don’t worry, Em. We’ll figure this out. I promise.”

Join us next Monday for the next chapter of Sweet Dreams by Katherine Valentine.

Copyright 2009 Katherine Valentine

Katherine Valentine’s widely read novels explore God’s response to our prayers in times of need. They include:  A Miracle for St. Cecilia’s; A Gathering of Angels; Grace Will Lead Me Home; On a Wing and a Prayer; The County Fair and The Haunted Rectory. All can be found in major bookstores and on-line.