The Book of CarolSue Read online

  Advanced Praise for The Book of CarolSue

  “In The Book of CarolSue, Hugo deftly combines whimsy and longing, old grief and newfound joy. With her unique and compassionate voice, she writes about loss and redemption in a way that makes you laugh out loud one minute, tear up the next. Either way, you’re sure to experience tender feelings for her engaging cast of unforgettable characters.”

  —Diane Chamberlain, bestselling author of Big Lies in a Small Town

  “Sparkling prose, wry humor, and timely, relevant themes abound in this genuine story of two sisters, a son, and the unexpected arrival of a small, immigrant child. Hugo writes about internal conflict with sensitivity, and compassion, making for a compelling page turner about personal loss, perseverance, and rediscovering the heart of family.”

  —Donna Everhart, USA Today bestselling author of The Moonshiner’s Daughter

  “Lynne Hugo writes down to the bone of family complications, grief, and shattering loss, while also offering miracles of rescue in The Book of CarolSue. The author walks a perfectly balanced tightrope as she illustrates how political conflicts are woven right into the heart of an Indiana farm family. I lost hours of sleep as I raced to finish this extraordinary novel.”

  —Randy Susan Meyers, bestselling author of Waisted

  “The ability to take tough issues and get others to truly see them is nothing short of magic; Lynne Hugo expertly wields that wand. In The Book of CarolSue, the plight of today’s immigrants, a mother’s sacrifice, and a family’s grief reveal the vulnerability of love, and its incomparable strength. Delivered with humor and heart by way of those delightful characters readers have come to expect from this author, The Book of CarolSue will echo long after the last page is read.”

  —Terri-Lynne DeFino, author of The Bar Harbor Retirement Home For Famous Writers (And Their Muses)

  Praise for The Testament of Harold’s Wife

  “Grief can make a woman a little crazy, but it can also make her very entertaining! The Testament of Harold’s Wife is part romp, part suspense, but above all, a love story. I adored this fun yet poignant book.”

  —Diane Chamberlain, New York Times bestselling author of The Stolen Marriage

  “The Testament of Harold’s Wife is a glorious—and unique—tale of tragedy, resilience, and one kick-ass grieving widow and grandmother. I laughed, cried, and cheered as Louisa talked to her pet chickens, splashed bourbon in her tea, hid ‘Glitter Jesus’ around the house, and wrestled with revenge. Louisa captured my heart, and I will never forget her.”

  —Barbara Claypole White, bestselling author of The Perfect Son and The Promise Between Us

  “The Testament of Harold’s Wife is a richly told tale that explores the human/animal connection and the journey to get past tragedy. Louisa, the spunky, elderly narrator delivers a tender hymn of hope and rebirth that stays with you long after the last page.”

  —Kim Michele Richardson, New York Times bestselling author of The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek

  “At the center of this moving, transcendent novel is the unforgettable Louisa. Perceptive, wry, full of righteous fury, and enlarged by deep compassion . . . I promise you will miss her when you turn the last page. The story itself—flawlessly written and genuine to the core—takes an unflinching look at how we survive shattering tragedy and pointless cruelty and continue to love the world. Its startling life-affirming conclusion will haunt me for a long time.”

  —Patry Francis, award-winning author of The Orphans of Race Point

  “Perhaps the toughest and bravest way to survive tragedy is by bearing up. In The Testament of Harold’s Wife, after losing her husband and grandson, Louisa weathers catastrophe through hard-fought wisdom, humor, and revenge served cold—fueled by a side of hot bourbon. I never left her side as she proved reinvention is possible at any age.”

  —Randy Susan Meyers, bestselling author of The Widow of Wall Street

  “Lynne Hugo’s delightful page turner, The Testament of Harold’s Wife, is fast-paced, unexpectedly poignant, and fun. Louisa’s utterly winning voice propels us at breakneck speed. As a woman who has seen it all and lost it all, Louisa will take her place in the pantheon of unforgettable characters. You may never see an older woman in quite the same way again. This gorgeous new book, with its swiftly moving plot and subversive humor, will stay with you long after you have finished the final page.”

  —Laura Harrington, bestselling author of Alice Bliss and A Catalog of Birds

  “Hugo’s latest is a sweet, sad, funny meditation on the nature of aging and grief . . . This is a novel that would fit right in on the shelf next to novels like A Man Called Ove and similar books that balance humor and heartbreak.”

  —Booklist

  “Suspended between heartbreak and hilarity, readers are sure to find emotional common ground in this story of an engaging elderly widow who sets her sights on revenge after the devastating loss of her husband and grandson, but unexpectedly finds hope, healing, and the possibility of a happy future . . . Lynne Hugo’s character building is superb . . . The plot is propelled forward at a good pace, and readers will be compelled to turn the pages as Louisa speaks with candor, wisdom and keen insight about her thoughts on life, The Plan, and her relationships with those around her . . . A winning and wonderful novel, with a unique and distinctive storyline, there is a little bit of magic for everyone within the pages of this book.”

  —The New York Journal of Books

  “I found a kindred spirit in Louisa, a somewhat eccentric, aging, bereaved woman who finds solace in conversing with her chickens. Her heart is empty and her rage is full. Relatable. Loss does that to you . . . The warp and the weft of Lynne Hugo’s characters in The Testament of Harold’s Wife are woven into a rich tapestry of life, where the irreverent, unconventional, quirky ‘flaws’ become the very thing that make it absolutely perfect, and fills one with a sense of hope.”

  —Delilah, Delilah’s Book Club Pick

  “The Testament of Harold’s Wife comes with a bounciness and light touch that surprises and delights . . . [as it] takes on the theme of survival, of hanging on . . . The results are poignant, but Hugo delivers a fresh blend of pathos and humor. The text is leavened by Harold’s wife, Louisa’s, tart observations on life and the failings of those around her, bless their hearts.”

  —Wilmington StarNews

  The Book of CarolSue

  LYNNE HUGO

  KENSINGTON BOOKS

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Advanced Praise for The Book of CarolSue

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  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

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Acknowledgments
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br />   THE BOOK OF CAROLSUE

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  Teaser chapter

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

  KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2020 by Lynne Hugo

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  ISBN: 978-1-4967-2567-7

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4967-2567-7

  ISBN-10: 1-4967-2567-0

  For Alan, Brooke, and Ciera, with my heart

  And in memory of my son, David Alan deCourcy

  “. . . When all the birds have flown to some real haven,

  We who find shelter in the warmth within,

  Listen, and feel new-cherished, new-forgiven,

  As the lost, human voices speak through us and blend

  Our complex love . . .”

  —May Sarton

  Chapter 1

  CarolSue

  Charlie was already dead when I finally hung up with my sister and came in from the porch. The twilight had settled around me like a sticky damp quilt, but the sky had held the glowing embers of the day and was lovely, so I’d stayed out. “Charlie, honey,” I said as I glanced at him, irritated as any wife would be, “you’ve dropped a hunk of pie into your lap. I can’t get blueberry out of khaki. Don’t touch it while I go get napkins.”

  Even when I came back from the kitchen, stopping to turn down the roar of our Atlanta Braves against Milwaukee from the television—Charlie never would put in his hearing aids—I didn’t catch on. “Pay attention, will you?” I said. That man could find a way to spill hard candy on himself. I was the one who should have been paying attention instead of being pleasantly surprised that for once he hadn’t made a mess worse after I told him not to touch it. I was the one who dropped the rest of the pie on his khaki pants when I picked up the plate, realized, and screamed. “No! No! No!”

  I’m usually the calm one, but I must have been still screaming when I called 911 because the dispatcher kept asking me to repeat myself. It took them almost fifteen minutes to show up. I could hear the sirens rising, falling, rising, falling, well after I’d made a total mess of things, after I realized that no, CarolSue, you really can’t even attempt CPR on a body that’s sitting in a recliner, you have to get him prone. Here’s a hint I hope you never find useful: If a 225-pound man has his legs up in a recliner, you can’t just shove them down. You have to use the lever. Well, I couldn’t get to the lever without sitting on his lap. As my sister would say, please don’t picture how that covered Charlie’s fly and the rear of me in blueberry pie, or the whispering it doubtless prompted among the ambulance and hospital personnel.

  Charlie was way bigger than I am. I had to drag him from the recliner by his ankles to get him onto the floor. I banged his head so hard I thought if he wasn’t already dead, maybe I’d just killed him and I’d end up in jail. It was then I remembered that I don’t know the first thing about CPR. It was my sister, Louisa, who had to get certified in it because of some law in Indiana where she used to be a teacher that they all had to know CPR, even though not a single elementary school student in the state had ever had a heart attack at school. So, naturally, I called the expert.

  “Louisa! How do you do CPR?” I shouted. Possibly I could have been more clear about the nature of the problem.

  “What do you mean?”

  “HOW DO YOU DO CPR?”

  “I don’t know. I’m retired, remember? Take the class. Why?”

  My sister can be like that, bless her heart.

  “It’s Charlie, he’s dead. How do you do CPR?”

  “You call 911!”

  “Tell me what to do!”

  “Listen, honey. I used to think Harold was dead if he wasn’t snoring, before he did die, I mean, but . . .”

  I was going to jail even if I hadn’t already killed Charlie with that blow to the head and by failing to know CPR because I had a strong homicidal impulse toward my sister.

  “I DID call 911. Help me, what do I do?”

  It was as if Louisa suddenly took hold and we switched places then. I’ve always been the one to take care of her. I’m the older sister, after all, even if it’s only two years.

  “Listen to me,” my sister said. “Find where the bony center of his rib cage ends. The center. Go up about an inch from that. Put one palm down there, flat. Got it? Now put the other hand crisscross on top of it. Start pumping, hard, fast. One, two, three, four, five, keep it steady, go, go, go, go.” And don’t you know, Louisa stayed on the phone until the ambulance arrived, her voice like a drum beating out the rhythm for my hands, to tell my beloved husband’s heart what to do. But his heart wouldn’t, not for me or anybody else on that midsummer night. And wouldn’t ever again.

  * * *

  Louisa made it to Atlanta the next noon to shepherd me through the funeral. It was like a replay of how I’d done that for her when her husband Harold died, only I’d had Charlie to help me manage things. Louisa said Gus had offered to come, but that I was, after all, Harold’s sister-in-law, not Gus’s, and she wasn’t about to start letting Gus be Harold’s stand-in. I imagine it was Louisa’s son, Gary, always overly fond of the internet, who made the quick plane reservation for her.

  She warned me that he had the automatic thought that he’d be doing the funeral, being a Reverend and all. Bless his heart, but no way I was going to risk Charlie’s soul with Gary’s fly-by-night internet ordination. I had no lack of love for my only nephew, him being the closest I came to having a child myself, but I knew I’d have to lie and tell Gary that Charlie had left instructions for his funeral with his will, and unfortunately, it involved his one-time Baptist minister to whom he’d been close. It wouldn’t be the first lie I’d ever told and funerals count as a good cause, don’t they?

  The good-hearted Baptist minister, who’d never previously heard of Charlie, but was kind to help me out, asked Gary to do him the “professional courtesy” of reading the twenty-third Psalm. That line was enough that I do believe Gary thought he’d died and gone to heaven himself, having finally proved himself a good and worthy man in spite of the sins that had cost his family so much.

  Louisa and I wore the same black dresses we’d worn to her grandson Cody’s funeral—I’d made an emergency run to buy hers—and then, six months later, to Harold’s. Then, it had been I who’d dressed her, and she’d been the rag doll.

  I would have liked to listen to the service, out of respect if nothing else, but my mind just wouldn’t stay in the chapel of the funeral home, though the décor was lovely, a soft peach, like an early sunset—doubtless, I was supposed to think of a new dawn—and the pew cushions heavily padded. That last was a mercy.

  I fingered the pearls Charlie had given me for our wedding—they looked nice against my black dress, Louisa said—while my mind zagged from what was I going to do now to how I’d ended up here, where I sounded like a foreigner and people still teased me about my “accent.” To me, they all sounded like their words were stuck together with syrup. Well, landing here hadn’t been an accident, I reminded myself. Charlie had been as rooted in the South as I’d been in the farmland of southeastern Indiana, and he was still working when we met. I’d never had a real career like Louisa, the educated one. How could I have asked Charlie to relocate? A husband is a husband, even if it is your second one, right? It had to be I who moved. Atlanta was my home now, too, wasn’t it? I supposed it was. Fifteen years is a long time. That’s what my mind was on instead of whatever the minister was saying. I imagine it was nice. People said it was.
Louisa told me that she hadn’t heard a word of Harold’s service, that she gave herself a grade of A just for sitting through it with none of her special tea, which, she reminded me, I wouldn’t let her have in advance.

  Well, now I understood Louisa’s tea-need at Harold’s funeral. I understood a lot. When the funeral meal was eaten, all the crying and hugging and so sorry, so sorry, so-sorrying was finally over, Gary was dispatched to his hotel and Louisa and I could finally stop, just stop, I was plain grateful when my sister fixed us both extra-large mugs of it. A body could get drunk on the smell alone. Perfect.

  I’d thought I was cried out, but as soon as there was this additional liquid in my body it worked its way out as tears. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” I said. We were on the couch in the family room together. It’s Louisa’s favorite room, I know, because there’s some furniture that was Mom’s in it, and it’s not so formal. “These retirement community—what do you call them? patio homes?—are nice,” Louisa said one of the few times she came here instead of my going there. She acted like she was in a museum in which everything has a DON’T TOUCH sign and is surrounded by an electric wire just to be sure. Well, Charlie did pay a fancy decorator, which wasn’t my idea, but he thought it would please me.

  “What do you mean, you don’t know? You’re coming home. We’re putting this place up for sale and you’re coming home. With me.”