Rearranging the Truth

R. Drees Valerie

Description

Tori knows something that Brian doesn't--a family secret revealed by Brian's Aunt Lily in Dublin, Ireland--only to her. A deception so coldly calculated and criminally complete, it has remained hidden for decades as a carefully arranged truth. Tori is determined to unearth the whole story. She takes the opportunity of a business trip to Los Angeles to drive up the coast to Santa Barbara, and there, to investigate the accident that tragically took the lives of two Sage family members in 1962. What Tori finds--yet another well-hidden deception--will rip through the fabric of the family once it becomes known. Yet, if she seeks to "poke the sleeping bear," the Sage family's patriarch, how can she see him punished for what he has done without hurting other family members? As Tori begins her quest to rearrange the truth, she worries that pulling the threads she has worked loose could unravel all of the long-buried secrets in the Sage family.

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Date de parution: 31 août 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781645757832
• Langue: English

Extrait

Rearranging the Truth
Valerie R. Drees
Austin Macauley Publishers
2020-08-31
Rearranging the Truth About the Author Dedication Copyright Information © Acknowledgment The Players Main Characters Secondary Characters 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 Author’s Note:
About the Author
Valerie R. Drees worked for many years in the corporate sphere, buying interior design materials for a bank in Glendale, California. She shifted careers in her mid-30s, becoming a teacher of World History and Geography to exceptional high school girls in Pasadena, California. Upon her relocation to Virginia Beach, Virginia, she continued her teaching career at a community college, offering courses in European History, as well as English as a second language. Until a few years ago, her writing record was tied to her work as a history instructor, including several non-fiction articles for a historical journal, and a local (Virginia Beach) police department history chapbook. Valerie left teaching to write her first novel, The Burden of Truth , a suspense/mystery/thriller published in May 2018 (Austin Macauley, New York). She now devotes herself full time to writing.
Dedication
This book is dedicated with much love to my husband, Clayton J. Drees, who is tireless in his support of my endeavors.
Copyright Information ©
Valerie R. Drees (2020)
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.
Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously and, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover art by Jean Anderson
Ordering Information:
Quantity sales: special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.
Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data
Drees, Valerie R.
Rearranging the Truth
ISBN 9781645757825 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781645757818 (Hardback)
ISBN 9781645757832 (ePub e-book)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020909281
www.austinmacauley.com/us
First Published (2020)
Austin Macauley Publishers LLC
40 Wall Street, 28th Floor
New York, NY 10005
U.S.A
[e-mail]
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Acknowledgment
I wish to thank the early readers of the manuscript, those dedicated folks who offered suggestions and painstakingly caught my goofs: M. Jean Anderson (who also provided the artwork for the cover), Denie Brand, Deb Pfirrmann, and Nancy Topping.
Grateful acknowledgement also goes to the following for granting permission for me to use quotes from previously published material:
Harper Collins Publishers UK, on behalf of Robert Wilson, author, for the quote used from his A Small Death in Lisbon , copyright 1999.
Greene & Heaton Ltd., on behalf of the copyright estate of P. D. James, from Devices and Desires , by P. D. James, 1989.
The Players

Main Characters
Tori (Victoria) Daniels, nee Sommer : co-owner of The Dust Jacket Bookshop & Café in Williamsburg, VA, lives above the shop, born 1958 in Los Angeles, former interior designer, a novelist, divorced.
Brian (O’Neil) Sage : co-owner of the bookshop (above) with Tori, lives above the shop, born 1953 in Santa Barbara, but raised from age nine in Winchester, England, English Professor at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA, earned Ph.D. at UCLA, UCSB undergrad, poet and playwright.
Lily O’Neil Donnelly and Laurel O’Neil Sage : twin sisters from the Dalkey area of Dublin, born 1928, Ireland; Lily is Brian and his brother Patrick’s aunt; Laurel is Brian and Patrick’s mother; Lily owns Donnelly Books and Prints in Dalkey, lives above the shop, her late husband was Declan Donnelly and her son is Michael Donnelly (spoiler alert).
Carlton Sage : father of Patrick and Brian Sage (spoiler alert), born 1928 in Winchester, England, son of Claire and Carson (deceased) Sage, co-owner of Sage Publishers, first wife was Laurel O’Neil, second wife is an Australian called Pamela Wade Campbell.
Claire Sage : mother of Carlton, grandmother of Patrick and Brian (spoiler alert), born 1899 in Winchester, England, co-owner of Sage Publishers.
Patrick Sage : son of Carlton and Laurel Sage, grandson of Claire and Carson Sage, older brother of Brian Sage, born 1948 in NYC.
John Sommer : deceased father of Tori Daniels, UCLA English professor, poet & playwright, mentor of Brian Sage (spoiler alert).
Michael & Fiona Donnelly (and baby daughter Laurel Donnelly): he is the son of Lily and Declan (deceased) Donnelly (spoiler alert), and is training to be a lawyer in Dublin, Ireland; she is his wife and works in her mother-in-law Lily Donnelly’s bookshop, along with shop assistant Moira.
William (Will) Crosley : a longtime family friend of, and lawyer for, the Sommers, sometime UCLA Law professor, practicing attorney in Los Angeles, born 1925 in Los Angeles; his secretary is Beverly (Bev) Wilder.
Ian Lehrer : English professor at University of Kent, Canterbury, England, friend and former UCLA colleague of John Sommer, friend of Brian Sage and Tori Daniels, son of Charlotte and Kurt (deceased) Lehrer, father of Kyle Lehrer, husband of Cynthia (Cindy).
Timothy Parker Irwin : fellow UCLA Ph.D. program alum and friend of Brian Sage, English professor at Queens University in Charlotte, NC.

Secondary Characters
Lana Marks Carter and her husband Kevin Carter : she is Patrick’s private nurse at the Devereux Residential Facility in Santa Barbara; he is a retired Santa Barbara police officer.
In Australia : Carlton’s second wife and Brian’s step-mother is Pamela Wade Campbell Sage; her daughter Priscilla Campbell Larsen co-owns and runs (with her mother) her late father’s (Cameron Campbell) mining enterprise and is married to Sigismund (Sig) Larsen, who manages Sage Publishers’ Australian headquarters; they have two children (son Cameron, daughter Campbell).
In the Dust Jacket Bookshop & Café, the shop co-owned by Brian Sage and Tori Daniels: Margaret is the shop’s manager; Robyn manages the café (is married to Air Force pilot Drew), Jake works on the book side, while Sally and Alison (Ali) work on the café side, Octavius Zachariah Lester (aka ‘Les’ or ‘OZ’ ) works on both sides; Frances Casper (Frankie) is the shop’s baker.
NOTE : any other characters mentioned in the story come up only in passing to facilitate the action or give background.
1
She watched from the window as the aircraft descended through white puffball cloud cover, then circled. Ah, there it is , she thought, as the spider-shaped restaurant came into view at Los Angeles International Airport. Tori had not been back to her beginnings in L.A. for just over six years. It seemed unchanged: lots of traffic around the airport, dry-looking shrubs along the freeway. Another drought year, she supposed. It was light-jacket-cool and very sunny. Not as smoggy as she remembered, but then it was November, one of the prettier times of the year. Yes, the San Gabriel Mountains were postcard-perfect this morning.
In her rented Ford Escort on the 405 Freeway, Tori Daniels drove toward the Valley, to Studio City and her 9:30 appointment with the film production team. It had been beastly to be boarding a plane at Dulles in DC at 6:10 a.m., but with the 3-hour time difference, and even despite the well over 5-hour air journey, she would be right on time. Sunset-Coastal Films was interested in turning her novel, Gathering Clouds, into something visual. She had no idea what to expect really, or how long the meeting would take, or even why they wanted a face-to-face. Her agent, ‘marvelous Marvin,’ as her best friend and business partner Brian Sage had nicknamed him, was no help. All he’d said was, “It’s all good, Hon. Go, see ’em, and make nice.” So, she’d be nice and see what developed. But that wasn’t really why she was here.
Since the late summer, Tori had been unsettled. The undercurrent of tension she felt was, at least in part, her own doing. She hated being the keeper of secrets. This was a doozie too, and she was keeping it from Brian who had absolutely every right to know. But it was not her secret, so not hers to tell. It was Lily’s . Brian had been doing so well since they’d returned in mid-August from their visits to England and Ireland. He had been writing away in every spare moment when he wasn’t teaching his classes at the College of William and Mary, or helping his students in the production of a campus play. No, the very large ‘sleeping dog’ would have to ‘lie,’ for the foreseeable future.
Brian and Tori were both looking forward to Thanksgiving and the first-ever visit of Brian’s Irish Aunt Lily O’Neil Donnelly to their combination bookstore and home in Williamsburg, Virginia. Lily also ran a bookstore in the Dalkey area of greater Dublin. She’d just become a grandma for the first time last month, so there was no question of an extended holiday visit this year; she’d certainly not miss grandbaby Laurel’s first Christmas. Her son Michael and daughter-in-law Fiona would never forgive Grandma Lily’s absence at such an occasion. They were a tightly knit little family, living across the street from each other. Togetherness was everything. Brian and Tori were family too, but their Irish kin had only rediscovered them this past summer. All the new understandings would take time