Letters From Al by Pieper, Kathleen (ebook audio reader TXT) 📕

"Thanks for stopping by. I think you'll have a wonderful time in Nebraska." The Blonde guide gushed and batted her eyelashes furiously at Mr. Detroit and Maddy walked out of the building.

"I sure hope you're right." Maddy said under her breath, and smiled back. She threw the brochure in the backseat with all her other stuff. The letter she just stared at. Hefting it in her hand she stared at the formal raised print from a law office. Her name and address looked official in bold black letters. Was she crazy for going off on what could be a wild goose chase?

"Well, my life can't get any more screwed up than it is already, so what have I got to lose?" She shoved the letter back in her pocket and started the car. Turning off the hot, air conditioning, she opened all the windows. Carefully backing out of the busy rest stop she pulled back on the Interstate with renewed hope. Here I come, Nielsen, Nebraska.

Nebraska was really flat, and so hot and dry. She tried to remember how long it had been since she'd been here. She shook her head feeling bad she couldn't. She was a city girl now, skyscrapers and wall-to-wall people. She lived right in the middle of the city, close to the public library where she worked. Yes, this was really different than the Chicago scene.

This was practically desolate, although the little valleys that appeared every so often were pretty, with green pastures, cattle and horses grazing and the little towns visible from the off-ramps.

"I wonder if anyone that I know is still living here. And my first boyfriend, what was his name, Alec? No, he's probably moved away by now if he was smart. Nothing was there then, and I doubt much has changed. Well, except that first kiss. That I remember."

It was easy to daydream about her brief stop in Nebraska years before with the radio not working any better than the air conditioner. She realized she was talking to herself again.

"Get a grip, Girl," she chided herself. Seeing a sign that said "Nielsen 12 miles", she could have wept with relief. "Thank you, thank you." Eagerly she headed down a two-lane highway to a trip back to her childhood, the thing that had made her decide to come to Nielsen personally. There had to be more to her life.

Daydreaming about the time she and her folks came through Nebraska and stayed with her elderly great-aunt, made the miles go faster. Only a few vehicles passed her on the two-lane blacktop, a school bus, a tractor pulling a huge wagon of hay bales, and some pick-ups.

Had it only been a few days since she left Chicago? Had she ever really lived here? Was Nielsen High School still around the corner from the post office? And the all important one, where was her first crush, Alec McKay? Answers to questions she'd never expected to ask herself, now were important.

The unexpected letter that arrived had started it. Somewhere inside her she hoped this letter might change things. Maddy tried to press it flat on the seat beside her, smoothing out the crinkles from being smashed in her pocket. It was twelve years ago, and she was enrolled in her first year of High School. One semester amidst a number of unsettled times for her parents before they gave up trying to make it on their own, and went back to a meaningless job in the lucrative family-owned publishing business in Chicago.

But giving up meant they had to rely on family, family that liked to keep everyone in their place and under the thumb of Grandmother Morris. But she never controlled Aunt Madeline. Stories about her were only whispered in the family because she had defied her grandmother.

She barely recalled her father's favorite aunt, actually her great-aunt, who had settled in the little town of Nielsen, Nebraska, and convinced her parents into moving there, too. Aunt Madeline begged Maddy's father to stick it out, not let the other family members tell them what to do. But, her mother had been sickly and with the cost of medical care, it hadn't been enough.

Her father loved his aunt and he often talked fondly about her in later years. But he also needed the security of a job and he had that back in Chicago. He understood Grandmother Morris was protecting her way of life and the family business in the stern way she had been brought up. He also could empathize with Aunt Madeline's views of independence and being an individual. When Maddy's parents moved back home, they were relegated to acceptable status within the family, but not favored.

Madeline was in her 60s then, with rich red hair in a funny hairdo. Everyone in town called her 'Aunt Madeline'. Stubborn but fair, with a kind and friendly personality, she especially doted on Maddy. With a trace of guilt Maddy remembered thinking how old-fashioned her father's dear aunt was, but in all fairness, it seemed so long ago. The thing Maddy did remember was her first boyfriend, and she'd had to leave him behind along with a good portion of her heart.

Today Alec would probably be considered a hunk. Even then he was sweet natured, handsome, golden haired, captain of the football team. All the girls liked Alec, but he had asked her to her first big dance. She hadn't wanted to leave, and they had promised to write faithfully. She wrote every day for months. He called at first and then, after one letter, he disappeared like a mist, leaving what was left of her young heart broken.

"So much for true love, huh?" She said sarcastically to herself, dodging a farm dog that chased her little blue Honda.

Recalling the pang of first love was still sharp even though it had been a long time ago. It actually made her mad all over again. Brushing damp bangs from her forehead