Juliet Richter had finished reading her husbands new book for the fifth time and still couldn’t believe that she was married to a published author. She thought about the long nights that he had been up writing until the very early morning. The hours of research that he had put into every chapter.
The door opened and in walked her husband, a bookish sort of man who’s build might have given off a more outdoorsy impression if it weren’t for the horn rimed glasses and the tweed jacket that he always insisted on wearing.
“Hello honey, you didn’t have to wait up for me,” he said.
“I wanted to. How was your trip?”
He set down his bag and sat next to her on the sofa. “It was alright for the most part. Though the item that I really wanted to see was missing.”
“Oh, what was that?” She asked off hand knowing that her husband’s own excitement would carry him through his story.
“The Antigone historical archives had a Journal belonging to Job Gellervice on file. But when I went in to view it, they couldn’t find the darn thing.”
At the name Gellervice Juliet perked up. “Why would you want to look at the Journal of a Gellervice for?”
“Because that’s the topic of my next book. The Invisible Feud: The Forgotten story of the Brettsins and the Gellervices.” He spread his hand through the air as if leaving the title floating there in his wake. “I think that the story your Grandfather used to tell you might have some truths to it. For example chapter 13 of Visions in the Smoke.” He picked his book up off the his wife’s lap and flipped through it. “The names Brettsin and Gellervice turn up everywhere I look and often in the most bizarre of circumstances.
“Did you know that I found the diary of Mavis Walker, a prostitute from 1891. She was in Colorado for the second gold boom and she had two clients. One was a Gellervice and the other was a Brettsin. One day Gellervice walks in while she is servicing Brettsin and jumps in bed like she’s alone or something. Brettsin doesn’t notice a thing not even the extra weight on the bed.”
“How could you read such things. A whore’s diary, really!”
“It’s history, There’s nothing wrong with history. Anyway the last name listed by the archives to look at the Journal, was a Carolina Gellervice, about thirty years ago. I‘m going to try to contact her and see if she took the journal.”
Juliet turned to her husband and looked him in the eyes. “You won’t be able to find her.”
“Oh and why not?”
“Because you married me. Whether I changed my last name or not, you are still married to a Brettsin and that makes you a Brettsin too. So if the story is true you won’t be able to have any contact with a Gellervice.”
© This story and subsequent parts are my own original idea and are protected under United States copy right law.
C. O. Bonham 