House on Diablo Road: Resurrection Day (The McCann Family Saga Book 3) by Jeanie Freeman- Harper

Jonathan long to take over the place and move right in with Lucinda. He took advantage of her, since she had nowhere else to go. He told everyone she lived on one side of the house, and him on the other, before he married her. Nobody believed that. The old timers used to say he’d always been sweet on her — besides being covetous of the McCann house to the point of obsession. Some folks said it wasn't Lucinda but the house that had Jonathan under its spell.”
    “ So what did Jonathan do with all that land Cyrus accumulated?”
    “ Ran some cattle on part of it. Sold most of the back acreage when the railroad came through to service the timber business. He married Lucinda when a decent mourning period had gone by.”
    “ Who owns the place now?”
    “ Jonathan’s great-grandson Nathan inherited it, but the old man specified he had to wait until he turned thirty. Figured he'd take care of things better, after sowing his wild oats, I suppose. The old man was particularly fond of him when he was a little boy. Some said the boy was the apple of his eye in his last years. Everyone but Nathan got bypassed in the will.”
    “ What happened to Lucinda?”
    “She was in her grave by the time she hit forty . She died right there in the house, from an overdose of rot-gut. So the story goes. The old timers said after she took up with Jonathan Bonney, she went downhill. Others believe she lost her will to live from never having children, even with Jonathan’s motherless brood to take care of. They say she grieved for the babies she never had, and she grieved for Cyrus. Only it was something more than grief, something hard to put a name to.”
    “ Didn’t she receive any treatment for depression?”
    “ Well, she always kept various so called 'tonics' around, since she was a young woman. Doc says he was never called out there, though. She died, and Jonathan buried her. End of story. We’re talking about old time ways, when country folks laid their loved ones to rest on their own property and sometimes without bothering with a death certificate, though some folks tried to get the information to do just that. He made it awful hard to even come on his land.”
    “ Was there a funeral?”
    “ No one knows. If there was, no one was invited to the service. There were bad feelings between Lucinda and Cyrus’ friends over their dislike of Jonathan. They felt like he took advantage of Lucinda’s predicament, since she had no one to take her in, and he had virtually stolen the plantation for the back taxes. The rest of her family was gone when her cousin died. Charlotte was her name I think.”
    “ Yes, she was Buck Hennessy’s wife.”
    The bell on the shop door jingled, as a trickling of customers entered, some smiling and nodding in their direction. One man stared at the oddly matched friends with unabashed curiosity. There was the calm and self-contained Jesse, tall with a head full of blond wavy hair mixed with gray and eyes of bright blue ice. Across from him sat the short paunchy Clancy, with small button eyes and the jitters of a caged hamster.
    Jesse waited until the customers selected their books and moved on before he continued: “It’s a shame a woman like her locked herself away from the world. Katie found her picture in an old newspaper at the library and said she was very much the elegant lady. Hard to believe no one cared enough to come to see about her.”
    “ It’s no wonder to me. Have you ever been all the way down that path? That house is isolated . Cyrus built it there for privacy, but he was no hermit. Now Jonathan ended up a recluse out there. He and Lucinda stopped coming into town and even sent a hired hand out for their groceries.”
    “ So no one saw Bonney in his last years?”
    “ Someone on an adjoining farm caught a glimpse of him one time and said he’d let his hair grow to his shoulders and had a ragged beard. And to think he was once such a meticulously groomed man. Used to come in the