I Still Dream About You

Edward Crocker Begins

FROM THE DAY OF HIS BIRTH, NURSE LETTIE ROSS NEVER LEFT young Edward Crocker’s side. Although she was still very young and pretty, she had no time for suitors. She was on call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week and slept in his room at night. Angus Crocker was terrified of kidnappers. There were ruffians down in the valley that would do anything for money.

As a consequence of his father’s mistrust of strangers, Edward played no games with other boys and mostly stayed indoors. Edward took after his mother’s side and was delicate and prone to colds and fevers, but even so, Angus refused to let Nurse Lettie call in a doctor. He no longer trusted doctors. He had come through many childhood illnesses; so would Edward.

But Lettie, being a trained nurse, did believe in doctors. Her own brother back home in Scotland was studying to become a physician. What Angus didn’t know was that Lettie Ross, passing the child off as her daughter, had dressed little Edward as a girl, and they had visited many a doctor in Birmingham over the years. She would take no chances while typhoid and yellow fever ran so rampant. She had made a secret vow to God that nothing would ever harm this child in her care, and if the child needed medicine, Angus Crocker be damned, the child would have medicine. But other than those occasional visits to doctors and carefully supervised outings to visit the Crocker-Sperry mines and steel mills, Lettie and Edward seldom left the grounds of Crestview. It wasn’t too uncommon. In the rarefied world of the wealthy, in the days of private tutors and private nannies, everything was brought up the mountain to Edward. Private barbers cut his hair; clothes were brought to the home and picked out for him by Nurse Ross. His schooling was conducted at home. He had everything a boy could want, except friends his own age and a loving father. The only real interest Angus seemed to have in Edward was to teach him the business so he would be prepared to take over one day. With no friends and a father who was absent most of the time, Edward’s entire world revolved around Lettie Ross. And for Lettie, who was still young enough to miss her brothers and sisters, Edward was her only companion. They played together, made up games, and had fun together. But then one day, when Edward came of a certain age, they suddenly grew even closer. Edward and Lettie Ross had a sexual secret, a secret that must never be told.