Patricia Mitchell Lapidus

The Cave House Stories Patricia Mitchell Lapidus

What was it that makes Kye, the Cave House woman, timid? She herself doesn't know until she meets the man who knows about the stories. Even then, she wants to hide. But her best friend Daisy teases her into the open. As the two women help with theater productions in their small town, each learns something from the way the other lives. Kye's worries double when one of her daughters joins a sharing community with narrow beliefs. Meanwhile, Bobby Lee is eager to play the child lead in the musical Kye and Daisy choose--if only his somewhat rigid father will let him. The story begins: When Ollie first saw the Cave House he wanted to move in, keeping its two shy occupants, a field mouse and a woman with waves of auburn hair falling down her back like the pelt of a red squirrel. A streak of white flowed from her widow's peak over her right shoulder like the squirrel's tender underbelly. He didn't know what part of the Cave House captivated him the most, the old time vertical wood siding, the large front windows that looked at him like kind eyes, or the way the house backed into the hillside as if there must be secret passageways deep within. Maybe it was the simple beauty of a roof decorated with moss and ferns. He saw the Cave House only after he'd won the shy woman's trust in a most unusual way, by telling her a story he'd never dared tell anyone. Even then he knew, with a Zen like acceptance, that neither the dwelling nor the woman would ever be his, any more than he could possess the wild mouse. And then, winging acceptance back at whoever had decided Zen living meant passive living, he vowed they would all be his, the mouse that crept in from the meadow, the cardinal that sang in the lilacs, the squirrel that chattered from the trees above the Cave House, and the woman who wanted nothing to do with love.