She surveyed the clouds, low enough to skim the hood. Unable to guess the storm’s natural end but unwilling to let it go just yet, she asked, “Where were you headed?”
“No idea. I barely remember climbing out of the car.”
Freesia knew that discord between the head and body. “Like you became a bystander to your life but didn’t care enough to fix the moment.”
“Exactly.” His voice was reverent; his eyelids tight as if he strained to understand how she had read his mind.
“I was in Chora once, in Greece. It’s this town at the foot of a hilltop monastery, laid out like a maze—tiny shops, white walls, confusing passageways. During my time there, I learned it was the only place I could go to forget, like a puzzle that forced me to engage to find my way back. One day I heard the distant clanking of a goat-herder bell. I had walked a valley all day and burned in the sun. I didn’t remember leaving Chora.”
Freesia had turned to face the man beside her, her knee propped on the seat, her back to the world outside the truck. He had mirrored her pose.
“What did you do? After?”
“I shared bread with two Orthodox monks in heavy robes who were climbing the trails. I told them what had happened, that I supposed I had wanted to disappear. One of them said he was sure I had missed the point of it all, that I had wanted, instead, to be found.”
The stranger clung to her words, eyes pinched, as far away as he’d been earlier, only this time, beside her on that rolling, green hillside. And when she fell silent, he inhaled as if he’d only just remembered to breathe. He glanced out the windshield, straightened, cranked the window down and sampled the air, then placed his ringed hand on the door handle, more like a proper passenger who had overstayed the kindness of a stranger.
Fressia wanted the rain to return, to keep him inside the truck a moment longer, but it had moved on.
“Looks like the storm has passed.”
Painful. Obvious.
“I should let you get on your way.” He popped the door ajar. “Thank you.”
His thank you was throaty, glum, tender, everything and nothing to do with shelter from the elements. A different variety of lost surfaced in his eyes. He made no move to leave.
“I might need a name if this story about a yellow sports car is to be believed,” she said.
“So that you know you weren’t a bystander but didn’t care enough to fix the moment?”
His smile transformed his face, left her with all the humidity beneath her skin.
“Jay.” He poised his hand for a shake.
She clasped his hand. His ring was warm, substantial, filled her palm. “Freesia.”
He didn’t release her hand.
She didn’t mind.
“Keep it real, Jay.”
He nodded, the same early smile haunting his lips. His hand slid from hers. When he had exited the truck, closed the door, that same hand made a fist, twice bumped the seam where the window hid inside the door, and walked away.
Freesia’s heart floated to her throat. She watched his retreat in the truck’s massive side mirror, knowing that reflected objects were smaller, less significant, than they appeared. Leave it, Free. But she was unable to block the words gathering on her tongue or the speed with which she hustled to the passenger window and poked her head out.
“Jay?”
His gait slowed. He turned and took a few steps backward.
“You like short rib hot dogs with spicy slaw? Place about three miles up the road. Hole in the wall. Might miss it driving by in that sports car.”
Jay stopped, his stance wide. “Then I guess it’s a good thing I have this fine truck to slow me down, show me what’s important.”
Freesia smiled, a bystander to the moment and all the ones to come. She had a flight to LaGuardia the day after tomorrow; a new job, her dream job, in New York; Charlotte saying “We’ll miss you,” including her sister, Alex, in that sentiment, though they both knew it wouldn’t be true; Freesia spending the rest of her life wondering if what she’d learned about her father in her short time in Devon would be enough. And perhaps, one moment with a wet stranger in a Mississippi spring that she didn’t care enough to fix. She was here, in this moment, simply a finder to someone who was lost. Nothing more than the monk in the heavy cloak had been for her. Completely incompatible. His very own storm.
Except now, it was entirely possible his storm had become hers.
The Family Wish will be available March 6th 2019
www.DanielleBlairBooks.com
BLURB
When her child’s life is at stake, a mother will do anything to save him.
Clara McNair is running out of time to save her son, James. When the two-year-old is diagnosed with a rare form of brain cancer, only an experimental treatment can save his life. She desperately needs money to pay for the surgery, but she’ll have to travel back to the site of her darkest memories to get it.
Clara has escaped the demons of her youth—or so she thinks. It’s been ten years since the mysterious disappearance of her parents. Widely suspected of murdering her mother and father, Clara fled west to start a new life. Now, a documentary film crew is offering cold, hard cash—enough to pay for James’s treatment—in exchange for the sordid secrets of her past.
With no other choice but to delve into a long-ago tragedy, Clara must unravel the lies surrounding that terrible night. Facing hostile gossip, Clara is fighting to clear her name and learn the truth about what really happened. But how far will she go into the dark to save her son—and herself?
Get your copy of A Mother’s Lie at
www.JoCrow.com
* * *
EXTRACT
Chapter One
Dense red clay was pushing between the teeth. Pond mist drifted across the manicured lawns, wisping through the dark eye sockets. Parts of the cranium were shaded a vile yellow-brown, where decomposing leaves clung to its surface like bile expressed from a liver. The jawbone was separated from the skull, its curved row of teeth pointing skyward to greet the rising sun.
Two feet away, closer to the oak tree, other bones were piled haphazardly: a pelvis, high iliac crests and subpubic angle; a femur, caked with dirt, jammed into his empty skull. Sunlight decorated the brittle bones in long, lazy strips and darkened hairline fractures till they blended with the shed behind them.
It was peaceful here, mostly. The pond no longer bubbled, its aerator decayed by time; weed-clogged flowerbeds no longer bloomed—hands that once worked the land long ago dismissed. Fog blanketed the area, as if drawn by silence.. Once, a startled shriek woke the mourning doves and set them all into flight.
It was the first time in ten years the mammoth magnificence of the Blue Ridge Mountains had scrutinized these bones; the first song in a decade the mourning doves chorused to them from their high perch.
A clatter split apart the dawn; the skull toppled over as it was struck with another bone.
In a clearing, tucked safely behind the McNair estate, someone was whistling as they worked at the earth. The notes were disjointed and haphazard, like they were an afterthought. They pierced the stillness and, overhead, one of the mourning doves spooked and took flight, rustling leaves as it rose through the mist.
A shovel struck the wet ground, digging up clay and mulch, tossing it onto the growing mound to their left. The whistling stopped, mid note, and a contemplative hum took its place.
Light glinted on the silvery band in the exposed clay—the digger pocketed it—the shovel struck the ground again; this time, it clinked as it hit something solid.
Bone.
A hand dusted off decayed vegetative matter and wrested the bone from its tomb. Launching it into the air, it flew in a smooth arc, and crashed into the skull like a bowling pin, scattering the remains across the grass. With a grunt of satisfaction, the digger rose and started to refill the hole from the clay mound.
When it was filled and smoothed, and the sod was replaced over the disrupted gro
und, the digger lifted the shovel and strolled into the woods, one hand tucked in a pocket as they whistled a cheery tune lost to the morning fog.
For two days, the bones rested on the grass by the shed, until they were placed, carefully, into forensic evidence bags in a flurry of urgent activity: flashing police cameras, and gawking, small-town rookie officers who’d never seen their like before.
Silence blanketed the McNair estate once more, and the looming, distant mountains stood watch over a town that had seen too little so long ago, and now knew too much.
Get your copy of A Mother’s Lie at
www.JoCrow.com
The Butterfly Dream: Match Made In Devon Bridal Shop: Book Two Page 21
