A woman starts a new life after her husband is found dead...and in renovating her new home she discovers a 30 years old mystery scribbled on scraps of paper where a woman and two children have disappeared. In trying to solve it she puts herself and her ex-cop friend in danger.
EXCERPT:
Chapter 1
2003
Abigail Sutton began driving with no real destination in mind. It’d been years since she’d done anything as spontaneous, not since before her husband, Joel, had walked out of their apartment late one night for cigarettes and hadn’t returned. She’d loved her husband more than anything in life, and he her. Joel hadn’t merely run out on her, she knew that from the first. He wouldn’t have done that, wasn’t that sort of man. They’d been happily married for twenty years and were about to begin building their dream house. Had the land, it’d been cleared off and the building would have commenced the following week.
Then Joel had disappeared and for two and a half years he’d been missing. Until last month when the police had phoned one morning to inform her his car and his body had been found in the middle of a ravine deep in the woods outside of town. Joel was dead. Victim of an ill-fated mugging, the police said, left lifeless and robbed, in his stripped car in a remote place no one had found until now.
It was ironic. She’d remained alone, in the cramped apartment, for two years, waiting, believing he’d stroll back in one night just as he’d walked out. Believing she’d get a phone call from him, a message, anything. It hadn’t happened. Her life had been frozen and sad. For so long. Too long.
She’d lost her graphic artist job at the local newspaper last month, which was partly her fault. She’d quit, sick of producing ads and inserts among a group of overworked and frantic people always fighting with the computers. Too many deadlines. Not enough employees. It’d been coming for a long time. Losing Joel had changed her. She wasn’t easy to be around, she knew that. Angry or melancholy all the time. Obsessed with finding Joel she kind of went nuts. Her co-workers ended up ignoring her and it hurt. With all those people around, she’d never been so alone. It’d taken her a while to figure it out but there was more to life than some lousy job and an empty apartment. Joel’s official death certificate sealed that belief. Now she was acting on what she’d learned.
The asphalt road before her car was shimmering in the summer’s heat and the steering wheel under her hands felt good. She was in search of a new life because the past was unchangeable, but the future wasn’t.
Traveling the main highway for over an hour, she veered onto an exit and a side road that wound into woods and ended up in a town the map called Spookie. She was searching for a sleepy hamlet; a certain feeling or magic remembered from childhood, of summer innocence and safety, a picturesque and welcoming village where she could start over. Because for the first time in a long time she was free. Free to reach out to other people, open her heart and her life, live, reinvent herself. She wouldn’t be moody and reclusive any longer. She was going to be happy.
With her savings she’d have enough to buy a fixer upper house, move in, and just live for a while until she got another job. If a job was what she had to do to pay the bills. She had this crazy idea of being a freelance artist, of selling paintings and drawings, and not ever again having to work locked up all day in an office. A crazy idea of living cheaply; of a simple life. But it’d been a long time since she’d drawn, illustrated, anything, because computers had replaced her creative skills, and she hoped she hadn’t forgotten how.
How peaceful the country roads and the surrounding woods were. She stopped the car on the shoulder and tramped into the damp grass alongside an old wooden bridge where the light, pale shades of tawny gold and delicate vermilion, seemed softer.
She began climbing, using slim trees to help her upwards. At the top of the rise, she paused. The countryside, all hills and tree-dotted valleys, was laid out for miles around her and the sky above was a palette of pinks, blues and wispy whites. The breeze, lifting her brown hair gently about her face, seemed to sing to her. Here you will find home.
There was a miniature town nestled in the center of a clump of woods below, pretty as a picture postcard, and so cloaked in fog it was barely visible. She studied it, fascinated. From where she was it appeared full of tiny houses, tiny buildings and tiny roads. But real people lived in those houses and buildings and lived their lives out among the woods and the mist. The town was calling to her as if she belonged there. Home is here.
Back in the car, she found herself on the town’s Main Street, which was lined in Victorian frame houses and shops. Each house well cared for and unique, some covered in climbing ivy, surrounded by towering trees and decorated in American flags for the coming holiday. There were people sitting and chatting quietly on shady porches or coming in and out of doorways, strolling through a park around the courthouse. A small lake surrounded the park. Businesses, a bookstore, a modest general and grocery store, a five & dime, a hardware store, a restaurant, an ice cream parlor, and what had to be a library, squatted side by side with homes. A perfect little town.
Welcome to Spookie, population 558 were the words on the sign on the side of the road. Big white letters on a bright red board.
Abigail couldn’t help herself and laughed. It was a peculiar name for a town. But the drifting fog, the darkness huddled beneath the trees and sky partially hidden by leaves and branches created an eerie ambiance to the place. It was a little spooky. She liked it though. It reminded her of an English village, tranquil and mysterious or a town right out of the1950’s. Much like the town she’d grown up in and had loved. Penny candy at the corner confectionary, books dragged home from a musty library, playing hide and seek at twilight and riding her bike through tree lined shady streets with her siblings were what she fondly remembered. In a sense she’d been looking for that town again all her life.
She parked her car in front of the courthouse. After the air conditioning of the auto, the outside heat was a slap of a hot hand. Even her thin blue jeans and red T-shirt seemed too warm on her skin. Grabbing her hair she tied it into a ponytail with a Scrunchie she kept in her purse and strolled the sidewalks peering into the store windows, nodding her head to the people lounging on the porches. They nodded or smiled back.
She caught wisps of conversation:
Myrtle broke the wheel on her wagon this morning. She got so mad. Saw her dragging it, grumbling the whole way, down the street. Laughter.
Someone’s got to do something about that sister of hers. I swear she’s got a hundred critters living in her house. Looks like a zoo. I delivered a package there the other day….
…they say that house needs a lot of work. The old lady had been sick a long time before she passed and didn’t keep the place up. Strange old reclusive woman. No, no relatives…not living that is. She had a younger sister once. What ever happened to her? She got up and just left, her and her kids. Off to greener pastures. A long, long time past, I recollect. No one ever saw them again.
It’s so hot today, ice cream sounds good. Let’s go get a banana split.
But Abigail felt at home…in a strange town in the middle of nowhere with people she’d never met before. This was where she belonged. She continued exploring the shops and the streets. In the air there was a tantalizing perfume, a combination of cotton candy, summer flowers and hot dogs. In the distance she could hear the purr of a lawn mower. Smell the aroma of cut grass. The sweet smells alone were enough to want to stay. Somewhere phantom children were frolicking and laughing. The usual summer noises. She expected to glance up any moment and see kids playing with their hula hoops or skating down the sidewalks on old-fashioned roller skates. The kind that used to have those tightening keys like the one she used to wear on a shoestring around her neck so she wouldn’t lose it.
Stella’s Diner was tucked in a tight corner a few stores down from Mason’s General Store. The diner was as good a place as any, she figured, to get a bite to eat and ask where the local real estate office was. And she was hungry. Wandering around had given her an appetite.***
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EXCERPT:
Chapter 1
2003
Abigail Sutton began driving with no real destination in mind. It’d been years since she’d done anything as spontaneous, not since before her husband, Joel, had walked out of their apartment late one night for cigarettes and hadn’t returned. She’d loved her husband more than anything in life, and he her. Joel hadn’t merely run out on her, she knew that from the first. He wouldn’t have done that, wasn’t that sort of man. They’d been happily married for twenty years and were about to begin building their dream house. Had the land, it’d been cleared off and the building would have commenced the following week.
Then Joel had disappeared and for two and a half years he’d been missing. Until last month when the police had phoned one morning to inform her his car and his body had been found in the middle of a ravine deep in the woods outside of town. Joel was dead. Victim of an ill-fated mugging, the police said, left lifeless and robbed, in his stripped car in a remote place no one had found until now.
It was ironic. She’d remained alone, in the cramped apartment, for two years, waiting, believing he’d stroll back in one night just as he’d walked out. Believing she’d get a phone call from him, a message, anything. It hadn’t happened. Her life had been frozen and sad. For so long. Too long.
She’d lost her graphic artist job at the local newspaper last month, which was partly her fault. She’d quit, sick of producing ads and inserts among a group of overworked and frantic people always fighting with the computers. Too many deadlines. Not enough employees. It’d been coming for a long time. Losing Joel had changed her. She wasn’t easy to be around, she knew that. Angry or melancholy all the time. Obsessed with finding Joel she kind of went nuts. Her co-workers ended up ignoring her and it hurt. With all those people around, she’d never been so alone. It’d taken her a while to figure it out but there was more to life than some lousy job and an empty apartment. Joel’s official death certificate sealed that belief. Now she was acting on what she’d learned.
The asphalt road before her car was shimmering in the summer’s heat and the steering wheel under her hands felt good. She was in search of a new life because the past was unchangeable, but the future wasn’t.
Traveling the main highway for over an hour, she veered onto an exit and a side road that wound into woods and ended up in a town the map called Spookie. She was searching for a sleepy hamlet; a certain feeling or magic remembered from childhood, of summer innocence and safety, a picturesque and welcoming village where she could start over. Because for the first time in a long time she was free. Free to reach out to other people, open her heart and her life, live, reinvent herself. She wouldn’t be moody and reclusive any longer. She was going to be happy.
With her savings she’d have enough to buy a fixer upper house, move in, and just live for a while until she got another job. If a job was what she had to do to pay the bills. She had this crazy idea of being a freelance artist, of selling paintings and drawings, and not ever again having to work locked up all day in an office. A crazy idea of living cheaply; of a simple life. But it’d been a long time since she’d drawn, illustrated, anything, because computers had replaced her creative skills, and she hoped she hadn’t forgotten how.
How peaceful the country roads and the surrounding woods were. She stopped the car on the shoulder and tramped into the damp grass alongside an old wooden bridge where the light, pale shades of tawny gold and delicate vermilion, seemed softer.
She began climbing, using slim trees to help her upwards. At the top of the rise, she paused. The countryside, all hills and tree-dotted valleys, was laid out for miles around her and the sky above was a palette of pinks, blues and wispy whites. The breeze, lifting her brown hair gently about her face, seemed to sing to her. Here you will find home.
There was a miniature town nestled in the center of a clump of woods below, pretty as a picture postcard, and so cloaked in fog it was barely visible. She studied it, fascinated. From where she was it appeared full of tiny houses, tiny buildings and tiny roads. But real people lived in those houses and buildings and lived their lives out among the woods and the mist. The town was calling to her as if she belonged there. Home is here.
Back in the car, she found herself on the town’s Main Street, which was lined in Victorian frame houses and shops. Each house well cared for and unique, some covered in climbing ivy, surrounded by towering trees and decorated in American flags for the coming holiday. There were people sitting and chatting quietly on shady porches or coming in and out of doorways, strolling through a park around the courthouse. A small lake surrounded the park. Businesses, a bookstore, a modest general and grocery store, a five & dime, a hardware store, a restaurant, an ice cream parlor, and what had to be a library, squatted side by side with homes. A perfect little town.
Welcome to Spookie, population 558 were the words on the sign on the side of the road. Big white letters on a bright red board.
Abigail couldn’t help herself and laughed. It was a peculiar name for a town. But the drifting fog, the darkness huddled beneath the trees and sky partially hidden by leaves and branches created an eerie ambiance to the place. It was a little spooky. She liked it though. It reminded her of an English village, tranquil and mysterious or a town right out of the1950’s. Much like the town she’d grown up in and had loved. Penny candy at the corner confectionary, books dragged home from a musty library, playing hide and seek at twilight and riding her bike through tree lined shady streets with her siblings were what she fondly remembered. In a sense she’d been looking for that town again all her life.
She parked her car in front of the courthouse. After the air conditioning of the auto, the outside heat was a slap of a hot hand. Even her thin blue jeans and red T-shirt seemed too warm on her skin. Grabbing her hair she tied it into a ponytail with a Scrunchie she kept in her purse and strolled the sidewalks peering into the store windows, nodding her head to the people lounging on the porches. They nodded or smiled back.
She caught wisps of conversation:
Myrtle broke the wheel on her wagon this morning. She got so mad. Saw her dragging it, grumbling the whole way, down the street. Laughter.
Someone’s got to do something about that sister of hers. I swear she’s got a hundred critters living in her house. Looks like a zoo. I delivered a package there the other day….
…they say that house needs a lot of work. The old lady had been sick a long time before she passed and didn’t keep the place up. Strange old reclusive woman. No, no relatives…not living that is. She had a younger sister once. What ever happened to her? She got up and just left, her and her kids. Off to greener pastures. A long, long time past, I recollect. No one ever saw them again.
It’s so hot today, ice cream sounds good. Let’s go get a banana split.
But Abigail felt at home…in a strange town in the middle of nowhere with people she’d never met before. This was where she belonged. She continued exploring the shops and the streets. In the air there was a tantalizing perfume, a combination of cotton candy, summer flowers and hot dogs. In the distance she could hear the purr of a lawn mower. Smell the aroma of cut grass. The sweet smells alone were enough to want to stay. Somewhere phantom children were frolicking and laughing. The usual summer noises. She expected to glance up any moment and see kids playing with their hula hoops or skating down the sidewalks on old-fashioned roller skates. The kind that used to have those tightening keys like the one she used to wear on a shoestring around her neck so she wouldn’t lose it.
Stella’s Diner was tucked in a tight corner a few stores down from Mason’s General Store. The diner was as good a place as any, she figured, to get a bite to eat and ask where the local real estate office was. And she was hungry. Wandering around had given her an appetite.***
