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S.D. O'Donnell
S.D. O'Donnell
Category:
Mainstream
Publisher: WindStorm Books, LLC
ISBN-10: B00M4MKAES
Type: Fiction
Pages: 32
Copyright: 7/27/2014
Price: $2.99 (eBook)
Mrs. Blackstone has kept a secret for 35 years. What is bothering this feisty octogenarian and why now?
Travel with her as she journeys through a long suppressed past and stares through the shadows of love and lost.
The novella Shadow Journey is a psychological read that keeps the pages turning and stays with you long after the last word.
Currently available for the Kindle only.
Excerpt
1
I SIT IN THE GAZEBO, alone. No cup of tea. No neighborly conversation to help fill the silence. Haunted by 85 years worth of musings, I watch the sun set and feel my age.
A November breeze kicks fallen leaves across the hillside and I’m happy I have on a heavy shirt since I’ve forgotten my shawl. I brush tears off my cheek before the wind can chill them.
Today is an anniversary. Not a good one but one that has come and gone 35 times. Only a few are left who remember the significance of this date. Only I have ever known the truth of it.
The weight of that truth grows heavier the closer I get to my own end. Maybe some part of me feels guilt and wants the release of confession. More likely, the weight comes from vanity. I don’t want the most significant event in my life to never be known, even though I will never speak of it while alive.
The last rays of sunlight disappear behind the peaks as I reach a decision. I'll expose my secret on paper and leave it for my friends Saul and Jayne, the two people most likely to care when I’m gone. This way, they can remember the whole of who I was, the worst along with, I hope, the best.
2
THE AFTERNOON MY HUSBAND, Ted, got the bad news, I asked our daughter to come over for dinner. Alice was 25, a single professional trying to make a name in the world of high finance. Whatever that meant. I taught botany at the local community college and Ted taught high school math, but according to her, we weren’t capable of grasping the ins and outs of investing money.
I’d long ago stopped trying to understand the child I brought into this world.
She usually demanded two weeks’ notice to schedule any kind of event, including dinner. I begged her to find time that night, and she finally agreed to stop by on her way home from a business engagement. She wouldn't guarantee a time.
Ted paced the house all night, wanting the telling over with. Alice and I had never grown out of the daughter-versus-mother conflict usually restricted to a child’s teenage years. Ted, though, always doted on her.
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