Here's a FREEBIE - Suspense, Supernatural, Family Drama - All set in snowy Carnation, Washington at Christmas time.
But, what they are up against is something they couldn't have ever imagined, something sinister and beyond their collected pool of experience with not only criminals, but the afterlife. In a mad rush to Christmas Eve, the twosome are desperate to prevent the prophetic dream from becoming a heart-wrenching reality and to save not only the Dunn family home but the patriarch - Pops.
If this book looks interesting, but you're still not sure of taking a chance on the FREE book because your Kindle has too many books on it already, read a bit:
"Love all, trust a few. Do wrong to none." ~ William Shakespeare
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Dec 19,20
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Daria Stark faces a lonely Christmas with her two young children promised to her recent ex-husband and his scheming girlfriend. Hoping for distraction, she leaves Seattle for the picturesque Canadian ski resort, Whistler Mountain, where her friend Joanne is entertaining a house full of Christmas company When a handsome man arrives at Joanne's mountain lodge for Christmas, Daria finds herself tempted by the attentions of the charming vintner, Pierre Charbenaud. Knowing she's vulnerable to his attentions and will undoubtedly face heartbreak at the end of the vacation when she returns to Seattle and Pierre returns to Napa, Daria throws herself in to Christmas instead of Pierre's log bed at the lodge. But days spent skiing the mountain with the once ski instructor and nights in front of the fire have Daria under the mistletoe with the dashing vintner soon enough.
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Excerpt from Dream Come True
Chapter 1
James
Dunn stood in the snow in his front yard in Carnation, Washington and watched
his childhood home burn. Orange flames licked the side of the old two-story
home, heading from the back to the front of the house and up. “Pops!” His
father stood in the front window of the bedroom he’d slept in his whole life.
Why the hell wasn’t his dad running down the stairs? The house wasn’t
completely overtaken by the inferno. “Get out of there!” he yelled to the old
man in the window, waving his arms.
Pops
shook his head, as if it was too late. But it wasn’t. He could still get down
the stairs. And then Jamey remembered that the hall from Pops bedroom ran the
length of the house at the back and the fire appeared to have started in the
kitchen. The back of the house where the kitchen had been was completely
engulfed in flames, crackling and finishing off the gathering place for the
Dunn family for forty some odd years.
He
pointed to the window. “Open the window. Jump!” Pops could slide down the roof
of the front porch outside his window and only fall about fifteen feet into the
snow. “Do it!”
Pops
showed that the window didn’t open and then Jamey realized that his father had
painted the window shut a few months ago when he’d decided to cover up the blue
bedroom for a “nice neutral and masculine tan.”
“Smash
it!” James yelled. Why in hell didn’t Pops do something. “Come on, Man. Get out
of there.” Jamey’s voice cracked. If Tina was in this dream, she could take
away the fire, leap up to the window, smash the glass and rescue Pops. She had the
ability to change the dream because this whole fiasco started as her dream.
She’d be wondering what happened to him, where he went. He wondered himself.
Maybe he could call her into this branch of the dream. “Tina! Get over here.”
Pops
stood at the window shaking his head.
Jamey
ran to the porch, stood on the railing and tried to shimmy up the corner post
to the grab the gutter. How had he ever gotten to the roof this way in his
teenage years, it was so slippery? He couldn’t get any traction. He jumped down
and ran to the garage at the back of the house, a building not attached to the
blaze. Finding the ladder hanging at the back of the garage, he hoisted it down
and ran it outside, hitting Pops’ truck several times along the way.
By
the time he got to the front of the house, flames had engulfed the front rooms
but it looked like Pops’ bedroom would be the last to go. He still stood at the
window, his face a blank mask of nothing. Jamey extended the ladder, locked it
in place and placed it against the roof outside Pops’ window. Just as he got to
the top of the ladder and was about to step to the roof, flames invaded Pops’
room. He could still save his father. He jumped onto the slippery, angled roof,
half crawled his way to the window and when he looked up, what he saw made him
stagger backwards.
It
wasn’t Pops at the window. The person who’d been watching him was a young woman
with a skeletal face and stringy hair, laughing to see that the trick had
worked. Now James would burn to death.
~
Tina
floated among the decrepit ruins of the sunken ship. Before falling asleep, she
and Jamey had decided on a wreck dive and she’d imagined a wrecked pirate ship
at thirty-five feet under, somewhere in the Caribbean. Who knew if such a place
existed beyond her mind, but as Jamey always said, “Darlin’, if you can imagine
it, we can go there in a dream.”
If
anyone had told Tina two years ago that she’d have this vivid dream life, she
would’ve laughed in their face. Until Jamey, she hadn’t believed in paranormal
mumbo jumbo. A business major, Tina had been influenced by her traditional
upbringing with two very conservative parents and hadn’t even heard of most of
this shit before Jamey came back into her life and revealed he was a psychic
freak. Then the mumbo jumbo became her life—entering other people’s dreams,
sharing lucid dreams, even telepathy, which Jamey called hyper-intuition as a
way of soft-peddling a “strange-ass ability.” It was all Jamey’s doing. He’d
brought the strangeness into her life.
Tina
kicked through crystal clear, turquoise water, across the deck of the pirate
ship, Jamey back there somewhere. She was the dive instructor with the most
experience, the boss underwater.
Pulling
herself through a doorway on the schooner, she floated down the stairs to what
looked like the ship’s dining room. A long wooden table and benches dominated
the room. As ordered, the visibility of the water was extraordinary, the fish
plentiful and the exploration of this ship fascinating. A large candelabra
dominated the center of the dining table, an ornate chair with carvings of
mermaids at one end.
When
she turned to Jamey to point out the chair, he wasn’t there. Had he not
followed her? She kicked herself up the stairs to the deck, but Jamey was
nowhere to be seen. That was strange. He couldn’t leave a dream without her.
She controlled this ability now, not him. Where was he? If he’d woken, she
would’ve too.
Tina took the water from the dream and stood
on the deck. “Jamey?’ Where’d you go?” she called into the dream.
No
answer.
Where
the hell was he?
The
ship wasn’t so large that he wouldn’t hear her. “Jamey?”
Nothing.
She
glanced over the railing to see that the vessel now rested on a sandy bed in
what used to be a picturesque bay. Then, she heard an anguished cry from her
husband.
“No!”
Jamey’s voice sounded very far away.
Tina
ran to the bow’s highest point. Aside from that one word, the dream was deathly
quiet around her. “Jamey!”
Footsteps
sounded on the wooden stairs and seconds later, Jamey emerged from the doorway.
Tina
jumped down from the higher deck and ran towards her husband. “Where were you?”
“We
need to end this.” His face had that shut up and follow my lead look. “I’ll
tell you what happened when we jump out.” He still wore his scuba gear but had
removed his regulator from his mouth and his face mask. “Now!”
She
didn’t ask why they needed to leave. Didn’t have to. Jamey was the expert
dreamer. They joined hands, ran to where they’d arrived in the dream, and on
Jamey’s “1, 2, 3…” jumped into the air.
The
trip back to their prone bodies in their Maui bedroom was less than two seconds
from the moment they jumped. Tina opened her eyes still holding her husband’s
hand from when they fell into the dream, probably only minutes earlier. She
sensed something was wrong. Terribly wrong.
Jamey
bolted upright. “I was taken into another dream.”
That
was impossible. “How?”
“I
don’t know. But, Pops’ house was on fire. Burning to the ground. It was snowy
and Pops was inside, trapped in his bedroom. I kept yelling at him to jump out
the window, into the snow, but he wouldn’t.” Jamey turned to her, his eyes
skittish with emotion. “He just watched me, nodding, like this was his time to
die. He didn’t even try to escape. I got a ladder and when I reached the
window, he turned into a ghoulish woman.” He covered his face with his hands
and let out a strangled sob.
Tina
slid over to wrap her arms around him. “Was it a proph?” They’d taken to calling
premonitions this, shortening the word prophetic.
“I
couldn’t tell. Everything was on fire. I don’t know.” Jamey was rattled, a
state she rarely saw with her confident husband, the ex-cop and soldier. “The
Christmas tree was in the window.”
Tina
wondered if Pops had his tree up yet. “If everything was bright, maybe it was a
normal dream.” Normals were innocent. Prophs were easy to tell with pale colors
and fuzzy edges. “Probably just a bad dream, Jamey.” She hadn’t seen her
husband this upset since she went into labor with Kai nine months earlier. “Your
dad wouldn’t just let himself die inside a burning house.”
Jamey’s
breathing was labored. “You’re probably right. But who the hell was that woman?”
His eyes darted around the room. “She looked young, but dead and she laughed
like she’d caught me in a trap.”
“Maybe
nothing,” she offered. “I wish I’d come with you to this dream.” How had he
left her dream on his own? “Call Pops to see if he’s doing fine.”
“Yes,
I will.” He got out of bed to retrieve his phone from the dresser top.
In
another two weeks, she and Jamey would head to the mainland with Kai to spend
Christmas in snowy Carnation, Washington. Maybe Jamey was just worried about
his father and it came through in his sub-conscious, causing him to have bad
dreams. After all, that’s what dreams were supposed to be—the hindbrain not
shutting off during sleep and amusing itself with all your memories and emotions
while your front brain shut down. “How did you enter a different dream?”
“Not
sure.”
Tina
waited while Jamey dialed his father’s number, her cheek resting on the back of
her husband’s shoulder. For over a year, she’d been leading these dreams they
called Fantasy Fun Time, as a joke. Jamey had never left one in the middle. Her
timing of the dream was his timing like he was attached to her. She’d shared
probably a hundred dreams with Jamey ever since he’d unknowingly passed a thirty-four-year-old
ability to her in the dive shop over a year earlier.
“Pops,
you okay?” Jamey said. It was three hours later in Carnation, but still too
early for a leisurely phone call. “Sorry I woke you.”
She
studied Jamey’s gorgeous profile in the darkness of their bedroom, his jaw
tense. Pops was used to years of middle of the night calls, simply to check in.
He didn’t need details.
“Just
a bad dream, I guess.” Jamey mumbled to his father. “Don’t get your Christmas
tree until I get there, okay?” After they hung up, Jamey turned to Tina. “He
hasn’t got the tree yet. Either I drifted from your dream or the new dream was still part of our diving dream. Regardless
of whether the dream was a proph or not, I have a very strong feeling that
Pops’ house is going to burn down.” He took a deep breath. “I need to get to
Carnation. See what’s going on. I’ll leave as soon as I can get a flight out.”
She
nodded, knowing two things. Jamey wasn’t an alarmist and her husband was rarely
wrong about dreams.
****
Pops
pulled up curbside at SeaTac airport, south of Seattle. Jamey threw a duffle
bag in the back of the old Ford truck and hopped in the cab. “Surprise.”
“Good
to see you early, Kid.” Pops navigated away from the curb, and into traffic.
“Sorry to land during rush hour.” Jamey patted
his father’s dog, Harry, who sat on the bench seat between them. Harry was
loyal only to Pops after being rescued last year. He barely had time for anyone
else, but he did allow Jamey to pat his neck.
“No
problem. It’ll give us some chew-the-fat time,” Pops said.
That
was Pops. Always saw the silver lining. And for that reason, Jamey hadn’t told
his seventy-five-year-old father that he’d seen him in the window of his
bedroom while the house burned down around him. Only that he was coming to
Seattle ahead of his wife and son for many reasons, including more time with
his twin daughters who lived nearby. His dad seemed to buy that, especially
when Jamey told him he wanted to come early to spend more time with his girls.
Pops knew all about Jamey’s dreams, jumping, prophs, remembrances, and all the
intricacies of the ability but Jamey didn’t want to worry him.
In
some ways, Pops was more the expert on dream jumping than Jamey having spent
his whole life listening to accounts of jumps from his brother Don—someone who
was now dead from a heart attack during a jump with a serial killer. Throughout
his childhood, Pops had been Don’s go-to for dream jumping and now was Jamey’s.
This made him what Jamey teased “the encyclopedia of weird shit,” keeping
mental notes to help Jamey make sense of a life he hadn’t chosen.
On
the fifty-minute drive to Carnation from the airport, Jamey even told his
father the secret he’d been keeping from Tina for months. A secret he guarded daily.
“I’m jumping again. I got it back, but I can’t tell Tina. Not yet.”
Pops
looked to his son with raised eyebrows, “How’s that going, keeping a secret
from your smart wife?”
“I’ve
done harder things in my life,” he answered. “She can’t know, or it puts her in
a difficult position if the military comes for me. I don’t want anyone on that
psychic team in Afghanistan picking her brain for information about my ability.”
“You’ve
done a good job keeping her safe from induction,” Pops added.
Jamey
had to agree, although it hadn’t been easy. Having lost the dream jumping
ability over two years earlier, he’d been useless to the Force and was on
leave. But Tina… “If Milton knew the extent of Tina’s abilities, they’d be
after her before they could say “We love psychics.”
Pops
nodded.
“Apparently,
they have better people on the Force now for honing in on enemy secrets. They
don’t need dream jumping.” Jamey looked out the truck window at the Seattle
skyline as they turned east off I-5, towards Carnation. “Until I’m released from duty, I have to keep
pretending I can’t jump on my own, just in case Milton is lying about his
hot-shot new psychics. I think he’d still love to pull a confession out of me.
I’ll keep lying to Tina for her own good.”
“How’d
you get jumping back?”
“Not
sure, but I entered Kai’s baby dream a few months ago, on my own.” Jamey
chuckled to think how basic a baby’s dream is. “It’s strange I lost the ability
after weird brain activity on a bad jump with another jumper, and I got it back
with an innocent baby dream.” Over the last few months, he’d thought a lot
about what might have restarted his ability, but hadn’t come up with a definite
conclusion. Only that maybe it had to grow from a very basic dream. His first
jump had been short and sweet, almost like his ability needed the simplest
dream there was to take hold of. “I wondered at the time if Kai’s a jumper and
pulled me into his dream like Tina does.”
“Have
you entered other people’s dreams besides jumpers’?”
He
knew why Pops asked. If not, it probably meant Kai was a jumper and Jamey still
wasn’t. “I have.” He looked at his dad. “I needed to test it after Kai’s dream,
but because I have to be touching the dreamer, that was a tough one. We had
friends over with young kids and the four year old took a nap on our bed. I
went in the room and jumped. Then, the next week I was on the boat with a
friend when he fell asleep on the way back from fishing.”
“Hopefully
he didn’t wake up with you touching him inappropriately,” Pops smiled.
Jamey
shook his head. “That would’ve been hard to explain.” The two men chuckled.
“His dream was more elaborate and it took a while to get in, but I did. I
wondered if my ability had to grow again before I could just jump adult
normals.”
“That
makes sense,” Pops chuckled. “If anything about dream jumping actually makes
sense.”
They
zipped along Interstate Highway 90, and soon pulled off at Fall City towards
Carnation. Jamey was amazed how much snow covered his hometown as they drove
over the bridge, turned right and headed down the road. Soon they were
navigating Pops’ long driveway. “You said there’d be snow, but I thought you
were just trying to get your grandson here for Christmas,” Jamey said.
“Callin’
me a liar?” Pops parked the truck. They exited the garage and Jamey headed for
the house. A house where Pops had raised four children, pretty much by himself.
Pops hung back with Harry, the mixed breed, who was sniffing around the back
yard.
“I’ll
be there in a jiffy, Pops said. “Harry needs to make some yellow snow.”
Inside,
Jamey did a quick check of the main floor to look for anything suspicious.
Anything that might stand out as a fire hazard. There were no old rags soaked
in anything flammable lying around, no faulty wires springing from lamps. In
the basement, the fuse box looked normal, there was nothing to suggest that the
house would go up in flames in the next few weeks. But, in the dream he’d seen
a Christmas tree in the front window. It had to happen soon. In his hurried
inspection, Jamey had noted that Pops did not have his Christmas tree yet. That
was good.
The
house looked like it always did—from the outside, in need of a coat of paint
and a new roof, and from the inside, full of family photographs and old,
familiar furniture. The only things Jamey could see that were different in the
last few months were a string of twinkling Christmas lights over the fireplace
in the front room and a large box full of decorations and lights where the tree
would eventually go. Pops saved the decorating for Jamey and his daughters. The
girls lived for this sort of thing.
Gavin,
his oldest brother, was coming over tomorrow to offer a second opinion on the
house’s safety. Besides Tina, Gavin was the only other person who’d heard Jamey’s
dream in horrible detail. And Gavin had been justifiably worried. He’d seen his
brother’s premonitions come true too many times to not worry.
“You
can prevent this, right?” he’d asked Jamey on the phone.
“Absolutely.”
Years earlier, Jamey had realized that the future could be altered from a
prophetic dream with careful interference. And he planned to interfere, in a
big way. For starters, he planned to take down the old Christmas lights at the
front of the house with the excuse that he wanted to replace some bulbs. He’d
buy new ones, just to be safe. Pops had owned those things for decades. The
front yard tree looked okay. Pops had paid a handyman to decorate the twenty
foot Douglas Fir tree on the front lawn, but that thing wasn’t close enough to the
house to be a threat. Jamey didn’t even recall seeing the tree in the burning dream.
He’d update the smoke detectors, buy some extinguishers, have an inspector come
out to check the house, among other things.
As
Pops stomped off the snow from his boots on the back deck, Jamey came up from
inspecting the basement. The snow was falling fast out there, like the flakes
were too heavy to float delicately to the ground.
“What
are you looking for in the basement, Son?” Pops took off his winter coat at the
back door and hung it on its usual hook.
“Just
a tool,” Jamey had hoped his father wouldn’t see that he’d been in the
basement.
“Maybe
I know where it is. What is it?” Pops pulled out the Scrabble set from the games
cupboard, while Jamey grabbed a beer from the fridge.
“A
Philips screwdriver I bought last time I was here.” Jamey hated lying to his
father and told himself it was for the best.
“Your
brother probably took it. You know Gavin and tools.” When the tea kettle
whistled, Pops made a cup of tea then cut a piece of mango bread that Tina made
especially for her father-in-law. “I’m not sure who I love more right now,”
Pops joked. “You, for coming early, or that wife of yours, who took up baking
for me.” He slathered butter on the thick slice of bread and chuckled. “Can’t
wait to see that little rug rat of yours too. He looks like he’s grown so much
since last visit.”
Kai
hadn’t been in his grandfather’s arms since July and he was almost eleven
months old now. He’d recently taken up walking. Not smoothly, but he stumbled
across the floor with his stance wide, his arms out and a big silly grin on his
sweet face. Jamey remembered the last time Pops had seen Kai. “He’s not a baby
anymore.” Years ago, Pops had made baby walking sticks for his granddaughters.
The canes were yard-tall, sanded branches from Pops big walnut tree near the
river. “Once Kai figured out the walking stick could help him with balance,
there was no going back.”
Pops
laughed. “I’d forgotten, it was so long ago. Those things must be twelve years
old now.” His eyes twinkled. “The canes, I mean. I know the twins are twelve. You
still driving them to school tomorrow morning? If you want to sleep in they can
take that school bus you know.”
Pops
was teasing him. Not only was Jamey not one to sleep in, but he hadn’t seen his
daughters for weeks and was eager to get his hug around them. “Should be a
great time to visit at seven a.m.” Jamey joked.
Pops
unfolded the Scrabble board and laid it on the table. They’d decided to play a
game before dinner. “Loser goes first,” Pops said, nodding for his son to start.
Jamey
shrugged at the insult, knowing the taunting had begun. “Happy to, Old Man.” He
arranged his Scrabble letters to spell meal
even though he had enough letters for flame.
Instead he held on to the f.
“The
twins are excited to have Kai coming.” Pops added the letters ose to the l to make lose. “They
have all kinds of plans for Kai and Harley to be best friends.”
Jamey’s
ex-wife’s baby, Harley, was a month older than Kai. “I doubt Kai will even
notice Harley for another two years,” Jamey said, adding the word smoke to Pops’ s. He gave his father a squinty look. “Still not smoking?”
“Never
again,” Pops said, shaking his head. “Getting rid of that dad-burned oxygen
machine was a triumph.” He looked down at the dog his granddaughters had found
at the soccer field last year. Harry’s head lay on Pops’ slippered foot. “I
need to be in the best shape to walk this stupid fart.”
Taking
on a dog had breathed new life into Pops this year. That and his friendship
with Tina’s widowed mother who lived forty minutes away on Mercer Island, near
the downtown area of Seattle. “And play pinochle with Elizabeth, I hear,” Jamey
added.
“You
mean beat Liz at pinochle.”
When
had his father started calling Tina’s stoic mother by a nick-name? Jamey smiled
and watched Pops add an r to the word
lose.
The
doorbell rang and Harry barked, heading out of the kitchen and down the hall.
Jamey liked that his Dad’s dog barked. It gave him a sense that someone was
standing guard for his father. Especially with how jumpy he was feeling about
Pops’ safety. Both men left the table to follow the dog down the hall. It was
unusual to have someone come to the door out here in the country. Especially at
night.
Jamey
could see the shadows of two people through the sheer curtain on the top half
of Pops’ front door.
“My
neighbors,” Pops said reaching for the door handle. “You’re going to like these
two.” Pops eyes lit up and his smile broadened as he opened the door to two
rosy-cheeked people covered in snowflakes.
Chapter
2
The
couple standing on the front porch smiled at Pops, only slightly surprised to
see Jamey behind his father. The young woman held a tray of something covered
in tin foil.
“There’s
the newlyweds!” Pops said. “Come in, come in.” He stood back to allow the
guests to enter.
Jamey
was surprised that Pops seemed completely overjoyed to see people Jamey had
never even heard of. Even Harry wagged his tail excitedly.
“Amy
and Max, this is my son, Jamey,” Pops said. Jamey’s intuition picked up on a
genuine fondness between all parties but then you’d have to be anaesthetized
not to feel that. Maybe it wasn’t telepathy he was feeling.
The
couple were probably early thirties, her blonde, him brunette, both wholesome
looking, and both smiling ear to ear. He was a big man, like Jamey but in his
case, it looked to be mostly soft flab, not hardened muscle. They said hello to
Jamey, then while Max bent to pet Harry, Amy handed the tray to Pops.
“I
baked Christmas cookies for the first time ever,” Amy said proudly.
Jamey
closed the door behind the guests. With a reception like that, and cookies in
hand, they were obviously coming in for a while.
Max
stomped the snow from his boots on the hall carpet and Jamey wondered why he
didn’t do that outside. Clumps of snow fell from Max’s boots, then he stepped
out of them.
“Well,
I’ll be a monkey’s uncle,” Pops exclaimed, taking the offered plate. He peeked under the wrap. “And I get to eat all
these or will you help me?” Pops nodded towards the kitchen for the guests to
follow. “Come in.”
Amy
took off her coat. “They are especially for you. They might not be that good,”
she said to Jamey apologetically, like he wasn’t supposed to eat any. Amy’s
blonde ponytail bounced as she followed Pops down the hall. “I hope we aren’t
interrupting anything. I didn’t know you had company.”
Pops’
words about Jamey not being company faded into the kitchen.
Jamey
brought up the rear of the group, behind Max, but half way down the hall, level
with the table of photos of the family fishing and camping, the young man
turned and smiled at Jamey. “I don’t remember Pops saying he had a son named
Jamey.”
“Probably
ashamed of me,” Jamey joked, and they entered the kitchen.
Pops
put the kettle on for tea and cut slices of Tina’s mango bread while everyone
seated themselves around the table that held the Scrabble board.
“I
love Scrabble.” Amy uncovered her plate of Christmas cookies. They looked deluxe
for someone who’d never made cookies before.
“Looks
like you two just started this game,” Max grinned at Pops. “Any way we can join
you?”
They
agreed to begin again and by the time everyone had something to drink, Pops had
put the first word on the board. Scared.
Max
joked that he might be subconsciously telling them he was frightened to eat
Amy’s cookies, and she playfully hit her husband on the shoulder. Harry sat
between the guests waiting for a handout or waiting for something to drop. Maybe
he knew they were messy eaters.
It
looked like Pops knew these two well and Jamey wondered why he hadn’t heard
about them before now. “Did you buy the Clancy house next door?” Jamey hadn’t
known it was up for sale again.
“Yes,”
Amy nodded. “We moved in before Thanksgiving.”
The
Victorian house to the north of Pops’ property was big for only two people and
although Jamey wanted to ask if they planned on having six kids, he held off.
The place had been vacant for years and these two probably got it for a good
price, especially because it had been neglected over the years.
Max
spelled daring with the r from Pops’ word and it was Amy’s turn.
“It’s
a big house. Used to be so grand.” Jamey took another cookie and noticed Amy
look at him. Did she only wanted Pops to eat the cookies?
“We
love it,” Max said. “For months Amy and I have been looking for a Victorian and
finally found our dream home. Right Amy?”
She
nodded. “Right now we’re making lists of things that need to be replaced and
repaired. It’s been so long since that old place had any attention.”
Max
looked at Jamey. “Do you two know anything about the ghost?”
Jamey
wasn’t surprised to hear rumors of a ghost, but the way Max asked, set his
teeth on edge. It was almost as if the neighbor had a strange fascination. That
was Jamey’s impression. He shook his head. “I never heard there was one,” he
lied.
But
Pops nodded. “I’ve heard talk, but I’m not sure I believe in all that.” Pops
was lying too. For one thing, he knew very well that ghosts existed because he’d
heard all about Tina’s experience last year.
“Me
neither,” Amy said, setting down the word dumb
off the d. “Max is obsessed with
knowing more, but I’d like to ignore that little morsel of information. I just
love my house.”
Pops
nodded to Amy. “We talked about this when I got the tour of the house last
month, but I don’t really know anything. Max, what do you know?”
Max
shrugged. “Not much. Only that the woman who lived there jumped off the widow’s
walk and the dad and kids moved away. The lady at the post office told me that
she committed suicide after her baby died.”
Amy
shot a warning look at her husband.
Jamey
set the word guard off the g and nodded to Max.
Pops
downed another cookie in one bite and then spoke. “It was a tragedy. Now, of
course, they speculate Edna Clancy had post-partum depression, and when the
baby died, she went off the deep end. At the time though, post-partum wasn’t
even a thing.” He shook his head like it was all too sad.
Jamey’s
ex, Carrie, had had post partem with the twins, and with her son, Wyatt. It was
a horrible affliction at a time when women should be enjoying their new baby. Luckily
Tina had remained her happy self when Kai was born. His sweet wife had taken on
the glow and happiness of being a mother for the first time. He reached for a
shortbread and avoided looking at Amy.
“I
do believe this is as good as yesterday’s banana bread.” Pops held up another
cookie decorated with a green Christmas tree.
It
sounded like the neighbors were trying to fatten up his father. He made a
remark about that and Max jumped in to defend his wife.
“She’s
learning to bake. Pops and I are the tasters.”
Pops’
eyes twinkled and he looked fondly at Max. “We’ll be the guinea pigs anytime
won’t we, Max?”
Amy
smiled, Max laid down ass after dumb, and they all laughed.
****
Tina
and her friend Pepper had gone diving for lobster, and now the two women sat on
Tina’s deck digging in to the succulent tails in front of them. The garlic
butter sat between their place settings along with a bottle of crisp Chardonnay.
Tina
picked up her goblet of wine. “To us, Pepper. The singer and the psychic.” They
laughed and she took a big sip of wine. Revealing her abilities to Pepper, last
week had been a tough one for Tina but after having a premonition that her
friend would be in a serious car accident, she’d had to intervene. Jamey wanted
as few people as possible to know about dream jumping, but they’d agreed that Pepper
was Kai’s godmother and like family. Shortly after hearing about the imminent
accident, Pepper’s planned road trip to Hana with her boyfriend was cancelled
and a broken arm was avoided.
Although Tina and Jamey didn’t know the
long-term repercussions of tampering with a premonition, they couldn’t sit back
and watch friends, family, and each other be the victim of bad luck. They’d
made the decision a year ago to interfere with the course of things if the
future looked bad. Premonitions didn’t come that often, nor did the proph
dreams.
With
garlic butter dripping from their chins and lobster in their mouths, the two
women were happily engaged when the phone rang. It was Jamey. Tina quickly
wiped off her hands on a napkin, said “I gotta get it,” to Pepper, and answered
the call.
“Hi, Gorgeous,” Jamey said. “I miss you.”
“Me
too.” Hearing those words spoken by that voice always made her feel warm and
fuzzy.
“How’s
Pops doing?” she asked.
“He’s
feeling kind of sick right now. Went to bed early. I think he ate too many
Christmas cookies,” Jamey added.
Tina
had a sense that Pops was ill. She could do this type of thing sometimes,
through the phone.
“But
other than that, he’s good. Very happy. I think your mother might have something
to do with his general state of happiness.”
Even
though they both wanted their respective parents to enjoy each other’s company,
it was still too close to Tina’s father’s death for her to imagine her mother
having a boyfriend. Especially Pops.
“There’s
a lot of snow here.”
She
could hardly wait to see it and wondered what Kai would think of snow. “I bet
it looks beautiful.”
Before
they said goodbye Jamey told her about the new neighbors. “They’re really fond
of Pops and visa versa.”
“It’s
good for him to have friends next door,” she added.
“True.
We had fun tonight playing Scrabble. I’ll be interested to hear your take on
them.”
“Something
weird?” she asked.
“Not
weird at all. Wholesome and outwardly normal. Just maybe too familiar with
Pops,” he said.
“Do
I detect a note of jealousy in there?” Tina teased. She looked at Pepper with a
look to say I’ll tell you in a minute.
“But Pops likes them?”
He
chuckled. “Oh yea. The woman, Amy, especially who keeps baking for him.”
Now
Tina’s nose was out of joint. “Well, just keep shoving my mango bread in front
of your father, and he’ll forget all about that woman next door.”
Jamey
laughed. “Between you and Amy, Pops is going to be fat by New Year’s.”
When
they hung up, Tina made a plan to bring her newly acquired recipes to Carnation
and show Pops her new cooking skills. “I lost Pops to a baking next door
neighbor,” Tina told Pepper.
“You
look serious,” Pepper’s smile left her face. “Ti, if someone is baking for
Pops, that’s nice, right? He still loves you.”
“You’re
right, but teaching me to cook is my thing with Pops’. I’m his protégé. I know
it’s silly to say but I’m disappointed.” She couldn’t hide it from Pepper.
“You’ll
get to Carnation in another week, do some cooking, trade some recipes, and the
neighbor will soon be forgotten.” Pepper waited for confirmation.
“Probably
right.” Tina picked up her fork to continue eating but the rest of the dinner
was filled with thoughts of the neighbor, Amy, weaseling her way into Pops
heart through food. By the time Pepper left, Tina was so upset she dug out the
recipe box that her father-in-law had given her and pulled out all their
favorite recipes to make over the Christmas holidays.
Nobody
was going to one up her in Pops’ heart through baking.
****
Jamey
saw the letter taped to the front door glass window when he came down the
stairs the next morning. As he unlocked and opened the door, he noticed that
Pops had left the front yard tree lights on last night. Before getting the
envelope on the door, Jamey unplugged the lights from the porch outlet. Strange,
he remembered his father going outside specifically to turn off the tree.
The
envelope was addressed to Pops, in large, bold handwriting. Maybe an invitation
to a party. He pulled it from the glass and went inside, setting the envelope
on the kitchen table. The house was cold so he turned up the heat to
sixty-eight and then made coffee. Pops preferred a cup of tea in the mornings,
but Jamey had to have his coffee. Today he’d drive the girls to school and come
back here to ask Pops if he wanted to go Christmas shopping. The sky hadn’t
begun to lighten yet at 6:45.
Later,
standing in the hall at Carrie and Chris’s house, Jamey thought again about the
letter-sized envelope and wondered what the envelope held.
“Dad!”
Jade raced down the hall, ready to go.
“Squirt!”
He hugged his daughter tightly. “Where’s Squirt two?”
“Hair,”
Jade said into his heavy coat.
“That’s
important,” he said. If Jasmine’s hair wasn’t perfect, Jamey would wait with
his less-fastidious daughter. “Why is Jaz always late?”
“I
don’t know Dad. She’s just a perfectionist, I guess.”
Jade
was getting so tall. He’d last seen them a month ago when he’d flown over to
talk to Pops about some family business and they probably hadn’t grown much
since then, but he felt like his daughters’ childhood was a thing of the past.
They were going to be teenagers soon and he wasn’t ready. Wyatt didn’t want to
drive with Jamey and had gone on the bus five minutes earlier.
Carrie
stood with a cup of coffee in hand, her preschooler, Mango, still asleep
upstairs, her husband off to work, and the baby, Harley, crawling at her feet.
“Have a good flight yesterday?” she asked.
“Yup,
uneventful.” He and Carrie had a good relationship now that they weren’t
married anymore. “So much snow this year.”
She
nodded. “The kids love it.” She set her coffee on the stairs and picked up
Harley who’d begun to fuss. “Pops looks good, don’t you think?”
“He
does, although he went to bed with a belly ache from eating too many cookies
last night.” He smiled at Jade and called for his other daughter. “Come on Jaz.
The Daddy bus is pulling out.” He smiled at Harley, a cute little baby with red
curls like his mother, then opened the door to leave. “See you later, Carrie
and company.” That’s what he called his ex and her five children.
After
dropping the twins off at the school, he returned to Pops’ house to find the
letter open on the kitchen table. No sign of Pops or Harry, the dog. Seeing the
paper was lying face up, he leaned over and looked at it. The page did not look
like an invitation. He read the letter.
Pops:
Max and I feel like we’ve done
everything we can to try to get you to turn off your house lights at night so
they don’t shine in our windows. And now you’ve gone and put up a tree with a
thousand lights, you say, and that is bothersome too. What we don’t understand
is that you seem to be a nice neighbor but when we ask you to turn off the high
wattage lights at night so we can get some sleep next door, you ignore our
request.
If this continues, I’m afraid we are
going to take legal action.
Max and Amy Overton
What
the hell? This letter didn’t sound like the nice people who’d played Scrabble
last night. Had they written it after they left here? Jamey went looking for
Pops and found him in bed. It wasn’t like his father to go back to bed. “What’s
going on Pops, you still not feeling well?”
“Just
a little under the weather today, Kid. I might stay in bed for a bit.” His face
looked grey and Jamey’s first instinct was to take his father to the emergency
clinic.
“Should
we pay a visit to Doc Sheridan?” He moved into the room to stand over his
father’s bed.
“Nothing
that bad. I’m just going to have a lazy day.” Pops patted his faithful dog. Me
and Harry are going to go back to sleep and see if that helps.”
Jamey
looked out the window at the yard. The snow had stopped falling for now, and
the sky had broken up to include some blue on the horizon. What would Tina
recommend he do for Pops? She was the voice of reason in a situation like this.
Then, he remembered the letter. “This doesn’t have anything to do with that
letter on the kitchen table does it?”
“No.
I don’t think Max and Amy wrote that letter,” Pops said. “I don’t leave lights
on overnight. I got another one of those and asked them if the lights bothered
them, why didn’t they just tell me to shut off the damned things. They said
they didn’t write the letter. I’ve been getting prank phone calls too.” He
tried to smile at Jamey, but failed. “Don’t worry. It’s just kids. When I asked
Max, he said he hasn’t got a clue who’s behind it, but it’s not them.”
“Phone
calls too?”
“Just
hang ups and then there was one where the caller said he was watching me. It’s
just teenagers.”
Jamey
hated to hear of anyone trying to frighten his father. Pops looked so tired
lying in bed, Jamey said they could talk later. “Go back to sleep you lazy guys.”
He exited the room, leaving the door open and vowed if his dad didn’t feel
better by this afternoon, they were heading to the doctor.
His
coat was on the banister. He put it on and was out the door before he realized
what he was doing. Trudging through the snow down the road, Jamey thought about
the note. He had a feeling they wrote it, claimed they didn’t but still got the
point across that they wanted Pops to turn off his lights at night. Jamey found
himself at Max and Amy’s house, standing right under where they must’ve found
Mrs. Clancy’s body so long ago. He pushed on the door bell, rehearsing what
he’d say to them. Do you have any idea what’s going on with these notes on the door? And
if, in fact, you did write the notes, what’s the matter with you people?
But
no one answered the door. He rang the bell three more times. A truck was in the
driveway. Unless they both went out in another car, someone was home.
By
now the sun had come out and was beginning to melt the snow on the road. When
Jamey arrived back at Pops’ house, he read the letter again, wondering whose
handwriting it was. Writing longhand was risky or stupid. Sitting at the
kitchen table with his laptop, he made a plan on how to prepare Pops house for
fighting an enormous fire, a plan that started with a smoke detector in his
father’s bedroom.
Next,
he tried to find an electrician to come out and inspect the place but no one
was available until after Christmas. “Can’t you find an hour or two before
then?’ he kept asking. But no one had the time.
Everyone
he called reminded him it was the holidays and they could come after Christmas
when things died down.
The
word “die” wasn’t lost on Jamey, but he couldn’t very well tell them the house
would be burned to the ground by then.
You know...resolutions?
Nope.
So, for my 2018 resolution, I vow to dive in to wherever life takes me, keep up the excitement, learn new skills, and not do any more of that self talk that I'm too old to do this or that because I need to start thinking about winding down soon.
