 |
|
|
 |
|||||||||||||
|
Books We Love Publishing, August 2011 CHAPTER ONE 
“We shouldn’t be here, Mommy.”
Caitlin had spoken the words the minute the tiny town of Mountain Bend came into view through the windshield of their ’83 Datsun. But Tori had refused to listen to the solemn warning in her seven year old daughter’s voice with the same single-minded determination she used to deny late payment notices and speeding tickets. In the three months that had passed since then, Tori had finally grasped what Caitlin knew all along. Unpaid fines and fiercely worded credit statements couldn’t kill them. Staying in Mountain Bend could. Gravel sprayed as she skidded into her drive, shifting into park before the car even came to a stop. She jumped out and rushed up the steps to her front door, fumbling with her keys as she glanced back the way she’d come. No tell tale clouds of dust trailing up the dirt road. Yet. She slammed the door behind her and locked it. A moment to catch her breath, and then she took the stairs up two at a time. Her sweater stuck to her back where perspiration had pooled between her shoulder blades. The sour smell of fear clung tight to her skin. At first sight, Mountain Bend had seemed a tranquil paradise to Tori. Nestled low in a basin between the rugged peaks of the Sierra Nevadas and a shocking blue sky, it looked like heaven. She’d rolled down her window, taking a deep breath of air scented with eternal Christmas. What possible wrong could be hidden in the quaint little haven? We shouldn’t be here, Mommy... She’d been irritated with Caitlin for saying something so negative before they’d given the place a chance. Before they’d even stopped the car. “Of course we should be here,” she’d said sharply. “Maybe now we can finally settle down.” Victoria France, Tori to anyone who knew her, had believed it, too. She should have listened, she thought now as she glanced at the clock on the wall. She should have turned tail and run. But Tori had been running her entire life and she’d ended up here all the same. She took her overnight bag from the hall closet and darted into Caitlin’s room. A pink and white lace comforter covered her daughter’s bed. Caitlin made it each and every morning. Not because Tori asked her to. Tori never even made her own bed. Her room was knee deep in clothes, shoes and boxes she didn’t pretend she planned to unpack. Not Caitlin. Her bedroom was her private sanctuary. Order in a chaotic world she had no way of understanding or controlling. In this way, as in so many others, Caitlin reminded Tori of her sister. Caitlin should have been her sister’s daughter. Lord knows, her life would have been better, easier...saner. Tears of frustration burned Tori’s eyes as she grabbed a few necessities for Caitlin and stuffed them into the bag. To have come all this way... To have met the one man who could stop the madness that had always directed her life... And then to realize that nothing she could do would change anything that was to come... She wanted to shout her rage. Instead she hurried to her own room and grabbed a change of clothes from the pile on the floor. She couldn’t risk taking time to pack more. Her breath came in harsh gasps and her throat was raw from it. She caught sight of herself in the mirror as she passed it. Wild eyed and scared, she looked as if she’d seen the resurrection of the devil himself. Perhaps she had. “It’ll be okay,” she said aloud. They’d find some place new to live, she continued silently this time. Some place where dreams didn’t become nightmares. Where nightmares didn’t step from the dark and draw breath in the light of day. As if called by her thoughts, the wall in front of her shimmied, shimmered like oil on water and the terrifying images streamed across its surface. “Go away,” she breathed. But by coming here, Tori had unwittingly crossed more than a border into a new town. Now she was trapped in an echo that went on and on until she couldn’t distinguish her own screams from those that had been waiting for her to take that final, fatal step. She couldn’t stop it. She couldn’t understand it. She couldn’t tell anymore what was real, what was not... She had to stay focused. She would grab the money, pick up Caitlin from school, and they'd head for New York. God knew it wouldn’t be the first time she’d shown up homeless at her sister’s door. Overnight bag in hand, she hurried back downstairs. All she had to do was get away from this place. Get away now. But even as the words resounded in her head, a noise reached her, one that mocked the futility of her efforts and stopped her mad race. The lock on the front door jiggled and the deadbolt slid back with a final click. Tori hesitated, not wanting to accept what she saw, but then the doorknob turned. |
||||||||||||||
|
Order Echoes: Amazon All Romance Many eReader Formats Sign up for Erin Quinn's newsletter or enter Erin's monthly contest to be automatically added and eligible for free books. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
