LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

      We sat there for moment thinking of how precious life was and how quickly everything could change on a dirty dime. It was only when Princess squirmed off my lap that I returned my attention to the box and pulled out the latest Midnight Poet Society Mystery by Lucy Barton. A squeal may have escaped my lips. Lucy Barton had been my favorite murder mystery author since my aunt let me read her first Midnight Poet Society Mystery when I was seventeen. It was the perfect distraction from reality. When I was a teen, the gang of young dark poets became my best friends. It was also what we needed to keep us focused on the future right now.

      I ran my hand across the hardback’s cover sleeve. The sleek surface gave way to textured ridges across the title. The black and purple cover depicted a dark and eerie murder scene in a forest with a muted moon illuminating a dead body. The murder weapon was on prominent display in the middle of the book cover—an ax protruding from the bloodied chest of the victim, while forming the right arm of the letter X in the title, Waxing Moon. It was brilliant and spooky. Gruesome in thought, yet relatively tame in the actual image.

      I oohed so loud, my dad couldn’t resist taking a peek over my shoulder. I began to pull the books out of the box and realized the count was way off. I hadn’t ordered that many books—in fact, I’d only ordered twenty because we had a midnight poetry reading scheduled for Friday night and were expecting at least ten people to be there. But from what I could see, there were at least thirty books in the one box.

      “Something’s wrong. I didn’t order this many books.” I looked over at the seven boxes that had been delivered. “Now that I think about it, I think this entire order is off. There’s no way I should have this quantity.”

      The bell on the front door buzzed softly and the automatic barn door swooshed open, allowing a cool seasonal breeze to proceed the entrance of our customer.

      “I’ll get that,” Daddy said before I could argue.

      Except Daddy didn’t move. His boots stayed rooted to the floor and I looked up to see what could possibly be the problem. His face had drained of color. His cheeks fell slack. But it was his eyes that really frightened me. They were full of pain—anguish that hit him at his core. A look I hadn’t seen since my momma died—

      I followed his gaze to the front door…and had the opposite reaction. Glee flooded through me, wiping away all my fear.

      “Aunt Violet!”

      Chapter Two

      I scrambled to my feet and made a beeline for the woman standing just inside the door, looking around like she’d gotten lost in time. Her expression changed; lightened and brightened when she caught sight of me. At fifty-eight, my Aunt Violet was tall and slender with curves that had filled out with age.

      Violet dropped her purse and swung open her arms. “Honey child, you are a sight for sore eyes!”

      Most women I hug are shorter than me by several inches. Aunt Violet, however, was taller than I am by an inch. She was the exact height my mom was before she died. They were nearly identical in every way…except for their hair and personalities.

      Before my momma died, she was the calming effect in my life. After she died, my daddy filled that role. When he and I split ways when I was seventeen, it was Violet’s role to fill.

      Except she couldn’t. Aunt Violet was the wild child, like me. But whereas I changed during college, Violet could still burn a town to the ground with her antics. She took me in and gave me a loving home when I fled my hometown and everyone in it. But she could never fill the role I wanted most, just as my mom or dad could never have been my boisterous cheerleader that Aunt Violet became.

      Aunt Violet had been all about teaching me to take the world by my own woman-made storm. To make a difference, I had to make the world see me. She insisted I leave my mark and strive toward a career that protected and served. If I’d followed her advice, I would have been working a beat on the Denver Police Department, and miserable as all get out. That was my Aunt Violet’s career, not mine.

      I did listen to her when she said I had a way of talking to people that calmed them, just like my momma did. I took her advice to heart—just not toward the path of law enforcement. I left all the bad guys, the conflict, and the spikes of adrenaline to my Aunt Violet, got my degree in education, and started teaching kindergarten instead. Teaching involved working day hours, with weekends off and summer vacations I couldn’t pass up. And the wild child in me became the calming spirit in the household. I had to be, otherwise my cousin Jamal…

      “Where’s Jamal? Is he okay?” I pulled back and considered her raven eyes accentuated by the sweeping arches of her eyebrows.

      “Your cousin is parking the car. He’ll be in in a minute.”

      I pulled my aunt away from the door and refused to let go of her hand. Looking at her inside my momma’s dream store, I suddenly realized what it would be like to see my mom in her late fifties. Her hair would be shorter and straighter than my aunt’s, who wore her hair with the curls tapered and uneven. Aunt Violet’s bangs accentuated the long lines of her jaw on one side, while showcasing the beauty of her almond-shaped eyes on the other. And for a moment, I could see my momma cleaning out the Barn, the pure joy of building her dream evident on her face.

      Then I remembered the shock my dad experienced when Violent walked in—she was my momma returning from the grave twenty years too late. I looked to him to offer comfort, but he’d recovered from seeing his wife’s twin.

      “Violet, you don’t look a day older than the last time I saw you,” Dad said as he came up and hugged his sister-in-law. It was like watching my parents together. They would have celebrated their thirty-second wedding anniversary this year.

      Jamal walked in and I ran to give him a bear hug. At six foot eleven inches, my cousin could be intimidating—if you were a computer, thanks to his hacking skills. To anyone else, Jamal was like chocolate chips in their hand; hold him tight enough, and he’d melt all around your fingers. I held him tight and felt his feet begin to squirm, and then his tummy began to rumble in my ear.

      I laughed and pulled away. “You’re hungry.”

      Aunt Violet couldn’t resist teasing her son. “Jamal is always hungry. It’s a state of being that has been a constant since he left the womb.”

      Jamal grinned, his eyes twinkling below a masculine set of the same arched brows as his mother. Somehow, between the two of us, he’d been the one to receive hazel eyes, while despite my biracial heritage, I’d inherited my mother’s deep brown eye coloring. We both, however, received the same light brown curls. My cousin wore his hair short, and if I could reach the top of his head, I’d flop my fingers through it like I did to my students—he was that adorable.

      “A snack would be really good right about now,” Jamal said.

      I pulled his Jolly Green Giant form toward the back of the store. “I have donuts in back.”

      “Get out!”

      “Actually, get in,” I told him as I pushed him inside the double-sized stalls that housed our tearoom.

      I was in the middle of asking Violet and Jamal why they were in Hazel Rock when the front doors swished open and the tiny bell dinged. Princess, excited about all the recent flurry of activity, peeked her head out from under the counter where we kept her bed and looked at the front door. I greeted our customer as she ran up and squeaked at his feet.

      “Hello, is there something I can help you find?”

      “I…I…I…” The man shook his shaggy head of hair and looked down at the floor and Princess nervously. He looked too embarrassed to say anything else as he slinked away toward the computer section.

      “She won’t hurt you. In fact, I think she kind of likes you.”

      That was an understatement. Princess was bound and determined to make a new friend, and by the hesitant hand the man reached in her direction, I suspected he was warming up to the idea himself.

      “Let

Скачать книгу