Dust by Eva Everson (epub e reader .TXT) 📕

dent in the clouds.” Then, to his brother, “I think you’re right, Wes. I think it’s going to break.”

Westley grinned as he turned on the portable radio, twisting the knob until he found the station of his choice. Until Peter Frampton’s guitar permeated the air around us. Within fifteen minutes we were in the river, DiAnn and Westley performing their tricks. My husband’s lack of fear became more and more evident each time we came here while I shuddered to think of all the things that could happen, even as I kept Michelle wrapped in my arms, listening as she cried out, “Me, too, Daddy! Me, too!” and wondering at what point her father would purchase little baby skis for her and have her out there, slicing into a wake.

I shifted in my seat, tucking one foot under.

“You okay?” Paul called out over the whipping wind that pulled his hair straight back and mine forward so that it hit my face like needles from a pine bough.

I nodded. “My back hurts a little. I just needed to shift.”

He smiled. Brought the speed back up. I turned my attention back to Westley who lay nearly flat against the water now, teasing nature with his flamboyance. I laughed then, the sound of it catching in my chest as intensity pulled low and unwelcomed.

Something was wrong … horribly wrong.

I shifted again and, feeling a familiar but unwanted wetness, twisted to look at the white vinyl seat beneath me.

It was smeared with blood.

Chapter Twenty-six

September 1979

Patterson

Dr. Patterson Thacker stretched on the sofa in his home office, arching his spine and feeling it pop. He blinked at the room made of heavy draperies, rich colors, dark wood wainscoting that gave way to bookshelves, a multipaned picture window, and double doors leading to the remainder of the house. The furniture was masculine and smelled of pipe tobacco and the lemony wax the housekeeper applied weekly. Axminster rugs that had cost him a near fortune lay somewhat flat and somewhat wrinkled and mostly curled on the corners, showing scant lines of the hardwood beneath. The bookshelves held a library of rare books as well as those he’d studied from in college and those he simply liked because they were considered classics and the writing was good. Books he’d read time and again. Would read time and again. This was his place of comfort. His reprieve. Where he stopped being who or what everyone else wanted and became only himself.

His home rested along the outskirts of Druid Hills—an Atlanta suburb recently added to the National Registry of Historic Places—in a house made solely of red brick. A gothic sort of home where his wife entertained lavishly, inviting only those who hailed from the city’s A-list, and he retreated to his study as often as possible. Nightly, in fact.

Patterson chuckled as he crossed his legs at the ankles on the leather-tufted sofa that both warmed and chilled him, thinking that this was one thing he and his old man had in common. That and a penchant for living life like a dead man. Going through the motions for the sake of what was expected. Obtaining an impressive degree, marrying the right girl, siring the right number of children—not too many, not too few.

He adjusted the large earphones that kept him bound to the enormous stereo system Mary Helen had given him for his birthday a week ago. Since then, he’d hardly come out except to go to work … eat dinner … and then sleep on one side of a large king-sized bed while Mary Helen lay like a stone on the other.

Ah, music … The one constant in his life had been music. He couldn’t play a single instrument. Didn’t know middle C from F sharp. But he took pleasure in the power and majesty of it. The boasting of it. He could determine all the instruments in nearly every work. Knew the French horn from the piccolo. The acoustic guitar from the 12-string, the bass from the lead. He could also tell anyone who may be interested about nearly every form of music, from Chopin to Dylan, from Sinatra to The Eagles, from Billie Holliday to Fleetwood Mac, which—amped up—pulsed through his body at present.

He closed his eyes, tapped one socked foot to the beat of Mick Fleetwood’s straightforward drumming, breathed in and out, enraptured completely by the contralto voice of Stevie Nicks. By the sultriness. That low rasp and the way it warbled as it climbed the scales. He imagined her, for a moment—one longer than he intended—lying possessed in his arms … begging him to love her as she’d never been loved before. Certainly better than Buckingham ever could. Or Henley. Or Fleetwood, according to the latest music gossip.

A tap on his shoulder startled him and he jerked upright to see his wife standing over him, her arms now crossed and a frown on an otherwise flawless face. He blushed as though she’d read his thoughts—and perhaps she had. They’d been together long enough that she should be able to. But, if that were so, she’d have divorced him by now. Divorced him and taken him to the cleaners, as the saying went.

How could so much sweetness have turned so sour in fourteen years? He’d often wondered if perhaps they shouldn’t have married on such a hot day—that the gods had aligned against them, starting with that. Or that they should have waited a little longer. Or perhaps that he shouldn’t have dallied around with Dani beforehand or Rita since. But he’d thought—no, believed—back then, that it would all turn out okay. That they’d have everything and more. A beautiful home, which they did. Although, compared to his childhood home, the rooms were smaller but the closets larger. A perfect number of family members—three wonderful daughters who excelled at everything they did, even five-year-old Helen-Leigh. A social life to rival his parents’.

And they did. They said all the right things, moved in