Passerby: A Psychological Thriller Page 16
“I can do it!” she exclaims, jumping up and down.
Several members of the staff have lined up on the porch to watch. “Look at you!” Ms. Eve squeals. She’s not Julia, but we love her. And Shelby doesn’t know any different anyhow.
“We have a bike rider in the house,” Cole announces proudly. If you asked him, he’d tell you we named our daughter after his favorite car. Me, I’d tell you the truth. She’s named after my favorite character in Steel Magnolias. How we ended up together is anyone’s guess and also what seemed like a forgone conclusion. I hadn’t meant to get pregnant, but I hadn’t not meant to either.
When I told him, the first words out of his mouth were as I expected. Marry me.
I hadn’t wanted to hear any of it. “I feel like this is the same conversation we keep having over and over.”
“Great.” He ignored me completely. “So? What do you say? You wanna come live out in the woods with me?”
“What, like happily ever after?”
“Probably not like that. But I think we’d do okay.”
“Magnolia House is my home, Cole. Always has been. Always will be.”
“Yeah,” he said. “But now it’s two against one.” He laid his hand on my stomach and looked up at me with that charming smile of his. “The way it’s looking, the odds are stacked against you.”
“I never perform better under any other condition.”
He laughed. “Now, that I believe.”
As the sun sets, our daughter looks up at me and tugs at my hand, anchoring me in the present. “Daddy says we can take the training wheels off tomorrow.”
“You’re still getting the hang of it, honey. I think we’d better give it a minute.”
“But,” she pouts. “I want to show Uncle Davey.”
“Davis,” I say, patting her head. “Uncle Davis.”
“He’s coming.” She looks at me suspiciously, as though perhaps I’ve forgotten. “Tomorrow? Remember, you said.”
“That’s right.”
“Is it tomorrow yet?” She has asked this nearly every hour on the hour for the past several days. At seven, her concept of time is still a little shaky.
“Almost.”
Sometimes, usually at night, Shelby asks me to tell her about Uncle Johnny. I usually defer to Cole, but I think about Johnny a lot. It’s hard not to. Business is booming again. We rebranded, though not intentionally. It has been said and written that two lovers haunt the room they were murdered in. The story draws a lot of attention. Most of it unwanted.
That room is locked off. We do not rent that room, not ever.
But it doesn’t stop people from asking or from trying.
As for it being haunted, that’s an interesting subject. I am haunted. So who’s to say? And I will admit that strange things do sometimes occur. Sometimes in the dead of night, I wake to the sound of a woman laughing. And while time has faded the memory at its edges, I do know that laugh and the first time I heard it, sitting at my kitchen table on a warm summer’s day.
Davis was indicted on murder charges. They sentenced him to seventeen years, but with good behavior, he’s out after seven.
I’m both hopeful and dreading seeing him. Our relationship is a bit strained on account that I wouldn’t mortgage Magnolia House to the hilt to pay for his defense. Davis made his bed, and he had to lie in it.
And I knew that not only would I not allow anything to take this house from me, but that when the dust settled, Davis would need a place to call home.
So when he called two days ago from the road and asked if I minded if he headed this way upon his release, I couldn’t say anything other than yes.
He arrives just after lunch. I watch him from the kitchen window as he steps out of the car. He looks older than the last time I saw him, but has more pep in his step. Being a free man has that effect, I’m sure.
I visited him in prison as much as I could, but then Shelby came along, and now there will be another baby soon. I have a business to run, and seeing him in an orange jumpsuit was harder than I thought. Eventually, I came up with enough excuses, and eventually he stopped asking.
I make my way from the kitchen to the front door on shaky footing. I don’t know what to expect. Through the screen door, I see a hint of golden hair and my breath catches.
As I step out onto the porch, I open my mouth to call for Shelby and Cole, but nothing comes out.
“Ruth,” Davis nods. He pulls a woman from behind his back, like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat. “This is Cassie.”
She reaches out and extends her hand in my direction. “Cassandra.”
Cassandra is a lot of things. Young and beautiful and a dead ringer for Ashley Parker.
I have so many questions. I don’t ask them though; I let my eyes do the talking, and I figure all things come in time.
Over tea and a weak imitation of Julia’s pimento cheese dip, Cassandra relays the story of how she and Davis met.
It takes me a few minutes to set everything right in my mind. I could blame pregnancy brain, but I don’t think it’s that. “So what, you were like pen-pals?”
Davis stirs his tea and then takes a sip. “Well, it was a little different than that.”
My head cocks. “Different how?”
“We had internet. We emailed.”
Cassandra looks at my brother and then at me. “Sometimes we wrote.”
“We’re getting married,” Davis says, popping a cracker in his mouth. “And we were hoping to do it here.”
“At Magnolia House?”
A wide grin spreads across my brother’s face. “I can’t imagine anywhere else.”
“So you’ll be staying for a while, then?”
He nods. “In the guest house, if that’s okay.”
I watch as Davis stands and walks over to the sink. He stares out the window, and I wonder how much prison has changed him, if any. “There they are,” he says abruptly, catching me off guard. I follow his gaze: Cole and Shelby coming up the road hand in hand.
“They must have gone down to the beach while I was napping.”
Davis doesn’t answer. He bolts out the door and jogs down the drive toward them.
“Davey tells me you’re having a boy.”
My eyes turn away from the window. “Yes.”
“You must be so excited!”
“We are.”
“Davey?” I ask, with the tilt of my chin.
“Hmm?”
“You called him Davey. Did he tell you to call him that?”
“That’s his nickname, right?”
My brows rise, and I press my lips together. I let that be my answer.
“I mean, that’s what everyone calls him?”
“Not me.”
She leans forward, resting her chin in her hand. “Huh.”
I clear our plates from the table. “How long have you known my brother?” I am inclined to hold up air quotes as I utter the word known, but I’m very pregnant, and I’m very tired.
This, and I don’t yet know what she knows.
I wonder if Davis told her about his brother and how he murdered people. I wonder if he told her that people will probably never know the truth, not for certain, even if they suspect, because I never told anyone about the notebooks I found in the workshop. No one except Davis.
Not even my husband and I discuss what’s in those notebooks. He has his suspicions, I’m sure. Johnny was his best friend, after all. But if you never say the truth out loud, then does it actually count?
“I’ve known him…” she replies. “Let’s see.”
I watch her as she tallies things up. She chews at her bottom lip and it reminds me so much of another young woman sitting in that same spot, all those years ago. “Wait. I got it. Coming up on a year now.” She smiles. “Ten months, four days and roughly eighteen hours, to be exact.”
She brushes a crumb from the tablecloth into her hand. “Davis is amazing.”
“Seems risky, meeting
a man in prison.”
“Yeah, it was.” I’m not expecting her to say anything more, but when she opens her mouth, words come spilling out. She speaks like she’s rehearsed what she has to say, like she’s afraid she’s not going to get to say her piece unless she says it in a hurry. “It was crazy, really. But a friend of mine came to stay here, and she told me all about it—mostly about it being haunted. Then I was curious, so I looked the story up… I love true crime—it’s funny because I think I remember hearing about it when it happened. But I was young, you know?”
You’re still young. I smile and it’s like déjà vu. Nothing ever changes.
She waves a hand in the air. “So I wrote to him.”
“You wrote to him?” I think of Shelby and I wonder how such a thing can happen. “You just looked up a man in prison and decided to become pen-pals?”
“Well, it wasn’t exactly like that.” She giggles. “I didn’t expect to fall in love. I guess I just really wanted to know him.” She looks up at me. “Does that make sense?”
It does, and it doesn’t. But what an explanation of love, if I’ve ever heard one. I guess I just really wanted to know him. “Your parents can’t be too happy,” I say. “Do they know where you are?”
“They’re livid. But they’ll come around, eventually. You know how it is.” She watches as I wipe down the table and fill the dishwasher. When I look over at her, she’s staring at her fingernails. “In the meantime, Davey said we could hang out at his place.” She raises her brow. “And so, here we are.”
A tight smile fixes itself on my face. When it fades, I swallow hard. “And so, here you are.”
A note from Britney
Dear Reader,
I hope you enjoyed reading Passerby.
Writing a book is an interesting adventure, it’s a bit like inviting people into your brain to rummage around. Look where my imagination took me. These are the kinds of stories I like…
That feeling is often intense and unforgettable. And mostly, a ton of fun.
With that in mind—thank you again for reading my work. I don’t have the backing or the advertising dollars of big publishing, but hopefully I have something better…readers who like the same kind of stories I do. If you are one of them, please share with your friends and consider helping out by doing one (or all) of these quick things:
1. Visit my review page and write a 30 second review (even short ones make a big difference).
Many readers don’t realize what a difference reviews make but they make ALL the difference.
2. Drop me an email and let me know you left a review. This way I can enter you into my monthly drawing for signed paperback copies.
3. Point your psychological thriller loving friends to their free copies of my work. My favorite friends are those who introduce me to books I might like.
4. If you’d like to make sure you don’t miss anything, to receive an email whenever I release a new title, sign up for my new release newsletter.
Thanks for helping, and for reading my work. It means a lot.
Britney King
Austin, Texas
July 2021
About The Author
Britney King lives in Austin, Texas with her husband, children, a dog named Gatsby, one ridiculous cat, and a partridge in a peach tree.
When she's not wrangling the things mentioned above, she writes psychological, domestic and romantic thrillers set in suburbia.
Without a doubt, she thinks connecting with readers is the best part of this gig. You can find Britney online here:
• britneyking.com
• Email
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Acknowledgments
Many thanks to my family and friends for your support in my creative endeavors.
To the beta team, ARC team, and the bloggers, thank you for making this gig so much fun.
Last, but not least, thank you for reading my work. Thanks for making this dream of mine come true.
I appreciate you.
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GET EXCLUSIVE MATERIAL
Looking for a bit of dark humor, chilling deception and enough suspense to keep you glued to the page? If so, tap the image or click here to receive your starter library. Easy peasy.
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&nb
sp; A timeless, perfect couple waltzes into the small coffee shop where Izzy Lewis works. Instantly enamored, she does what she always does in situations like these: she searches them out on social media.
Just like that—with the tap of a screen— she’s given a front row seat to the Dunns’ picturesque life. This time, she’s certain she’s found what she’s been searching for. This time, she'll go to whatever lengths it takes to ensure she gets it right—even if this means doing the unthinkable.