Here is a new chapter in our mini mystery, Pages of Fate…
I don’t know when the ominous feeling came over me. Maybe it started when we woke up to a darkened house. The electric had gone out sometime during the night. Which was fine, we totally did not need that coffee to start the day, or the use of the oven to help get our week off to a good, running start. Not at all. We totally needed those hours of twiddling our thumbs while the feeling that something bad was coming hung over us.
Or maybe it started when the boys came back with the mail. Hidden between flyers advertising high-speed internet, trash removal at a price, and classes at the local nursery was a letter. Addressed to me, it boasted of “a night where the lines between story and reality blur into a thrilling, enigmatic dance.”
Either one could have caused that feeling of tightness in my throat, but coupled with them came the sound of a roaring wind. I knew it was the wind, but I also knew my friend Nancy, author of To Love a Falcon, had gone missing along with another of our friends, Kathleen, whose book The Missing Songbird, was due to release soon, and I couldn’t help but shiver. The wind sounded an awful lot like a jet plane flying overhead which in turn triggered all those little thoughts you don’t want to think when your day is already off to a bad start.
Were their disappearances innocent in nature? Were they just friends who were no longer answering their phones, replying to texts, or commenting on social media due to time constraints forcing them to take a break from outside disturbances? Or were they victims of some cruel plot against authors?
There did seem to be a major connecting link. This very same invitation. I knew they’d both received one. We’d talked about it before they went offline, commenting on the oddness of the wording. Wording that our personalities differed in the interpretation of.
“A thrilling, enigmatic dance” to one meant “horrifying and too-much-peopling” to another. That other being me, of course. I wanted nothing to do with crowds. And a dance? Thank you very much, but no, not me. I want to be the one sitting behind the keyboard creating people who enjoy things like dances.
However, unlike my imaginary people, I do not want to be forced to put on my best smile, to be personable and chatty, moving among strangers as though I were anything but flat-footed and horribly uncoordinated.
I wanted to hide away in the remote solitude of our quiet country life, mourning the lack of coffee and the delayed start to the busy day we’d planned to have. So we continued to twiddle our thumbs and wait, and the electric finally came back on so life could return to normal.
At least on the surface. Occasionally, from outside I continued to hear that oddly frightening drone that sounded like a fighter jet buzzing the skies. Again, I ignored the connection to Nancy’s book, chalked it up to the wind, and went about our day, determined to tackle everything on the list.
And a busy day it was too. Cooking, cleaning, and more cooking. And on top of that, loose sheets of paper kept blowing in from who-knew-where, littering the yard like the seeds from the millions of dandelions growing in the field. The kids thought it a joke to run out and gather them up, but as the pile in the trash grew, so, too, did that feeling of apprehension.
I didn’t look at them. I didn’t want to know what was written on them. But I think then—sometime between the baking and chopping veggies for ferments, when the kids ran out for what had to be the gazillionth time that day—I realized that more was at stake than a bag of trash blowing on the wind.
Rumors varied as to what exactly happened and when, but one thing we knew for certain was that paper had been involved in my friends’ disappearances. What that meant for me…
Well, I didn’t want to think about it so I tried to shove it from my mind. And, instead of worrying, went back to the kitchen to finish up the ferments before diving right into baking a double batch of banana bread.
The paper had been coming at various intervals throughout the day, but it had been another windy day and anything was likely to blow in. Typical for this area of the country at this time of year, the wind also blew in all the stink from the neighboring chicken farms, so there was that to deal with as well.
I thought about going up with the rest of the family to lock up the chickens, but the stench was only growing stronger with the setting of the sun. Plus… the paper. There were still a few scattered sheets caught on the trunk of the larch tree and tucked between the stems of the lilac bushes. Only a few, but enough to remind me that something weird was afoot. I didn’t want to let on that it had me worried, so I feigned a (also legitimate) dislike of the smell permeating the outdoors, and stayed back.
When the doorbell rang just after the others reached the chicken coop, I peeked out the window, my heart rate went through the roof.
Because somehow the lines between reality and fiction had blurred and I recognized those figures and knew my time had come…
____________________________________
Now for the fun part!
Enter at this link here The Missing Songbird giveaway for your chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card and an ebook copy of the book.
____________________________________
Here’s a little more about the book.
Lina, after growing up in austere post-WWII Wales, only has one dream—to one day find love and sing on the stage in London. But when her father, her only champion, suddenly dies, that dream seems as far away as London itself.
When charming Captain Everette and his side-show come to town and offer a path to fame, it’s like all her dreams are suddenly coming true. It seems she’s willing to leave behind not only her hometown, but even the one man she’d always imagined marrying for this one shot.
But the path Lina has chosen turns rocky and treacherous, as everyone she meets seems to have their own plans for the beautiful, diminutive singer. Things turn awry when she finds herself suddenly imprisoned for a murder she didn’t commit. With no one to turn to and everything hanging in the balance, how will Lina trust God and His will for her life?
With an equally beautiful writing voice, Kathleen J. Robison draws in her readers with suspense, mystery, and romance.
The Missing Songbird can be found HERE in ebook, paperback, and on KindleUnlimited.