Trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something good to read!

Okay…I got a lot of good, deep and restful sleep last night and I’m feeling a bit silly. However, I’m going to start putting out a few treats from “Hope From the Ocean!”

“Hope From The Ocean,” is the prequel to my first novel, “Fireflies.” You’re going to need to read “Fireflies” first, in order to enjoy this. 😉

Here is your first treat from chapter one:      

They barely knew him; this man whose wavy red mane was now frosted over and unruly, with the permanent indentation… of a hat pressed into it. All he said was, “you’ll be livin’ with us now.” The letter was still folded in his shirt pocket from Wednesday’s post. The simple and powerful expression of hopelessness playing over and over in his mind, yet those few scribbles on a note gave way to this foretold journey and the outcome of his brother and sister in law’s short lives.

“Colleen is dead and buried and I don’t have the means to keep them. The sooner you come get them the better.”

His brother’s wife’s mother, the “grandmother” so named to these two blameless beating hearts, turned them out without so much as an empty apology. There was not one “grand” thing to this pretender of a human. She didn’t even have the decency to wait with them until Dan arrived. She barely had enough humanity left to send two sentences to save their lives. Dan dug deep for either pity or some shred of understanding for how blood kin could leave two small boys alone on the side of the road but could find neither.      

Over the years, he’d seen his fair share of malice. He’d walked the earth long enough to have witnessed much worse in people than this, yet regardless of the amount of times he’d beheld the reprehensible acts of human beings, he didn’t grow blind to them. Once he laid eyes on the boys again, and the state in which they were, any chance their mother’s mother had of absolution in his prayers turned to ash.      

His voice was low and it rattled a bit. He sighed after he spoke emptying his chest, then took a deep breath and yawned. He’d traveled an hour in the dark to fetch them and the sun had yet to make even the slightest peek over the horizon.

“Where’s yer things?” “We haven’t any things. Someone came and took…” Patrick attempted to explain.

“Figured that, off we go then.”

“Brothers don’t let anyone or anythin’ come between them. Blood is thicker than water,” Dillon repeated silently to himself.

Their uncle’s heavily lidded eyes never met theirs when he lifted their weightless frames each into the flatbed of a cart, pulled by an aged yet sturdy black horse. His words were few but well headed. His calloused hands barely clasped the reins when he clicked his tongue in his hallowed cheek at the horse to move.

Happy Halloween!