Let it All Burn: A Paranormal Women's Fiction Novel (From the Ashes Book 1) Read online

  “OMG, Mom,” Harriet said in disgust. “Did you get so drunk that you bleached your hair and forgot about it?”

  Bleached my hair?

  I ran down the hall to my room, heading straight into the en suite bathroom. Nothing on the front of my hair, not that I’d expected otherwise. I’d glanced in the mirror, however briefly, before heading out to make breakfast. I yanked on the drawer next to the sink, which took two jerks to open (another thing to fix), then grabbed out my hand mirror. The reflection in the mirror mounted over the sink allowed me to see the back of my head. I didn’t have to search hard—there on the left side of my head was a one-inch streak of golden hair—not a bleached platinum or dull yellow or even gray—but a streak that looked like soft gold, which stood out in sharp contrast to my naturally dark hair.

  Something niggled at my memory, but I couldn’t quite capture it.

  “How on earth did you do that by yourself?” Harriet asked. She’d trailed me to the bathroom and was gawking at me like I was a train wreck. “And when and where did you get the color kit?” Her eyes narrowed as she glanced in the trash can. “And where did you throw it away? There’s nothing in the kitchen trash.”

  I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out. I had no answers. I had no idea how that streak had gotten there, and that scared the crap out of me.

  “Uh…I don’t know.”

  “It’s called being blackout drunk,” said Elena, joining her sister in the doorway. “And it’s a sign of alcoholism.”

  “Mom’s not an alcoholic, dufus,” Harriet said in disgust. “She just drinks wine every now and then.”

  “Sometimes she drinks full bottles,” Elena countered. “That’s another warning sign.”

  “I’m not an alcoholic,” I said, brushing past them on my way back out to the kitchen to make eggs. “And I only drank the whole bottle a few times after Dad left. Besides, I can stop any time I want.”

  “That’s warning sign number three,” Elena said solemnly. “I have the number for Hillside Residential Treatment Center.”

  “Oh, my God!” Harriet cried out. “Did you look that up this morning?”

  “Last night.”

  “You want to have Mom committed?” Harriet screeched. “Are you insane? Who do you think’s gonna take care of us while she’s gone? It sure as hell wouldn’t be Dad.”

  “Harriet. Language,” I warned as I pulled out a carton of eggs from the fridge. I reached for a bowl from a cabinet, then mindlessly started cracking the eggs into it, dumping the shells into the sink. But after two eggs, I realized the sink was full of dirty dishes, and the shells were landing in a bowl crusted with dried mint chip ice cream. “Who didn’t rinse out their bowl, and where in heaven’s name did the mint chip ice cream come from? I didn’t buy any at the store.”

  “Nana Stella must have brought it home last night,” Jack said. “I heard her walking past my room talking about her winnings.”

  “What time was that?” I asked with a frown.

  “Around two?”

  Giving him a stern look, I asked, “What were you doing awake at two in the morning?”

  “I was asleep, Mom. I swear. She woke me up with her giggling.”

  I shook my head. I was going to have to give my grandmother a curfew.

  “Irritability,” Elena said. “Warning sign number four.”

  “Mom’s not an alcoholic,” Jack exclaimed in a rare moment of irritation at his little sister. “Alcoholics go around beating their kids and driving drunk. Mom’s a responsible driver, and she’s never even given you a spanking, let alone beat you.”

  “And even if she was an alcoholic,” Harriet snapped, “you’d have to hide it from Dad or he might sue for full custody or something.”

  “He wouldn’t sue for full custody,” Jack said in disgust. “We’d mess up his new life in his two-bedroom apartment.”

  As it was, they had to sleep on blow-up beds in his office on their weekends with him. He’d tried to glam it up as “camping,” but according to Harriet, at least one of the beds had sprung a slow leak, and Richard occasionally crept into the room to use his computer in the middle of the night.

  “Okay, everyone!” I yelled, holding up a hand to get their attention. “Elena, if I were an alcoholic, you could and probably should tell your father. But drinking too much wine every few weeks does not an alcoholic make.”

  “Are you sure?” Elena asked with a quivering chin.

  Dammit. I was going to have to get rid of all the alcohol in my house until she was convinced. “I’m sure. Now go get dressed while I make your eggs.”

  “I want sunny-side up,” she said.

  I glanced down at the now-empty carton, realizing I’d dumped them all in the bowl. “Maybe tomorrow. Today everyone gets scrambled.”

  I’d accidentally just cracked nearly a dozen eggs, but I had a feeling my nearly bottomless pit of a son would eat most of them.

  Grabbing a skillet out of the cabinet, I set it on a burner and turned on the gas flame. While I waited for it to heat, I thought again about that weird golden streak in my hair and reached back to touch it. To my surprise, it felt soft and silky, completely different from the rest of my coarse hair.

  “What really happened to your hair?” Harriet asked quietly.

  I turned to look at her, the fear in her eyes breaking my heart. “Honestly, Harriet, I don’t know.”

  “Did you get blackout drunk last night?” she asked, tears brimming in her eyes.

  I shook my head emphatically even though it sent a fresh wave of pain through my head. “No, Harriet. I swear to you, I didn’t. I didn’t even finish the bottle. I drank maybe half before pouring the rest down the drain. I fully remember getting out of the tub, putting on my pajamas, checking on you kids—you and Elena were asleep, but Jack was texting someone—and then I went to bed. I remember everything.”

  “Then how did you get that streak in your hair?”

  Tears filled my eyes too. “I don’t know.”

  “Fine,” she said in a defiant tone. “Don’t tell me.” Then she marched toward the back door.

  “Where are you going?” I called after her. “You didn’t have breakfast.”

  “Irene is picking me up.” She closed the door behind her with a bang, running out to meet her best friend.

  “Don’t worry about her,” Jack said, grabbing the egg carton and tossing it into the recycling bin. “You know how she is lately.”

  “You mean she loves me one minute and hates me the next?” I said with a laugh, but my eyes filled with tears again.

  “Ah, Mom. Don’t cry.” He started to reach for me, but I waved him off and dumped the eggs into the skillet. “I’m fine.” I was relying far too much on my children to get me through the divorce. It was a burden on them. No wonder they were a mess.

  “Did Harriet tell you that Dad texted us last night?”

  “No,” I said, turning at the waist to face him. “What did he say?”

  “He wants to take us on a trip to the mountains with Tiffany this weekend.”

  “Well, it is his weekend, but Harriet would miss dance. What did she say?”

  “We both told him we weren’t going to go.”

  “To the mountains?”

  “No,” he said with a rare look of defiance. “We’re not going at all, so he called off the trip. He doesn’t want to go with just Elena.”

  Richard was likely furious.

  I cocked my head to the side. “And neither of you thought to tell me?”

  “I’m telling you now,” he said, taking a seat at the island.

  “That’s not entirely true. It sounds like you’d made up your mind not to go before he texted.”

  “Okay. We told him after our last weekend that we weren’t going to visit him anymore,” he said defensively, “so he texted trying to bribe us into going this weekend with a trip to the mountains.”

  “He’s your father. You should spend time with him,” I sai
d, trying to sound gracious, but feeling no small measure of satisfaction that my children had chosen me over their father.

  “Then he shouldn’t have moved out. If he hadn’t left, then he’d actually be here to spend time with us.”

  I released a sigh. “It’s not that simple, Jack.”

  “And it’s not that complicated from where I’m sitting, Mom. You’ve always done everything to take care of us. Even after you started working with Aunt Cyn. When he lived here, Dad just came home and did nothing. Do you know how many of my games he’s been to this year? One.”

  “Honey, I’m sure he’s been to more than one game.”

  “Stop defending him, Mom. You’re better than that.”

  I fought more tears, wondering how I’d gotten caught in this weird position of defending Richard’s actions, but I lifted my chin and said, “You only have one father, Jack, and he’s not a perfect man. He’s human just like the rest of us. It’s not fair that you’re caught in the middle of all of this, and it’s not fair that you have to juggle his emotions when you’re just a boy, but I’m asking you to step up and take the high road. I’m asking you to try to walk in his shoes.”

  Jack’s face turned red, making his light smattering of freckles stand out. “I will never cheat on my wife and leave my kids. Never.”

  I rushed over to him and pulled him into a hug, and he buried his face into the crook of my neck. “No, I know you won’t. You’re already a good man, Jackson Douglas Weatherby, and you’re not even full grown yet.” I tilted his head back so I could look him in the eye, my tear-stained fingers brushing a shaving nick on his jawline. “I’m so proud of you and your integrity, but sometimes we have to give grace to people who make mistakes. Even if they hurt us badly in the process.”

  “And you’re too nice, Mom. Which is why people hurt you so much.” He slid off his barstool. “I’m not hungry. I’m going to head to school.”

  He scooped up his backpack and headed out the door.

  “Something’s burning,” Elena said, her voice tight with fear.

  Sure enough, my forgotten eggs were black and smoking. Without thinking, I picked up the hot pan without a pot holder. The heat seared my palm, and I dropped the skillet into the sink with a loud clang, the water in the basin sizzling from the heat. I turned on the cold water and stuck my hand under the flow to ease the pain from the burn, which was sure to hit any moment. Only it didn’t. When I pulled my hand out to see if the burn had blistered, there was no sign of injury at all and definitely no pain.

  Elena grabbed my hand and studied it. “Where’s your burn?”

  “I guess I dropped the skillet before it could do any damage.”

  She looked up at me with her dark, piercing eyes. “Something weird is going on.”

  “Something weird is always going on around here.”

  “Something even weirder than usual.”

  I gave her a quick hug and a kiss on top of her head. “How about this for weird? I’ll get ready, then we’ll go through the Dunkin’ Donuts drive-thru and you can have donuts for breakfast.”

  Her eyes lit up. “Really?”

  “Just don’t tell your brother and sister.”

  “I can keep a secret. Cross my heart.”

  I had no idea how true that was.

  Chapter Four

  I was ten minutes late to work, but I’d figured Nikki would be too busy dealing with the aftermath of her fire to come to work. Boy was I wrong.

  “You’re late, Darcie,” Nikki said, standing at the door and glancing at her watch. On a good day, the 1980s usually called to ask for her teased, hair-sprayed, bleached-blond hair back, but they wouldn’t be calling today. Her overprocessed, brittle hair hung in thin strands—which was shocking enough—but her attire held center stage today. She wore a pair of cheetah-print leggings with a black halter top and a pair of clear platform three-inch heels.

  “I…uh…” I mumbled, trying to collect myself. What in heaven’s name was she wearing?

  She propped her hand on her hip and shot me a steely gaze. “You all thought I wouldn’t be here today, and you figured you could take advantage of the situation.”

  “You got us, Nikki,” Parker said, walking past us on his way to the breakroom. “We had a GroupMe chat and plotted it all out.”

  “A what?” Nikki asked, squinting in confusion.

  I’d asked my kids the same thing a few months earlier, but I wasn’t going to be the one to tell Nikki it was a group chat service. Or that it was mostly used by teens.

  “Why are you wearing your hair up today?” Nikki asked, scanning me up and down. “You seem different.”

  If that wasn’t the pot calling the kettle black…

  I’d pinned my hair up so I wouldn’t have to deal with questions about the gold streak. Nikki was the last person I wanted to tell about my rogue dye job. Leave it to her to comment on the fact that I usually had it down.

  “A near-death experience will do that,” Parker said. “Darcie, come check out the espresso machine corporate put in.”

  “I’m docking your pay for being late, Darcie,” Nikki said as I made a beeline to the breakroom.

  “I wouldn’t expect any less,” I called back, hurrying into the room behind Parker.

  Kristie was always talking about his cute butt, and for the first time I had a full-on view and realized she was right.

  Oh, my word. What was I thinking, ogling a man nearly a decade younger than me?

  “Did corporate really give us an espresso machine?” I asked, trying to take my mind off his butt.

  “Those cheapskates?” he said with a laugh. “We were lucky to get a Keurig.”

  “Lizzy brought in the Keurig,” I said. “Her husband got her a new one for their anniversary.”

  “Well, there you have it. The suits in corporate really are a bunch of cheapskates,” he said, showing me the basket of K-cups. “Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

  I couldn’t help laughing. “Why, how generous of you. I’ll take a dark roast with half-and-half.”

  “Let me,” he said, plucking the pod out of the basket and popping it into the machine. “How are you faring after your near-death experience?” He placed a mug on the dispensing platform and turned it on.

  I waved him off. “I wouldn’t call it that.”

  “Darcie, the fire was directly under your seat. Once you stood, the entire thing burst into flames. If you’d sat there a second longer…” He shook his head, then grabbed the container of half-and-half from the fridge. “I don’t even want to think about it.”

  I was stuck on his comment about the fire being directly underneath me. I’d thought so too, at the time, but later the whole lead-up to the fire had become something of a blur.

  He poured the half-and-half into the mug and picked it up when the machine was done spitting out coffee. “I like your hair like that.”

  I reached my hand up to the back of my head. What was going on? Was he flirting with me? I’d never sensed any interest from him before, although he had complimented me on my decade-old beige top the previous week. “Uh…thanks.”

  “It really brings out the green in your eyes. You should wear it like that more often.” His gaze dropped to my neck. “You have really beautiful skin.”

  “Uh…” Yeah, he was flirting, but why? Sure, I was wearing my hair differently, but my outfit wasn’t anything special—gray leggings paired with a black tunic and sensible black flats. And while I was wearing makeup, it was the typical five-minute mom job—foundation, blush, a few swipes of mascara and, if I had extra time, a literal minute spent on eyeshadow application. Sometimes I remembered to put lipstick on in the car. Today I’d forgotten. Even so, it was like trying to slap paint on weathered siding—my skin wasn’t the same as it had been in my twenties, and my neck, which he was still looking at, slightly resembled chicken skin.

  “Is this a joke?” I whispered before I thought better of it. Had Parker and some of the other staff member
s set out to prank me?

  “What?” he asked, looking shocked. “No!”

  Humiliated, I snatched the cup from him, spilling coffee on my hand. The hot liquid stung, but I was too busy making my escape to worry about the burn.

  “Darcie, are you okay?” he called after me as I headed for the bathroom to wash off the coffee.

  My hand didn’t even look pink from the burn.

  “What in the world is happening to me?” I whispered to myself.

  I held my hand up and examined it more closely. The coffee was hot enough that the cup was too hot to handle without the…well, handle. My hand should be burned or at least irritated. It looked fine. Better than fine, as if I’d been using a great moisturizer.

  A memory tried to surface again, but it didn’t quite make it.

  I stared at my reflection in the mirror, really looking at myself. Something about me looked different, but I couldn’t figure out what had changed. Was it the near-death experience? Except that didn’t account for my skin’s new insensitivity to heat or the gold streak in my hair. Were the two related?

  This is crazy.

  I needed to forget the whole thing and get back to my desk. Nikki was going to be watching me like a hawk, and she’d probably already docked my pay (more) for going to the breakroom and the bathroom. Besides, maybe Kristie could help me figure out what was going on. She was one of the most perceptive people in the building.

  I headed to my desk, my coffee cup in hand, ignoring Parker’s obvious look of concern.

  “What is going on today?” I asked Kristie as I sat down and started to boot up my computer. “Everyone is…weird.”

  “The company posted the two employees who won the complimentary invites to the fundraiser ball at the art museum. Some people aren’t happy about who was chosen.”

  “Let me guess,” I said dryly. “Nikki got one of the sets.”

  “And her boss got the other, but it was supposedly chosen at random, so…”

  “Not so random.” Now didn’t seem like a good idea to tell her I already had an invite through my mother and I’d promptly thrown it in the trash.

  “Exactly.” She leaned closer, squinting. “Speaking of people acting weird, you’re different today.”