Stones Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Praise for Marilyn Baron

  Dedication

  Awards

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two:

  Chapter Three:

  Chapter Four:

  Chapter Five:

  PART TWO: THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

  Chapter Seven:

  Chapter Eight:

  Chapter Nine:

  Chapter Ten:

  Chapter Eleven:

  Chapter Twelve:

  Chapter Thirteen:

  Chapter Fourteen:

  Chapter Fifteen:

  Chapter Sixteen:

  Chapter Seventeen:

  Chapter Eighteen:

  Chapter Nineteen:

  Chapter Twenty:

  Chapter Twenty-One:

  PART THREE

  Chapter Twenty-Three:

  Chapter Twenty-Four:

  Chapter Twenty-Five:

  Chapter Twenty-Six:

  Chapter Twenty-Seven:

  Chapter Twenty-Eight:

  Chapter Twenty-Nine:

  Thank you for purchasing this publication of The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  Stones

  by

  Marilyn Baron

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Stones

  COPYRIGHT © 2014 by Marilyn Baron

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Contact Information: [email protected]

  Cover Art by Kim Mendoza

  The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  PO Box 708

  Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

  Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

  Publishing History

  First Mainstream General Edition, 2014

  Print ISBN 978-1-62830-441-1

  Digital ISBN 978-1-62830-442-8

  Published in the United States of America

  Praise for Marilyn Baron

  “Baron offers a bit of everything…. There’s humor, infidelity, murder, mayhem, and a neatly drawn conclusion.”

  ~RT Book Reviews (4.5 Stars)

  “I just finished reading UNDER THE MOON GATE and really enjoyed it. I was fascinated by the intertwining of the characters in the stories from the 1700s to present day and I especially enjoyed the segment that took place during WWII. Great writing. Marilyn did a great job of bringing Bermuda during the WWII era to life in this book.”

  ~PJ Ausdenmore, The Romance Dish

  “[UNDER THE MOON GATE] is a surefire blockbuster…a treasure trove of mystery and intrigue. It sparkles with romance…. I couldn’t recommend it more.”

  ~Andrew Kirby

  “An enjoyable read from start to finish...family, friends, enemies, intrigue and suspense...sadness, laughter, romance and ultimately love.”

  ~Romance Junkies (4 Blue Ribbons)

  “SIXTH SENSE has a great mix of romance, spine-tingling suspense, and real hope for two jaded individuals for a happily-ever-after ending. I'm looking forward to reading Book Two in the Psychic Crystal Mystery Series.”

  ~Tami Brothers

  “An intriguing, albeit reluctant, psychic detective in this paranormal romantic suspense story…a strong and captivating heroine .”

  ~Pauline Michael, Night Owl Romance (3 Stars)

  Dedication

  To my wonderful daughter, Marissa,

  whose stories make me laugh

  and who inspires me

  to be true to myself in my writing.

  Awards

  Finalist, Georgia Romance Writers Unpublished Maggie Award for Excellence, 2005, Single Title (STONES, originally titled The Colonoscopy Club)

  ~*~

  Winner, Georgia Romance Writers Unpublished Maggie Award for Excellence, 2012, Paranormal/Fantasy Romance (SIXTH SENSE)

  ~*~

  First Place, Suspense Romance Category

  2010 Ignite the Flame contest

  (Central Ohio Fiction Writers chapter

  of Romance Writers of America)

  PART ONE: THE ROAD TO PALM COAST

  PRESENT DAY

  Chapter One:

  Desperately Seeking Closure

  Atlanta

  Thank God for lint.

  It’s the one area in my life where I’ve been able to achieve closure. I can wash a load of towels, toss them into the dryer, fold them, and, after opening the lint filter, peel back a glorious, thick, colorful strip of lint, admire it, and throw it into the wastebasket. Then I can cross that task off my to-do list. Now, that is closure! And, by the way, I have a new dryer that gives really good lint.

  I’m sure you’re thinking that anyone who’s turned lint-making into a fine art must be either crazy or desperate. But before you jump to the conclusion that I’m totally insane, I should tell you I am not crazy. Now that I’ve reached the unenviable milestone of fifty years, I am, however, officially old. I have to face facts. If I didn’t know it before, I’m reminded daily by all the e-mails I get about the signs of depression, regaining my mobility with a power scooter, and burial insurance.

  The good news is my best friend Mackie and I are growing old together. If you walked out of a bathroom trailing toilet paper, wouldn’t you want someone to give you a heads-up? For me, that someone is Mackie Shack. And, like toilet paper, Mackie is the kind of friend who sticks till the bitter end.

  To celebrate our coming of age, we even scheduled our colonoscopies on the same day, but in different cities. That’s one rite of passage I could have done without. I’m here to tell you that even though the colonoscopy itself was anticlimactic, the prep for that operation (my husband Matt minimized the whole thing by calling it a procedure) was nothing short of traumatic. Besides, Matt has no right to comment, seeing that both he and Mackie’s husband, Little Jon, have been “too busy” to schedule theirs, and they are rapidly running out of lame excuses.

  Mackie and I have decided to form The Colonoscopy Club, since that seems to be the favorite topic of conversation among the fifty-something crowd these days. It’s always a contest between us as to who had the worst colonoscopy prep experience. I, of course, consider myself the hands-down winner. Some of our friends say their prep was a walk in the park. They waltzed out of their doctors’ offices and into a restaurant to have breakfast or went right back to work. Needless to say, they weren’t invited to join our club.

  Right now, Mackie and I are the only two members of this exclusive organization. And we like it that way. There’s no formal program or structured format to our club meetings. They are not even meetings in the strict sense of the word. They can be held online or over the telephone. We can’t meet face-to-face because my “dearly beloved” dragged me out of Miami last year and dumped me into what Mackie calls the Deep South, although, on the map, Miami is technically far south of Atlanta, which makes absolutely no sense. All I know is, Mackie and I are now worlds apart.

  We can talk about whatever happens to touch us or tick us off. We’ve got sort of a foam-at-the-mouth, stream-of-consciousness dialogue thing going on, like real friends do. We don’t take club minutes. Neither of us really needs an official record, because time has branded memories on my brain like a hot iron. And Mackie is my Rosetta Stone. She is best at helping me decipher my life because she lived through it with me.

  Now that half my life is over, I’ve somehow become disconnected, and I’m breaking apa
rt at the seams. It’s as if some giant Hoover is hovering over me like a rain cloud or an alien spaceship, sucking all the happiness and energy out in steady, soul-severing whooshes, leaving me stuck on the spin cycle, permanently pressed.

  How do I know I’m unraveling? I used to be a news junkie, and now I never read the newspaper—except for my horoscope in the Living section—and I can no longer tolerate the babble and the blare of TV. I guess if I lose my grip on reality I can always find it on any number of network reality shows I don’t watch. I may be the only person on the planet who doesn’t watch Dancing With the Stars or American Idol. How did I ever survive? I figure if I miss something really important someone will let me know.

  Last week, Matt came home from a business trip and found me fast asleep on one end of the couch with a book over my face and my Bichon Frise, Abercrombie, asleep at my feet, both of us comfortably settled under the same wool afghan. He took a digital picture, printed it, stuck it on the refrigerator (thank God he didn’t upload it to Facebook) and created a screensaver for my computer, in case I needed a reminder that I was sleeping my life away. Or that my ass was leaving an imprint the size of Savannah on the sofa.

  The dog is not growing old gracefully, and neither am I. At least Abercrombie has an excuse. The vet says she has doggie dementia.

  “You’re kidding,” Matt said when I brought her home from her most recent checkup.

  “No,” I countered. “He says she’s lost her purpose in life.”

  “And how would anyone know what that was?” he replied. “Are we supposed to ask her? Just what is her purpose in life?”

  “To love me unconditionally.” Like you used to do.

  Matt says he’s worried about me because I never consider weighty matters anymore. He might be surprised to know that, in fact, I’m considering a very serious matter right now. One that never would have entered my mind a year ago. But a lot of things have changed since Matt moved us from Miami so abruptly, announcing that Atlanta is a better place to do business. Matt believes that Miami is a good place to live—if you’re a drug dealer. I think even Matt would agree that contemplating whether to meet my first love, Manny Gellar, at my oceanfront condo in Palm Coast, Florida, qualifies as a pretty weighty matter.

  To go or not to go to Palm Coast is no longer the question. The question is what will I do once I get there? Will I really have the nerve to reconnect, or as my daughter Natalie likes to say, “hook up,” again with Manny Gellar? How will I feel tomorrow when I see him alone for the first time after twenty-five years? Will I finally reveal what I feel compelled—no, what I’m busting a gut—to tell him? That he has a beautiful son, that our son Josh is getting married in just three months? I’m probably rationalizing, but I think he finally has a right to know.

  My bedroom is scattered with slip-on summer dresses and slip-off sandals. My suitcase is bulging with sexy bathing suits, frivolous beach accessories, and freshly purchased, frothy unmentionables. Not that my husband is interested in my frothy unmentionables anymore. Maybe Manny Gellar will be.

  Mackie says I have a severe case of tropical depression. Which is a coincidence, because at this very moment a hurricane (formerly a tropical depression) is heading toward Florida—and so am I. I told Matt I was going to our condo to batten down the hatches, just in case. I knew he wouldn’t go, of course. He’s always too busy with work.

  Mackie thinks I’m in a funk because, for the first time in my life, I’m trying to negotiate an empty nest. She might be onto something. I’m in the middle of planning Josh’s wedding, and my daughter Natalie has just gone off to college out of state. She’s already dating a boy named Barnyard. Now, before you ask, his real name is Bernard, and no, I don’t know why his fraternity brothers call him Barnyard—I don’t want to know.

  Mackie asked me about it this morning as we sipped hot chocolates at our respective Starbucks. Since Matt and I moved to Atlanta last year, Mackie, one of my last links to sanity, and I have a standing weekly date at Starbucks, via our iPhones, with matching purple OtterBoxes®. Natalie wanted me to buy her an iPhone, too, but I thought I could save some money by mating my iPhone with Mackie’s and giving the by-product to Natalie. That didn’t work out. Apparently the gadgets don’t reproduce. Sometimes we call; sometimes we e-mail; sometimes we Instant Message. My screen name is Jewels. Mackie’s is DoubleMac. Both nicknames are courtesy of our mutual friend and my ex-boyfriend, Old Unfaithful, Manny Gellar, now “Realtor to the Stars.”

  Mackie calls in religiously from Miami; I report from Atlanta. Things haven’t been exactly the same between Mackie and me since I moved away. There’s a subtle strain, a distance I pick up on whenever we talk now. I hope it’s all in my mind.

  From my corner seat at the coffee shop, I inhale the steam and touch my lips to the liquid warmth, letting the drink conjure all the feelings of home. I can almost feel my mother’s hand pressing a mug of sweet cocoa into mine as we try to stay warm, cocooned in the cramped kitchen in the house where I grew up, around a portable heater, on a rare chilly 40-degree Miami morning.

  “Is Barnyard an animal?” Mackie wants to know.

  “No. I’ve never met the boy, but according to Natalie, he seems perfectly respectable. And the best part is he has a small family. You know how big Josh’s fiancée’s family is. The Suarez side of the guest list is growing like kudzu.”

  “Kudzu?” Mackie asks.

  “It’s a hyperactive vine with an attitude that’s trying to finish the job General Sherman started,” I explain. “Anyway, I promised Natalie that if she married Barnyard his mother could invite as many people as she wanted to the wedding.”

  “That’s very generous of you, Julie,” Mackie observes, before her tone turns serious. “What do you think that means for Natalie and Greg?”

  Greg is Mackie’s son, and we’ve been planning their wedding since the kids were in diapers. And Greg would have made a fabulous son-in-law, and he will, only for some other mother-in-law. The happily-ever-after ending is never going to happen for Natalie and Greg, because, although Natalie loves Greg, she’s not in love with Greg. And I don’t know how to begin to tell Mackie or if I should even be the one to tell her. So I resort to a little white lie to keep from hurting my friend.

  “You know how girls can be when they get their first taste of freedom,” I say. “Remember how we were? She just wants to experiment. Barnyard is nothing more than a starter college boyfriend. She’ll come back to Greg. They were meant to be together.”

  We don’t always get what we want. I thought Manny Gellar and I were “meant to be together” too, but that didn’t exactly work out either.

  Mackie’s sigh of relief is audible.

  Natalie thinks I’m crazy to bring up marriage, since she’s only been out with Barnyard four times. Now that I’m no longer working full-time at my jewelry boutique, Stones, in Coral Gables, Florida, my daughter says my new job seems to be supervising every move she makes. She accuses me of hovering and meddling in every aspect of her business and encourages me to “Get a Life!”

  She made an exception one evening last week when I picked up the phone, heard her wavering voice at the other end of the line, and imagined her beautiful, pale face crumpling.

  “Mama,” she cried.

  “Honey, what’s wrong?” I pictured a horrific car crash, a nuclear accident, or a terrorist attack on campus.

  “It’s Bernard.”

  “What about Barnyard?” I said, my parental radar picking up flashing Natalie danger signals.

  “I found out he has a girlfriend back in Boca.”

  Small family or not, I wasn’t going to let Barnyard get away with saddling my daughter with ex-girlfriend issues.

  “Those long-distance relationships never last,” I assured her.

  “When I confronted him, he told me they’d broken up. And now they’re back together.”

  We had made such progress in the last three years, I wasn’t about to let Natalie founder in rough rel
ationship waters. She had to be protected at all costs. No matter how far away she roamed, I would never stop trying to smooth the way for her.

  “There are other fish in the sea, or in this case, animals in the barn,” I counseled. “There are a ton of boys at the university. I’ll bet if you look, you’ll find one who is perfect for you.”

  “I know. But I like Bernard. He kissed me.”

  “That’s all he did, I hope,” I managed, trying not to strangle on the words. I wanted to wring Barnyard’s neck for hurting my baby. And I didn’t want what had happened to me in college to happen to my daughter. I didn’t want history repeating itself by having her hung up on the wrong man for half a lifetime.

  “I have to see him all the time. He lives in my dorm. He’s in most of my classes. He still wants me to go out with him, even though—”

  “Well, if you’re asking my opinion, don’t go out with that farm animal until he gets his act together. Ask one of your sorority sisters to fix you up. Maybe if he sees you with someone else, he’ll get jealous.”

  “Mom, that’s sneaky.”

  “Yes, well, sometimes your old mom can be a sneaky Pete.” If she only knew.

  Natalie laughed at my attempt to lift her spirits. My daughter is brilliant, so much so that it sometimes boggles my mind. But she is also oversensitive and serious, so I have a tendency to overcompensate by being overprotective.

  In the past there have been a whole range of subjects that were off limits to talk about between us. Boys, clothes, and food (especially food) are just a few of the parent traps. If she baits me by asking about one of those “hot button” topics, I refuse to comment because I have learned that there are no right answers. Mackie’s husband, Little Jon, my psychiatrist, says Natalie was just acting out because of separation anxiety as she mentally prepared to go off to college. But that rocky period is behind us, now that her eating disorder no longer defines her. And she’s very resilient. She’s already survived a shaky period in her young life, so I have to believe she’ll be okay. It doesn’t stop me from worrying, though.

  I don’t know how many times in the past month I’ve fallen asleep on the couch in the den only to wake up in the middle of the night, disoriented, looking for my precious Natalie, who up until a month ago had been my little shadow. Is she up in her room? Sleeping at a friend’s house? Out with Greg? Why isn’t she here in the house with me? Then I remember she is away at college, Matt is out of town, and I’m alone, except for the ever loyal and affectionate Abercrombie, who dutifully follows me around like Mary’s little lamb. And it takes a few minutes for the ache of missing my little girl to disappear.