by Devney Perry
The Candle Palace
A Jamison Valley Series Novella
Devney Perry
THE CANDLE PALACE
Copyright © 2019 by Devney Perry LLC
All rights reserved.
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ISBN: 978-1-7323884-7-5
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No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations in a book review.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
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Editing & Proofreading:
Elizabeth Nover, Razor Sharp Editing
www.razorsharpediting.com
Julie Deaton, Deaton Author Services
www.facebook.com/jdproofs
Karen Lawson, The Proof is in the Reading
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Cover:
Sarah Hansen © Okay Creations
www.okaycreations.com
Also by Devney Perry
Jamison Valley Series
The Coppersmith Farmhouse
The Clover Chapel
The Lucky Heart
The Outpost
The Bitterroot Inn
The Candle Palace
Maysen Jar Series
The Birthday List
Letters to Molly
Lark Cove Series
Tattered
Timid
Tragic
Tinsel
Tin Gypsy Series
Gypsy King
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Epilogue
Preview to Gypsy King
Acknowledgments
Prologue
SARA
“Stupid winter.” My lips were stiff as I muttered the words, half frozen from the thirty-second dash inside from my car. I gritted my chattering teeth and yanked off my gloves, throwing them onto the floor.
With my fingers free, I tore the hat off my head and unwound the anaconda of a scarf constricting my throat. Once I could breathe again, I wrestled with the zipper on my coat, which had been giving me trouble all week. It slid down easily enough but at the bottom where the dual zipper clips met, I couldn’t get one side free from the other.
“Let.” I jerked the zipper hard.
“Me.” One hand pulled down as the other pulled up.
“Go!”
It came loose as the bottom plastic piece went zinging across the room.
Annnnd now I need a new coat.
“Grrrr!” I stomped my boots furiously on the mat, pounding my frustration into the carpet as chunks of snow scattered across the tile floor of the Prescott Spa. The outburst only made me feel worse. My shoulders fell and I hung my head. Deflated, I whispered, “I. Hate. This.”
“Uh, Sara?”
I pushed the curtain of strawberry-blond hair out of my face and looked up to see all eyes on me.
“What’s wrong?” my best friend Gigi asked.
“Everything.” My chin quivered, which only made it worse.
I shrugged off my broken coat and bent to swipe up my gear from the floor, using the task as a means to suck in a few deep breaths before I cried. With my emotions in check—for the moment—I toed off my chunky black Sorel boots, setting them beside the five other pairs of a similar style.
It was girls’ night at the spa, something five of my friends and I tried to do at least once a month. I hadn’t been able to make the last few because I’d been home with my newborn son. I hadn’t planned on coming tonight either. Hudson was two months old and it was difficult for me to leave him. Given how hard it had been to have him in the first place, I was all right being stereotyped a clingy mom.
“I didn’t think you were coming tonight.” Gigi stood from her chair along the far wall, crossing the room in bare feet. Her jeans were cuffed up her calves.
“I changed my mind.”
“What’s wrong? You seem upset.”
“I’m mad at winter.” Among other things.
“She’s a bitch this year,” Felicity huffed from her seat in one of two pedicure chairs. “My car said twelve below on the drive in.”
“Mine said fourteen,” I grumbled.
It was February and we’d had cold temperatures for months. The snow was piled everywhere, making driving through our small town slow. The wind would blow every few days and create rock-hard drifts in our driveway to trap my car in the garage until Milo could get them cleared away. And worse, there was no end in sight.
In the nearly twelve years I’d lived in Montana, we’d never had one this bitter. The forecast was calling for negative twenty tomorrow during broad daylight, and the wind chill would drop that temperature even lower, leaving me barricaded inside because it was just too cold to take Hudson anywhere.
I didn’t like leaving my baby, but I did like leaving the house, even if it was just for the grocery store. The only good thing that had come out of Milo’s mouth tonight had been his suggestion to come to the spa.
“Who’s next?” The spa owner walked in from the back hallway. Sabrina followed, her long blond hair tied up in a ponytail and her eyelids heavy after her massage.
“It’s my turn, but I think Sara needs it more.” Maisy stood from her seat and crossed the room, pulling me in for a quick hug. “You go next.”
“Okay. Thanks.” I wasn’t going to argue. I needed some time to close my eyes, relax and replay the fight I’d had with Milo.
We never fought. I could count on one hand the number of arguments we’d had in our eleven years of marriage. I was itchy and uncomfortable. The knot in my stomach kept pulling tighter and tighter. Maybe I should go home so we could talk.
No. It was better if we both cooled off first.
I walked toward the dark massage room, hugging Sabrina on my way, and settled into the massage chair. Then I closed my eyes and let the masseuse work her magic.
When I emerged thirty minutes later, the kinks and stress in my shoulders had been rubbed away. Some of the unease from my fight with Milo was gone too.
We rotated treatments on these spa nights. The girls and I would pick and choose between pedicures, manicures and chair massages depending on our moods. Mostly, we came to sit, drink wine and talk about our husbands, children or the hot gossip in town.
“We’ve decided you’re getting everything tonight,” Emmeline said from a pedicure station. She pointed to the empty chair at her side. “Take a seat.”
Again, I didn’t argue.
“Thank you.” I relaxed into the chair, the tub of water at my feet warm and waiting.
As I settled into the second pedicure station, Maisy gave me a smile, then disappeared down the hallway for her massage. The nail tech started on me right away as Gigi brought me over a glass of wine.
“So besides winter, what’s bothering you?”
I sighed. “Milo and I had a fight. He’s being an asshole.”
“What happened?” She went back to her seat between Felicity and Sabrina. The spa had a small lounge area with just enough seats for us all.
“My mother is coming to visit.”
Gigi winced. “Uh-oh.”
The two of us had worked together
at the Jamison Valley hospital for years. It was a quiet job, for the most part, which meant Gigi and I often found ourselves at the nurses station, talking. She knew a visit from Mom had the potential to end in disaster.
“Do they not get along?” Felicity asked.
“Not really.”
Gigi knew about Mom and why Milo didn’t trust her as far as he could throw her. But because I didn’t talk about Mom often, it was no surprise that Felicity, Sabrina and Emmeline were staring at me, waiting for an explanation.
“Milo and my mother do not like one another. At all. But she hasn’t met Hudson yet, and she’s been asking and asking when she can come out for a visit. She’s been . . . persistent. And I finally just gave in.”
With the roads snow packed and icy these past few months, it had been easy to persuade her to stay in Spokane. I hadn’t had the energy to play mediator between her and Milo while trying to adjust to life with Hudson.
But Mom wasn’t waiting any longer. She was dying to meet her grandson. Even though the temperatures were ridiculously frigid, the roads were mostly clear. She was coming in two weeks, whether we liked it or not.
She’d been waiting years for a grandchild. I didn’t talk to Mom often, but after Milo and I’d gotten married, not a phone call had gone by when she hadn’t asked if I was pregnant.
It wasn’t her fault she didn’t know how hard it was to choke out a no. I hadn’t told her how long Milo and I’d struggled to get pregnant.
Hudson was our miracle baby. I was thirty-five years old. Milo was thirty-eight. We couldn’t afford expensive fertility treatments, so after years and years of failed pregnancy tests, we’d all but given up hope. Then he’d come along, and even though my mother irritated me beyond belief at times, I wanted him to know his grandmother.
“Milo always gets jumpy when she comes for a rare visit. We got in a fight tonight over where she was going to sleep. I said the guest bedroom. He said the basement. On the floor.”
“That doesn’t sound like Milo,” Felicity said. “He’s so sweet to everyone.”
“It’s coming from a good place.” I sighed. I’d forgotten that while we’d been fighting, but Milo’s reaction to my mom was because he loved me so much. “Mom and I have always had a strange relationship. She did some things years ago that hurt me. Milo hasn’t let it go.”
“That sucks.” Emmeline reached over and patted my hand. “Sorry.”
I shrugged. “We’ll get through it. She’ll come and visit. Drive Milo crazy. Then she’ll leave and we won’t see her for another year.”
“What did she do?” Felicity asked.
“Short story? She chose to believe my archenemy instead of me.”
“I’m afraid to ask, but what’s the long story?”
“It’s long. It goes way back to when Milo and I met.”
“You know what’s crazy?” Sabrina snuggled deeper into the plush chair where she was curled up. “I can’t believe that in all the years we’ve been friends, I’ve never heard the whole story of how you two got together.”
“Yeah, me neither,” Felicity said. “Will you tell us?”
Not a lot of people knew our story. Milo had been so shy about his scars that he’d kept that experience in Spokane private. So when asked, I’d always told the story of how we’d met vague.
But Milo had opened up about it more and more over the past few years. He talked about the explosion. He wasn’t as compulsive about hiding his scars. And I knew he wouldn’t mind if I shared our story with my most trusted friends.
“Sure.” I took a long sip of my wine. “It all started at the Candle Palace.”
One
Twelve years earlier . . .
“Welcome back,” Kym said as I walked into the locker room. “How was vacation?”
“Oh, fine.”
Actually, my vacation had been a mess. Instead of having a week off to laze around my condo, bake cookies and binge-watch random television shows, I’d spent a week deep cleaning my mother’s house so my twenty-year-old brother, Denny, could move in with her. He’d been evicted from yet another apartment of his own.
I’d baked zero cookies. I’d watched zero minutes of TV. Because by the time I’d come home to my own bed each night, I’d been so exhausted from hauling boxes into storage and scrubbing walls coated with years of cigarette smoke that all I’d been able to do was shower and collapse.
But Kym hadn’t asked how my vacation was because she wanted those details. In the year we’d worked together, we hadn’t gotten past the superficial conversations as coworkers. She knew I was single and lived alone. I knew she was married to a banker with two teenage boys. Besides that, we talked about life inside this hospital. Particularly, life inside the burn unit.
“How was your New Year’s?” I asked, stowing my purse into my locker before sitting on a bench to untie my snow boots.
“Boring. The boys stayed up late. I was in bed by ten thirty.”
“I have you beat. I was asleep by nine.”
Kym laughed, closing her own locker. “See you out there.”
“Okay.” I nodded, swapping my boots for the pair of Nikes in my locker.
I put them on, made sure my badge was clipped to the pocket on my navy scrub pants, then swiped on another coat of mint lip balm and closed my locker. I was almost out the door when I spun around, remembering the tea light in my purse. With it safely in my pocket, I walked out and found Kym at the nurses station, chatting with the night-shift team.
It didn’t take them long to give us the night report then head for the locker room to go home for the day. The floor had been mostly quiet all night and our patient count was low.
“We had a new admit while you were gone,” Kym said as we walked the small loop of rooms that made up our unit. “He’s got third-degree burns on his arms and torso and a pile of second and firsts from head to toe.”
My heart ached for this stranger. Burns were slow and painful to heal, and he had a long road to recovery to walk. But like all the other patients who’d come in and out of these rooms, eventually he’d leave, mended. “What happened to him?”
“He was in an explosion.” She lowered her voice. We were alone in the hallway but sound tended to carry, bouncing off the gray-striped wallpaper and waxed linoleum floors. “I don’t know the whole story but I guess he’s a cop somewhere in Montana. The explosion happened at a meth house.”
I winced. “Are any of the burns chemical?”
“No. He’s been in and out of consciousness this week. His burns are so bad that he’s been on sedatives. But we began tapering them yesterday. Doctor Vernon wants the patient to be more lucid so we can assess pain and treatment. We’ve done the preliminary cleaning but haven’t starting debriding.”
Removing the dead skin and tissue from the burned area was a lengthy process that came with a lot of pain. We had a special bathtub to help, but if the burns were too severe, the only way to get the area prepared for a graft was with surgery. Then came the waiting. The burns had to be given time to restore good blood flow. A skin graft needed a healthy bed to latch on to.
The preparation for a graft took weeks. After the procedure, there’d be weeks to recover and monitor the new skin’s growth. Add onto that any physical therapy required, and it sounded like our newest patient would be here for a while.
“So how do you want to divide up the unit today?” I asked Kym.
“You can have Luna.” She gave me a knowing grin. “She’s been asking for you.”
“Thanks.” I smiled. We all had our favorite patients and Luna was mine. I’d never developed a personal relationship with a patient, but she was the exception. “Then I’ll take this side of the loop.”
“Sounds good.” Kym set off for her patients’ rooms with a wave. “See you later.”
“Bye.”
The burn unit was a small square on the fifth floor of Spokane’s Sacred Heart Hospital. The ten patient rooms ran along the outside wall while the nurses s
tation and supply closets took up the center. Each shift divided the unit in half so one nurse could concentrate on a set of rooms grouped together. It saved a lot of steps, not having to run from one corner to the other all day.
At the moment, there were four patients on Kym’s side and only three on mine. But given that the new admit was a severe case, I’d have a heavier workload than she did today. It was worth the hustle to get Luna.
I went back to the nurses station and grabbed an iPad to record patient notes, then walked down the hallway to room 503. Before going to Luna’s room, I wanted to check in on our new admit and introduce myself.
Milo Phillips. His name sounded strong and smooth as it echoed in my mind. I glanced over the details in his chart as I walked toward his door, my eyes getting wider as his list of injuries went on and on. Concussion. Multiple lacerations. Burn after burn.
This poor man. The doctor’s latest note stressed the importance of finding a fluid and electrolyte balance. At the moment, Milo’s burns were draining his body dry. Literally. I’d be changing dirty dressings often today in an attempt to keep them dry. That and swapping IV bags out left and right in the fight to keep his body hydrated.
As Kym had mentioned, the worst burns were on his arms and torso. Those third-degree burns were so deep that the skin and nerves had been destroyed; repair would require a graft of new skin.
The chart also noted second-degree burns on Milo’s face and others on his legs where his jeans had melted against his skin. Those would be swollen and blistered. He’d come to hate seeing me walk into the room with a handful of gauze because dressing changes could be so painful on that type of burn.