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Author’s Note
Well, you made it through the Saratoga Falls series. While I’m not writing off the possibility of another book in the future, I hope Nick and Bethany’s story was a satisfying conclusion to Nick, Mac, and Sam’s shenanigans. It feels right to take a break here—with the crew’s stories nicely wrapped up, leaving other Saratoga Falls characters’ lives ripe for more curveballs and adventures (cough—Anna Marie and Bobby).
All in all, this book was a surprising story for me to write in many ways. First, I thought it would be difficult to do Nick’s character justice, but it ended up feeling natural and being really fun in the end. Since the beginning, Bethany’s character has been one I’ve wanted to shed light on and develop deeper, making her more of a gray, misunderstood character than the typical mean girl trope. I even put a little bit more of myself into her than I’d planned, specifically, my struggle with dyslexia. Each crossed out word in her journal entries were words I mangled while writing them, so I left them that way. And, as you can probably tell, I like to tackle some of the darker, less spoken about parts of real life, which I was able to do in this story as well. Autism, in particular, was something I wanted to learn more about. In fact, I want to thank Tracey Ward for taking the time to ensure Jesse’s character was true to that of a child his age on the spectrum, having raised her son who is also Autistic.
I also want to thank the real-life Nick, Anna Marie, and my crew for being so excited about these books and giving me so much material to build such fun-loving characters from. Nick, maybe someday we’ll finally actually have a Lick’s, and Anna, you can be our bubbles girl While I doubt Nick will ever read the books he stars in, I know the girls will share it with him. So, Nick, know this: you’ve inspired a character that readers love, and one that will forever be with me.
Most of all, I want to thank you, reader, for buying my books, for caring enough to read them. Take it from someone who got red marks on all her English papers: you’ve made my dreams come true. I hope you enjoy my other series as much as I hope you enjoyed this one.
As always, happy reading adventures!
Linds - xoxo
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P.S. If you have time, I’d be grateful if you would leave an honest review on Goodreads and/or your preferred retailer.
A Sneak Peek at Forgotten Lands
Dust and Shadow - Prologue
“NO MATTER WHAT YOU HEAR, no matter how curious you are, never ever go outside during a storm. Do you understand?” The wind howls and something thrashes against the house, waking me from a restless sleep. “Tell me you understand.” Beeswax, faint and sharp, fills my nostrils as a cool gust of wind whips by me, and I blink my eyes open. I’m not sure how long I’ve been sleeping, but the cracked white moulding high above me is visible in the dismal light of the sand-soaked morning.
I stir from my cocoon of blankets, peering around the sitting room as my eyes adjust. The room is cast in a flaxen-colored haze, turning the rich pinks and purples in the floral wallpaper almost brown. Everything is covered in a thin layer of sand. The candlesticks on the table next to me are no exception, finished in dust and burned to almost nothing from the long hours of the night before.
I stare down at my sister. Her chest rises and falls with each steady breath as she sleeps. Her bright red hair—the color of the red saguaro flowers that bloom in the dunes beyond the farm— spreads across my lap. She sleeps so peacefully, so quietly.
The house creaks, a familiar, expected sound for an old ranch house, but when floorboards groan under slow, heavy footsteps behind me, I twist around to find Papa, staring through a crack in the shuttered window. The metal that darkens the windows is a shield and an ominous reminder.
The fuzziness of sleep instantly fades away as I realize the storm is still howling outside and Mama hasn’t made it home yet. “Never ever go outside during a storm.” Her words are engrained in me, the hymn of survival in this place of increasing danger.
“It’s letting up,” Papa whispers, as if he can feel my concern.
Carefully, I extricate myself from my sister. I recall my first memory of Mama and I playing with baby Scarlet, cooing and fidgeting on the plush oriental rug beneath my feet. Tears prick my eyes, and the worried sentiments that had hounded me until I finally fell asleep hours before return.
I watch Papa for a moment, wondering what it is he thinks he sees beyond the crack in the metal shutters, through the whirling sand as the storm assaults the exterior. Mama would never venture out in a sandstorm; she would never risk the blinding, painful sting of sand or the possibility of death.
Stepping up to the other window, I move the damask curtains aside and peer between the slight seam in the shutters. It started hundreds of years ago: the Shift. Mama’s great-great-grandma, Elizabeth West, wrote about it in her journal. Lethal fogs that suffocated the bigger cities after the Industrial Revolution, killing innocents and forcing those who were still able to flee out of their homes. That’s why she came to Sagebrush, all those years ago. To escape. But things didn’t work out the way they’d planned on account of the sandstorms and the drought. It wasn’t just the cities with their big machines and coal engines that changed, but the whole world. Mama always reminds me that it’s the sand that is our greatest enemy, but it’s also the sea of sand surrounding us that keeps us nestled away from scavengers in search of precious water we can’t afford to share—it’s the sand that keeps us safe.
Sometimes, I get too curious about Grandma West and the big steamboats that traveled the world. I try to imagine an ocean, or even a beach, where the water meets the sand, and not coarse sand like we have here, but a soft, malleable thing beneath bare feet. “We are grateful to be in Sagebrush, Jo. Never forget that.” Black lung took nearly everyone, and Grandma herself was ailing all her short life because of it. It’s why Mama’s family is so good with healing, something her family had to learn many years ago and passed down to her. “Grandma would have died in Baltimore and we would not be alive, not when so many others died.”
But Sagebrush is a harsh place, cut off from whatever else is out there, that makes me uneasy and restless in the far-reaching expanse of the desert. It’s the only place I’ve ever known, and I try to think of a world where sand can be beautiful and water stretches as far as the eye can see. My mouth dries imagining it.
“I’ll kill him,” Papa says under his breath, and I glance over, confused. Even if I don’t understand the anger in his voice, I somehow know that even if Mama were to walk right through that door, unscathed and smiling, something terrible would follow. I can feel it, the impending something, alive and humming in the air. It turns my longing and anticipation into fear.
“She’s somewhere safe.” I try to reassure him because Mama knows what to do during a storm, and I know Papa knows that, too.
“If he’s done something—anything . . .”
Even at nine years old, I know who Papa is cursing. The marshal is scary, even if I don’t really know why. I’ve felt the tension between him and Papa during dinner parties and when we see him and his family around town. Although I don’t really know him, the marshal doesn’t seem like a pleasant man, but then none of the Cunninghams are very nice. I don’t like Clayton, the marshal’s son, either. He laughed at me once when I fell leaving church. His sister laughed, too.
I look at Papa again, watch the way he combs his mustache with his bottom teeth and leans against the windowsill, as if it’s the only thing holding him upright. He looks gray and exhausted, and I wish I could do something to make the worry around his eyes soften, but I don’t know how.
I fidget with the butterfly pendant Mama gave me on my seventh birthday. The enchanting creatures were her “favorite” thing from the world before.
I saw one when I was a little girl, when I was with my best friend down at the creek. She always had a sorrowful look when she told that part of the story. Perhaps someday I will see another butterfly.
I’m not sure how much time passes between Papa’s cursing and my drifting thoughts, but he doesn’t move from his perch. I sit on the edge of the blue velvet sofa, fiddling with the ends of my dark hair that’s rumpled and grimy from sand and sleep. I pick at the hem of my nightgown and then bite on my nails, even though Mama always scolds me not to. It feels like an hour passes before the storm finally starts to die down. The muted sound of wagon wheels outside barely reaches my ears as Papa turns on his heel, startling me.
He rushes out of the room, his quick, heavy footsteps echoing in the hall. I glance at Scarlet, still asleep, and rush after him. I skid to a stop behind him at the front door and he turns to me. “Stay in the house with your sister,” he orders, his fingers gripping the door handle. “I mean it, Jo. Stay. Here.” He pushes the front door open, steps outside, and flings the door shut behind him. I hear him growl something from the porch, but I can’t make it out.
Unable to resist the earnest nudge inside me, I open the door and follow after him. I stare down at the sand grinding beneath my bare feet as I run down the steps of the farmhouse, colliding directly into Papa’s back.
The muted sunshine is disarming and my eyes are not used to the brightness, no matter how faint in the settling sand. The thump of a horse’s hoof as it paws at the dirt reminds me we have visitors, and I peer around Papa.
Standing at the end of a horse-drawn cart with a jailer’s cage is the marshal. He looks different than usual—he looks sad. His face is exposed and red, like he’s been out in the sand without his sand cape and head scarf. His chapped lips are pulled back in a sneer. He doesn’t have goggles slung around his neck like the other three men I see climbing down from the front of the cart: two older men, one very young and nervous looking.
“What did you do!” Papa lunges toward the cart, all composure gone from his wild, brazen features. I clap my hands over my mouth as two deputies rush to him, their sand scarves falling from their faces and down around their necks as they struggle to hold Papa back. The older one with graying hair elbows him in the face.
“Papa!” I shout, wanting to rush to his side, to beat the men off of him as he struggles and curses, but I’m too frightened to move, too small. Too uncertain.
“Doyle!” the marshal barks, and it sounds like a warning as the deputies wrestle against my father.
“Leave him alone!” I shriek and meet Marshal Cunningham’s cool stare. But it’s the vibrant red hair, flashing through the iron bars of the cage behind him, that catches my attention. When I spot a long, delicate hand sticking out from beneath a blanket, all else is forgotten. I gape at the woman, unmoving in the cart. I’m confused.
I’m not sure how many seconds pass before I actually start to cry, or even register that it’s truly my mother, motionless in the cage. Her hair is tangled and mussed, a stark contrast to the faint bruising around her neck. The squeak of the swinging metal door and my father’s sobs are all that fill the pause. “Caroline!”
“Mama!” I scream and run to her, air barely filling my lungs. Faintly, I register the marshal clearing his throat behind me. “Ashford, get a blanket from the barn,” he commands.
“Let me go to her!” Papa shouts frantically as he struggles against the two men. The young one, Ashford, disappears around the side of the farmhouse, his footsteps almost as urgent as my racing heart. This isn’t real—I don’t understand . . .
The cart sways as antsy horses fidget in place, and I can’t tear my eyes away from Mama’s fingers. They move with the cart, as if she’s beckoning me closer to her, but I’m too petrified to move. My body begins to tremble, the tears catching in my throat as I stare at her in stunned horror.
“I told her to stay,” the marshal starts. He stares down at me. He clears his throat and rests his hand on the grip of his holstered pistol as my father’s pleas become more desperate. His mustache twitches. I glance from the marshal’s face to his pistol and his knuckles clenching white around it. “She tried to leave right as the storm set in.” His voice is more raspy than usual, perhaps sad even, and his unfocused gaze settles on Mama’s limp body. His eyes blur and shimmer, like mine.
“Son of a bitch!” Papa shouts.
The marshal seems unfazed, his attention lingering on Mama even as the deputies stand above Papa, taking turns hitting him in the side of the face.
“—did this!” he sputters. “You did! She wouldn’t have you and you—” They hit him again and Papa coughs, his teeth red with blood.
I find my voice and scream. I want to help Papa, but when the marshal reaches for Mama’s hair, I hit his hand away. “Don’t touch her!” I spit at him, wiping my nose on the back of my arm. I shield her from his touch with my body, clutching the blanket that covers her as tightly as I can. “Don’t touch her,” I squeak.
“I tried to make her understand!” the marshal shouts, leaning in over me. I feel his breath on the back of my neck, and the sour stench of his breath hits my nostrils before he clumsily takes a step back. His chest heaves and he clears his throat.
The hot metal of the cage sears through the thin linen of my nightgown, the lip of the cage cutting into my stomach, but I take little notice and nestle my face into the blanket that’s Mama’s tomb, and I wish everything away.
The marshal says something else behind me, but I can’t hear him over my sobs and the grunting and cursing of the men as they pin my father to the ground.
“—did this! I know you did . . .” Papa coughs again, his face shoved in the dirt, his nose already swelling. His eyes are bloodshot and wide as he strains to see her, his lip curled, bloody and broken. Papa’s body is shaking. I hate what they’re doing to him, but all I can do is squeeze my eyes shut and inhale the scent of my mother. But there is nothing left of her; something foul clings to the blanket instead.
When I open my eyes, Papa is staring at me. The anger is gone from his expression and his eyes are filled with tears. “You . . . killed her,” he chokes out.
As the words, broken and filled with anguish, pass Papa’s lips, something angry and protective stirs inside me. I turn to the marshal—hit at him and scream—but he acts like my fit of fury is a brush of the breeze against his skin and he barely sways in place. He doesn’t even care . . . “That’s my mama!” I shout and sob between kicks at his shins and punches to his stomach. I pull at his vest, smack him. Push him. “You killed her!” I shriek, and Marshal Cunningham shakes out of his trance.
He pushes me to the ground as anger, red and dangerous, narrows his features.
“No,” he snarls and points to Mama’s dead body. “She did this. If she hadn’t left, this wouldn’t have happened. She chose to leave . . . and she was attacked by drifters in the storm.”
“You’re lying,” Papa snarls.
I climb to my feet, prepared to run to him, when the marshal grabs hold of my arm and yanks me beside him.
“Don’t you touch my daughter, you murdering son of a bitch. I’ll tell everyone what you’ve done. I’ll kill you myself—”
I vaguely hear Scarlet crying from the porch as I try to break free of the marshal’s hold, but his grip tightens.
“Watch what you say, Mr. Mason . . . slanderous accusations have consequences.”
“Let me go to her—she was my wife,” Papa whimpers between gasps.
The deputy that disappeared behind the house returns, a blanket in his hand as he walks toward us, toward my mother. “She wouldn’t have you, and you—”
“You’re hysterical, Mr. Mason,” the marshal says warningly, and I cry out as his fingers press into my arm more painfully. “Calm yourself before you make yourself sick or cause an even bigger scene.”
I notice Jane, the housemaid, and the ranch hand peering around the edge of the house, mouths agape and uncertain what to do. Jane pa
les when her eyes land on me. I point to Scarlet, but the instant the deputy uncovers my mother completely and lifts her body into his arms, I’m unable to look away. Her head hangs limply over the crook of his elbow, her dangling arm bouncing with each hurried step.
“I’ll . . . tell . . . everyone,” Papa says unevenly as the two men drag him up to his knees.
The marshal tosses the blanket off another body with his free hand—a body I didn’t notice before—exposing a sickly-looking man in leathers with impossibly dark hair. I’m so close I can smell him; the foul aroma is stronger, and I scream, desperate to get away.
“Your wife was attacked by drifters!” the marshal says, growing angrier. He shoves me closer to the dead man, my insides roiling as I take in his green, sunken face. “See? She made her choice and yes, it killed her. Perhaps you should be blaming yourself—your stubbornness, what you’ve put me through!”
I try to pull away from the marshal’s hold, but he shoves me closer to the body. I grip the hot metal bars of the cage, afraid he’s going to shove me inside. “This, little Josephine, this is what I protect you from. This is your future without me. Your mother didn’t understand any of that.” When I peer up at him, eyes bleary and beseeching—pleading with him to let me go—his gaze shifts back to the servants, at Deputy Ashford forcing them and my sister back into the house.
My eyes rest on my mother’s discarded body on the porch, covered with the blanket.
“You’re a liar,” I seethe. “And a monster . . .” I tear my arm from his grasp with all my might, and as I’m about to run away, the marshal’s other hand grips my throat.
“Monster?” He laughs, a throaty, vicious noise, and I can hear Papa shouting, begging the marshal with renewed desperation. “You want to see a monster?” The marshal’s hold tightens around my windpipe and squeezes the air from my lungs. I can’t breathe. “You’ll calm yourself, Charles,” the marshal demands.
Told You So_A Saratoga Falls Love Story Page 29