Six Days: Book One in the SIX Series

by Randileigh Kennedy

  SIX DAYS

  Book One of the SIX Series

  By Randileigh Kennedy

  Copyright – 2014 by Randileigh Kennedy

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, people, or places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are simply products of the author’s imagination, and any similarity to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any way whatsoever without written consent from the author.

  To M.F., my greatest adventure yet.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 1

  When I was nine years old, I was given wings, with which I could use to fly anywhere, at any moment. I have spent hours, days even, staring out into a universe of stars, or watching the sun come up, feeling as though I might sail over it at any moment.

  So why is it now, in this very moment, that I question why it is that my feet have never left the ground? I guess I should start at the beginning. People don’t often just end up on top of a mountain trying to decide whether or not they should jump, right?

  As luck would have it, my life story kicks off with a traumatizing childhood. It doesn’t seem so bad now after all this time I guess, but I’m sure some psychoanalysis professional would say my numbness to the whole thing is some type of repressive denial. Whatever.

  My parents owned a small bed and breakfast in the cozy town of Starlite, Nevada. I know, sounds dreamy, right? Unfortunately it wasn’t as magical as it sounds. When I was six my father was arrested. It turned out he had another business on the side other than his welcoming hospitality gig. When guests would check into the bed and breakfast my father would sell their address information to a group of guys, including their length of stay at the inn. While the guests were on vacation, their houses were broken into. Their stolen goods were sold and my father received a hefty cut of the profits, which he quickly turned around into a gambling addiction. It took the cops two years to track all the break-ins to my dad. Even my mom never saw it coming.

  My mom was so mad about the whole thing she didn’t even tell me which prison he was sent to. The bed and breakfast was shut down and sold to pay my father’s debts. My mom moved us shortly after, so if my dad ever tried to contact me, I’m not sure he would have been able to find us. We moved around a lot, and I never knew what kind of new life my mom was actually trying to find. I asked her about my father occasionally, but she was so bitter and angry about the whole thing. I knew she didn’t like to talk about it. As a kid I really believed they were in love. It seemed that way to me anyway. But then again, I wonder if that’s what every kid believes, perhaps because they are just too young to really know the difference. It wasn’t until I overheard her one night talking to a friend on the phone about going out to find husband number two that I realized maybe she wasn’t as brokenhearted about my dad’s departure as I thought.

  It wasn’t long after my dad left when my mom remarried. It seemed all too quick if you ask me. His name was Hank, and well, we just never really connected. I’ve blocked most of it out by now, other than the horrible stench of cheap whisky. He worked long hours, which I was grateful for. But when he came home, he had a bottle of bourbon in one hand and his angry temper in another. Sometimes when my body aches I swear I still have splintered bones from how hard that man knocked me around.

  Apparently my mom didn’t fare so well through Hank’s mood swings either. One night, when I was nine, my mom took too many sleeping pills. People who knew her all assured me it was a terrible accident. They all swore it was a mistake. But I had known better, even at nine years old. That same week, Hank blamed me for my mom’s choice to never wake up again. He blamed me good. I was so black and blue after that I could barely open my eyes, and I had a severely broken left arm.

  After finally being released from hospital, I was taken to a woman’s house. Her name was Ardell, and she was about eighty years old. She wrapped me in a blanket that night and held me. It was the only time my whole life I could remember being held like that. We didn’t say much. I just sat there, shaking, a scared nine year old girl. And she just sat there, ancient, holding me. When I awoke the next morning I was still wrapped up in that blanket, and her arms were still wrapped around me.

  Ardell explained to me that morning that some people were coming to take me. They were good people. People that would take me somewhere safe. Minutes before I left, she gave me a small box. Inside was a small pair of white porcelain wings. They were beautiful wings that looked like they belonged to an angel. She told me to hang onto those wings, no matter what, and that someday they would save me. She told me someday I could use them to fly, anywhere, somewhere I would never be hurt again. That was the very first time I believed an adult - more so because I felt I had to at that point, otherwise there would be nothing left for me.

  The State tried to locate my grandparents, but I had little information about them. Neither of my parents had spoken to their folks in years. Apparently my mom got pregnant at seventeen, and she ran away with my dad and got married young, which neither of their parents approved of. Since the State was unable to locate anyone willing to claim me, I was eventually passed around through a few foster homes. By the time I was fourteen, I realized not too many people were open to taking in a teenage girl. I was eventually sent off to an all-girls boarding school in Mason City, Nevada. Mind you, not the kind of boarding school rich kids get sent to, that’s for sure. More like the kind of school you’re sent to because no one else wants you.

  Fortunately I excelled in school, finally latching onto something meaningful in life. I was even transferred to a different school my senior year of high school. It was a school for advanced learning, since I clearly didn’t fit in with the rest of the kids at Mason Prep, given their lack of enthusiasm for knowledge. Eventually I was able to get a full scholarship to a small college a few towns over in California.

  I really enjoyed college. I took tough science classes and enjoyed electives such as art, which I hadn’t experienced much of in my prior education. I was a cute girl, pretty enough for college boys anyway, though that doesn’t say much. I had grown out my blonde hair and was pretty slender, though I wasn’t interested in any compliments. I stayed shy and studied, never wanting to get too close to anyone so I wouldn’t have to explain my life to them. That was, until I met Grant.

  Grant was in my chemistry labs, which I thought was so cliché at the time that I blew off his advances. Eventually he wore me down though, and we began dating. He was a nice enough guy, sure, though not overly romantic. We spent a lot of time together though, and for the first time in my life, I really opened up to him. I told him all about my parents, what I could remember about them anyway, and about what I went through with Hank. He didn’t have a great relationship with his own parents, so we connected in that way. He was an attractive guy with light brown hair, hazel eyes, and a dimpled chin. Grant was smart too, and I liked that about him. We didn’t do many adventurous things together, though Chinese take-out and a good movie several nights a week was enough to sustain me, making me think I finally had a normal life. Time passed quickly, and I felt comfortable with my p
lace in the world.

  Grant made a promise to me one night, a promise that he would never leave me. We moved in together the following weekend, shortly before graduation. We both graduated with degrees in biology and expected to do something great, but things quickly went downhill from there.

  Grant was unable to find a decent job after we graduated which took a toll on him. He went out more with his friends, and that’s when the drinking started. I tried to keep it all together, taking any jobs I could find in order to pay our bills. Life in California wasn’t cheap, and the dreams we had at twenty-two weren’t enough to keep us afloat. We moved several times, further down to southern California, but things seemed more expensive and stressful the further south we moved. I knew it wasn’t the life I wanted, but somehow I stayed with him four more years on the promise he would be the first person to truly love me. That somehow turned into me wondering why he was the person to hurt me the worst.

  Finding out we were pregnant surprised us both. Sure, we were still young and it was anything but planned, but I thought it could be an adventure for us. Maybe something to help Grant grow up a bit. Instead, he was anything but happy. He left the night I told him the news, and came home seven hours later in a drunken stupor. The following few weeks, things got even worse. I just wanted it all to end.

  The night I lost the baby, I thought of my mother. My father. Grant. Everyone who was supposed to love me in the world, abandoning me. And now my baby abandoned me too. All I could think was that the baby knew better, or that maybe I had wished the baby away and it came true. I pulled out the box that night; the one Ardell had given to me, which I had held onto all this time. I pulled out the small white angel wings, held them against my chest, and cried. For two days, I wept. Grant didn’t even come home.

  It was in that moment I knew I needed to get out, out of the life I was living. I just wanted to be free. Free to be someone, anyone, without this story, without the life I had suffered through. Everyone left me, one by one, without reason or explanation. I always had some feeling in me that I was made with intent, that I would have some sort of better life than what I had already experienced. But time after time, I felt as though I was being proved wrong. I packed one large bag, drained our savings account of its twenty-three hundred dollars, and got in my car.

  I drove north for what seemed like an eternity that night, though my clock indicated it had been about twelve hours, and somehow that seemed good enough. I ended up in a town called Mountain Ridge, Nevada, really close to the California border near Lake Tahoe. The mountains seemed comforting and the lights of downtown twinkled in the early morning hours. The air was crisp and it was the closest I felt to a clean start.

  I rented out a small apartment in a brick complex owned by a little old lady. Maybe she recognized the sadness in my eyes, or maybe she didn’t understand the current inflation crisis and rent prices, but she cut me a good deal. Since the place was vacant, I was able to move in that afternoon. She even left it furnished, though I wasn’t sure that was part of the deal she originally had advertised, but I happily accepted it.

  I immediately set out to look for a job, though I knew had no use of my biology degree. The odd jobs I took trying to support Grant the last four years never exactly led me into a steady career path. Honestly, I wasn’t sure what I even wanted to do. I knew I would need to start making money quick though, because my twenty-three hundred dollars would dwindle fast.

  The town was lively, mostly with tourists, which was comforting since I didn’t know my way around either. There were beautiful resorts, casinos, boating shops, and cafes. I felt lost, not sure where to go, but somehow this feeling of ‘lost’ didn’t bother me nearly as much as I would have expected. I’d felt lost all twenty-six years of my life, so I knew that this at least felt different. I could finally do anything, something for me. Maybe, after all this time, I could finally live the kind of life I wanted.

  Chapter 2

  The day I met Mallory my world got a little better. It was the third day of my job search and things looked a little dismal. I ran into her on the street corner of Sixth and Savannah, just a few blocks from my apartment on a small side street. I had never before heard so many curse words come out of someone’s mouth so quickly. I started thinking maybe she was even making some of them up. I noticed in that moment that she had tears in the corners her eyes. Clearly she was having a bad day, though strangely I felt comforted by the thought that someone else was having a tough time just like me.

  “Excuse me, is there something I can help you with? You seem like you’re having a rough day,” I said, cocking my head to the side, trying to make eye contact with her.

  “Unless you happen to be an excellent baker and you’re free for the next seventy-two hours, I don’t think so,” she replied. Her tears slowly made their way down her pretty heart-shaped face.

  My mind flashed back to the break-and-bake cookies I burnt two weeks ago, and how angry Grant had been about it. “I’m pretty good at baking, with a recipe,” I replied. Not a total lie, I thought. How hard could it really be? “I’m definitely free for the next seventy-two hours, that’s for sure. Maybe I can help? My name is Adelaide. Well, my friends call me Addie.”

  The woman, with her short dark hair and hazel eyes, looked up at me and threw out her arms. Without a word, she wrapped me in a hug so tight I could barely breathe.

  “You’re an angel,” she said excitedly. “My name is Mallory. This is my shop,” she said, pointing at the large pink French doors with a sign above them that read ‘Sweet Cheeks.’ “My business partner, if I should even be calling her that, has apparently found a better opportunity. She left me a note saying that she moved to New York. How could she do this to me right before one of my biggest catering events? She was one of my good friends too, ironically enough. This is the biggest job I’ve had since starting up the shop.”

  Mallory looked up at me as if I completely understood the emergency. All I could do was stare at her.

  “I need six cakes, three hundred cookies, one hundred and fifty cupcakes, and about fifty treat bags for the kids. Do you have any experience?” Mallory looked at me with desperation.

  This was one of those moments where I didn’t know how big of a lie to tell. I wanted so badly to ease her fears and tell her I knew what I was doing. Then I remembered the four, yes, only four times I had ever decorated a dessert of any kind and I began to feel hopeless as well.

  “Look,” I said, clearing my throat in an attempt to sound more confident. “Maybe you can make the recipes and I can help decorate something? I’m a decent artist, painting and drawing and such,” I added, although I had no idea if some pencils and a sketch book correlated whatsoever with a frosting thingy and something edible. “I’m sure I can do it.” The biggest lie I told so far. I tried to search my brain for some type of happy frosting memory… didn’t I frost Christmas cookies with a grandma once? Oh that’s right, not too many sweet loving grandmas at the boarding school I was sent away to. Damn.

  Without hesitation, Mallory swung open one of the pink French doors and led me inside. The smell was amazing. The room was lit by a pink sparkling chandelier. The floors were perfectly white, and directly in front of me stood two large glass bakery cases filled with the most superb desserts I had ever seen. There were giant cupcakes with cherries on top, chocolate tortes, cookies galore, and things so covered in sparkly sugar I couldn’t even tell what they were.

  “Those are fake, if you were wondering,” Mallory said with a mischievous smile, pointing to the bakery cases.

  “You make fake desserts? I don’t really get that,” I said with an obvious confused expression on my face. “I’ve never heard of a bakery that specializes in fake food. That sounds a little disappointing.” They looked pretty, sure, but it just seemed like a cruel joke. Why would someone have such beautiful glass cases filled with fake desserts?

  “I’m not really open all the time. I mainly just do private orders. This building is
more or less just my work space. One of my friends built me those beautiful glass cases, and I don’t know, it just seemed weird to keep them completely empty. But, since I don’t have a stream of people coming in here, I could never keep them full with the real stuff or it would all go bad. So I settled for some mock-ups. Makes people at least think I am a superb baker if they look through the windows though, right?” Mallory said with a smile.

  I nodded, amused by the sight of all those fake desserts. Her idea certainly worked, strangely enough. My mouth was watering and I wanted to try them all.

  “Back here,” Mallory said, motioning me to walk around the counter. I suddenly felt like I was invading such personal space. “Put this on,” she said, throwing a ruffly pink apron at me.

  Without hesitation, I lifted up my long blonde hair and tied the apron around my neck and back. I then made my way over to a large sink area to wash my hands. Probably the only thing I would do right today.

  For the next twenty minutes, Mallory gave me a stunning how-to presentation as if she was a tour guide for a kindergarten class. Her hazel eyes sparkled as she spoke, and I noticed she had a few light freckles underneath her eyes. She was a pretty girl, looking honest and laid back in her skinny jeans and a loose t-shirt. I smiled at the irony of a baker wearing skinny jeans. The idea of it was amusing to me. She continued her tutorial, making the equipment sound easy to use, and the baking room was immaculate and well organized. She then led me into a small decorating room completely full of piping bags, colored frosting, and even some design books for me to thumb through.

  “Are you ready to get to work?” Mallory asked, beaming at me for the first time since her earlier break down. Her teeth were perfectly straight and she had a dimple in her right cheek. I nodded, not really sure what I was in for.