World Departed
The Cascadia Series: Book One
Sarah Lyons Fleming
Copyright © 2020 Sarah Lyons Fleming
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the author, except as used in a book review. Please contact the author at [email protected].
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
For all the f*ckers in my Facebook fan group. Thank you for laughing with me, for crying with me, and for amusing me (and yourselves) during the loooooong wait between books.
Y’all are the best readers—and cheerleaders—a girl could ask for.
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 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
About the Author
Acknowledgments
1
Rose
I’m not sure how one is supposed to spend the day before one’s twentieth wedding anniversary, but I’m fairly certain playing Magnum, P.I. to catch one’s husband cheating isn’t the usual. Even worse, one shouldn’t be hoping to catch him in bed with another woman. But here I am, hoping away, because a dalliance would mean I could firmly and unequivocally tell him not to let the door hit him in the ass on his way out.
I slump in the driver’s seat when Ethan exits an old Craftsman bungalow down the street. Eugene, Oregon is full of those quaint houses. Some are decent, some run-down, and some restored to their former glory of gleaming wood and leaded glass. The house Ethan exited is one of the run-down ones, and an unlikely space for an afternoon assignation.
He definitely isn’t glowing with release. He walks quickly, hand fisted around his treasure, and his jaw works in anticipation of what he’s purchased. He’s still handsome at forty-two, with his tousled blond hair, caramel-brown eyes, and charismatic smile. I can see that much. But over twenty years and a torrent of water under the bridge have made me impervious to his charms.
I watch him get into his SUV across the street, my eyes just above the dashboard and my heart thudding in my throat the way it does whenever I pull this secret agent bullshit. His truck doesn’t move, and I wonder what he’s up to. It has to be bad form to fix up directly outside your dealer’s house.
Anger is the first emotion—the one that clamps my hands around the steering wheel. Then comes the numbness I’ve cultivated over the years, and even, as petty and juvenile as it is, a smidge of triumph. I knew. I knew, as I usually do. I’m not going crazy. I’m not the one with the problem. Except I am the one with the problem. And that problem is Ethan.
Fucking Ethan. Again.
I take a deep breath, then press my phone’s home button and say, “Call Mitch.”
The speakers blip and then the ring of a phone fills the car. “Woman!” Michelle—Mitch—yells when she answers. “What’s up?”
“Talk me down,” I say. “Tell me I need to stop this.”
“You need to stop this. Wait, what are we stopping?”
“He’s using again.”
“Crap.” Mitch sighs, a long, breathy exhalation that makes the car speakers crackle. “Crappity crap.”
I close my eyes, partly from exhaustion and partly to stop the tears that threaten to come. I’m done crying about this. I’ve decided that already. Obviously, my tear ducts have other plans.
“Rose?” Mitch almost never calls me Rose, full stop. It’s Rosie, or Ro, or a million other nicknames we have for each other after almost thirty years of friendship. Rose means concern, Rose is serious. “If he’s the one using, what am I telling you to stop?”
“Oh, nothing. Except for the fact that I tailed him to his drug den, and now I’m hunched down in my car so he won’t see me.”
“You tailed him?” Mitch snorts. “Who are you, Magnum, P.I.?”
I giggle. It turns to a laugh, and then Mitch’s laugh is everywhere, in surround sound, and it’s almost as good as one of her hugs.
Ahead, Ethan pulls from his parking space. He zips to the corner, taps his brakes at the stop sign, and turns left. He isn’t going home. I can only hope he’ll nod out in his car for a few hours before he makes it there, since I’d rather stick a sharp object in my eye than pretend to like him at this moment. Thankfully, as I knew it would, Mitch’s virtual presence prevents me from following—which was likely the next step of this insane plan.
“Why was Magnum the only detective I could think of, too?” I ask. “I don’t even remember him doing any detective work.”
“I think he was too busy seducing ladies and arguing with Higgins.”
I laugh. “Spenser for Hire! There’s one. Hey, remember The—”
“Ro,” Mitch cuts me off. “What are you going to do?”
“Discuss private investigators from 1980’s television. I thought that was obvious.”
“So I hear. But is it also obvious you need to do something?”
I rub my temples while the tightness in my throat becomes a dense ball that can’t be swallowed. Mitch knows how much I hate confrontation. Maybe everyone hates confrontation, but I’m a master of avoidance, especially when every talk with Ethan becomes a discussion of Ethan’s feelings and my inability to empathize properly. I’m practically made of freaking empathy, which is why I’m still here. I’m a pushover to the nth power.
“Ro?” Mitch asks, softer now. “I know you’re listening, and I know what you’re thinking.”
“How do you know I’m thinking about The Equalizer? Those were the scariest opening credits of any TV show, ever. Everyone is being stalked or a
bout to be murdered. I would drop dead if I were them.”
“You done?” Her voice is deliberately bored. I stick out my tongue and don’t answer. “You just stuck out your tongue, didn’t you?”
I grin but stay silent.
“Yeah, you did,” she says. “I’m going to kick your ass when I see you tonight. Be prepared.”
“I love you,” I say because I can’t say what she really wants to hear. Not yet. “You know that?”
“I love you, too. We’re not done here, you know that?”
“Yes.” I sigh and flip down my visor mirror. I look like hell, especially since the daylight accentuates every single line around my eyes. I swear there are more than a week ago. The twitch under my left eye, which comes and goes depending on Ethan’s current sobriety status, has returned, and I press my finger to the tiny muscle in an attempt to calm it. “You should see my wrinkles. He’s aging me before my time. How much is Botox again?”
“First of all, I saw you five days ago, and you looked fine,” Mitch says. “Second of all, embrace the fact that you’re forty-two. Third of all, you’re a gorgeous forty-two, wrinkles and all.”
“You have to say that, as my best fri—”
“Shut up. Fourth, and most importantly, you’re too chickenshit to get Botox. ‘But what if I’m the point-zero-zero-zero-two percent where it goes wrong?’ ” For the last part, she uses a small, scared voice that’s supposed to be me.
I laugh, mainly because it’s true. “Those of us who have no need for Botox need to shut up.”
I jump when something touches my leg, then gaze down at the tiny paw resting on my thigh. The face attached to that paw is half-squashed and chestnut brown, with a black snout and floppy triangular ears. A pug dog. Actually, a pug-something hybrid, which Ethan gave me four days ago as an anniversary present. I admit Willa is cuter than your average pug, but she still brings to mind a creature from a planet in a far-off galaxy. Willa whines, her bulbous eyes probing mine, and her tongue nervously licks her nose.
“It’s okay, Willa.” I scratch her head. “I think she has to pee.”
“What are you going to do with her?”
This sigh rises from the bottom of my feet. Since Holly and Jesse left for college, I’ve been enjoying the phase of life where I have no obligation to care for small creatures, where the future is open for the first time in decades. And now I have Willa, a ten- to fifteen-year sentence. “I don’t know. Find her a home, I guess. I feel like he gave her to me to trap me. Is that crazy?”
“The fact that he might’ve or the fact that you think that?”
“Either.”
“Both are crazy. That doesn’t make them any less true.”
As always, Mitch doesn’t skimp on bluntness. Before she can rekindle the conversation I’ve managed to avoid thus far, I say, “I have to get home before my ice cream melts, but I’ll see you tonight.”
“Holly and Jesse there yet?”
“They should be. Jesse texted that he was almost home and picking up Holly on his way.”
“Tell them Auntie Mitch sends her love and I’ll see them later. I’ll be over earlier than I thought. I was supposed to have a conference call with St. Louis, but I got an email yesterday saying they were taking a company-wide sick day because of that virus.”
“Is it that bad there?”
“They said they were playing it safe. Anyway, I’ll see you in a few hours. I’m bringing a big-ass bottle of wine.”
“Mitch, we have more alcohol for the party than we could drink in a month.”
“This is why we’re friends. Love you, chickadee.”
“Love you, ladycakes.”
Mitch clicks off. I sit for another minute, staring at the corner. Willa is curled in a ball, eyes closed and any bathroom needs forgotten, so I follow the initial path Ethan took, then turn right for home.
2
Rose
As I wait at the stop sign on Twenty-Eighth Avenue, two Army trucks roll past. At least I think they’re Army trucks, since they’re painted a drab brown and have camouflage-clad drivers. It’s unusual enough that I stare for a moment, but there is an Army Reserve station smack dab in the center of town. Besides, Eugene has plenty of weird vehicles. There’s the school bus camper with the Volkswagen bus welded to its roof, the colorful hippie buses, the guy who built a wooden house on his pickup, the trailers made out of pickup truck beds, and so on.
I continue uphill, jabbing at my phone when I realize I have time to get in a song before home. I refuse to think of how a forty-two-year-old woman singing at the top of her lungs might look to other drivers. It’s better than therapy, and everyone knows you’re invisible in your own car.
I stop jabbing and raise the radio volume when I hear mention of that virus. “…increase in cases in California and the Midwest. Over ninety cases have been identified in Oregon, though authorities report only ten of those are in the Eugene-Springfield area,” the female announcer says. “Bornavirus LX causes aggression in patients, who bite and scratch their caregivers, spreading the virus through bodily fluids such as blood and saliva. Health officials urge anyone who thinks they may have been exposed to the virus to visit the emergency room for antiviral medication immediately. Failure to seek medical attention could result in death.”
My stomach jolts a little at that. You can bet your sweet ass I’d be at the hospital if I had it. The virus has popped up all around the world in the past few days, and though I’m not thrilled about the fact it’s now here, I’m not that worried—as long as it isn’t airborne, the likelihood of catching it is slim. Still, I’m glad the kids are home this weekend. Safe.
I press play on my Fuck You playlist for the rest of the ride home. When I pull up to the house, the gate is open, and Jesse’s car is parked under the giant cedar tree at the end of the driveway. Our house sits back from the two-lane road in what’s considered Eugene but is more like the country. Though it’s only a modest mid-century ranch, I love its quirks and counter space and the woods that grow all around.
I park alongside Jesse’s car and grab the bags from the backseat. Willa jumps from the driver’s side and trots around the corner of the house. Luckily, she’s not overly annoying. Equal parts lazy and loving, Willa doesn’t demand much.
It’s not raining for a change. I enjoy the dry walk up the steps and through the front door, where I enter the foyer at the corner of the living room. The kids’ voices come from the kitchen and dining area, which we opened to the far end of the living room years ago.
“Watch this one,” Jesse says. His deepened voice still surprises me at times, as if he were seven years old when I saw him last. Tinny screams, likely from a phone’s speakers, follow his words.
I take a moment to compose myself—the less they know about Ethan’s activities, the better. Especially this weekend. I enter the living room, pass the armchairs and picture windows, then turn into the dining area. Jesse and Holly sit on stools at the breakfast counter with their backs to me, both watching a phone. Holly’s dark auburn hair hangs down her back in bouncy curls and loose waves. A lifetime of battling with my own version of the same hair makes it difficult to appreciate on myself, but I always admire it on Holly. When it isn’t yours to contend with, it’s lovely.
“How is that a zombie?” Holly asks, an eye roll plain in her tone. “It’s blurry people running and screaming. Just like every video ever taken of Bigfoot. You could just as easily tell me it’s a Bigfoot video.”
“Zombies?” I ask. “Is that what they’re saying now?”
Holly stands from her stool, but Jesse reaches me in three strides and hugs me tight. Except for a hiatus between the ages of twelve and seventeen, he’s always given great hugs.
“Hey, Mom.” Jesse pulls back, pushing his brown hair from his face. He’s taller than his dad now and handsome the way his dad was at his age. He takes the bags from my hands, his smile dimming with concern. “You okay?”
Jesse’s acutely observant, al
ways has been, and I suspect he knows. He knows the way I knew. I smile and shake my head. “Maybe a little tired, but fine. How was the drive down?”
“It was fine.” At my continued raised-eyebrow stare, Jesse huffs. “No, Mother, I did not get any speeding tickets.”
I smile. He deposits the bags on the counter while Holly comes in for a hug. She lives in town by the U of O and stops home regularly, but the Winter family hugs at hello and goodbye, and plenty of times in between. Holly is delicate and slight the way my mother was, with brown eyes like her dad, unlike Jesse’s and my blue. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m ruminating on Ethan, on this life we built that’s falling apart—has fallen apart, if I’m honest with myself—but the two seem impossibly perfect at this moment.
“How’d I make two such splendid children?” I ask. “Good-looking and helpful.”
“Time to get off the drugs, Mom,” Holly says.
I force a laugh, thinking if only you knew, and head for the counter where the phone sits with the video paused. “What’s this about zombies?”
The Cascadia Series (Book 1): World Departed Page 1