Hex After Forty: A Paranormal Women's Fiction Novel: Singing Falls Witches: Book One

by M. J. Caan

  Hex After Forty

  M.J. Caan

  Copyright © 2020 by M.J. Caan

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  For Himself. Because you’re simply the best.

  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

  Also By M.J. Caan

  About the Author

  1

  The first thing Torie Spitz intended to do after her divorce, was head to her lawyer’s office and have her name changed back to her maiden name of Bliss. She had never admitted it to anyone, but she hated the name Spitz. It made her sound like the butt of a mean girl’s joke from her high school days. Of course, at the time, she had been more than happy to take on her husband’s name. It was what was expected of her after all.

  Okay, so technically it wasn’t the first thing she did. The first thing she did was cry. But she was too ashamed to admit that the man she had spent the past twenty-six years of her life with had reduced her to tears on the evening he announced he was leaving.

  When he said it, so casually over a glass of cabernet, she was more than a little confused.

  “Leaving? I’m sorry, did you have a work trip that I forgot?” she had asked. She started to panic almost immediately, thinking she had forgotten he had to leave for a business trip and she had not packed his things. He often took the overnight flights to Europe for business, so announcing that he was leaving at five o’clock in the evening wasn’t all that strange.

  “No,” he said with a heavy sigh. “I mean…I’m leaving.” He let his words hang in the air, long enough for their meaning to drill their way into Torie’s head.

  She sat back in the plush dining chairs, unable to focus.

  He reached for her hand, which she immediately snapped back.

  “What I mean is—” he started.

  “I know what you mean,” she said. Her voice was soft and sounded especially far away, even to her.

  He took a deep breath, ran his hand through his pale blond hair. “We should talk about this.”

  For some reason, his tone infuriated her.

  “Now?” she snapped. “You want to talk now, after you’ve obviously already made up your mind?” She wanted to fight but felt the energy sapped from her body like air escaping a balloon. The atmosphere around her vibrated in her vision, and she felt a migraine forming in the recesses of her mind.

  “Look, you knew this was coming. You had to know…”

  Her head snapped up, her eyes locking onto him with an icy gaze. “Knew? You want to know what I thought I knew? I thought we had counseling in our future, yes. I thought that now that Shawn was out of the house and away at college, we would focus on us. On rediscovering what we might have lost over the past few years. That’s what I thought I knew.” Her hand was trembling, and she didn’t trust herself to pick up the glass of wine that enticed her from just a few inches away. “Why don’t you tell me what you knew?”

  Ward looked at the woman he had spent all his adult life with. The mother of his child. The woman that had been his rock and guiding north when he was building his company from the small one-bedroom apartment they rented just out of college. That small business was now one of the biggest telecommunication firms on the planet with contracts all over Europe and Central Asia. But she was more than all that. She was—or had been—his best friend.

  “Tor—” he started, then saw her flinch at his pet name for her, “Torie…I guess I just haven’t been happy for a while now. I’ve felt it…”

  She saw his mouth moving, but his words had trailed off. He guessed? Guessed?

  What the hell did he mean he guessed? Theirs was a marriage; not a goddamned jar of marbles sitting in a grocery window that would win you a year’s worth of free Gatorade if you guessed the right number. She felt her heart rate begin to pick up, and the back of her neck felt flushed.

  “What’s her name, Ward?” she blurted out, silencing him mid-ramble.

  He stared at her, swallowing loudly. “Nothing will come of that, Torie. There is no need to add injury to insult here.”

  Idiot. For someone who worked in the media, he never was very good with words. “I think I should get to be the judge of what hurts and what doesn’t.” She wanted to say that he had just hurt her, but she bit that back.

  “Fine. It’s Wednesday. And before you say anything, we never meant for this to happen.”

  Of course. She had thought it was his little secretary that he claimed not to fawn over, but that would have made him a walking stereotype.

  Wednesday.

  His business partner. Honestly, that one hurt Torie more than if it had been his secretary. His partner, who had come in on the ground floor of the company and managed the client side of the business while Ward—while she and Ward, had worked to develop the software integrations that allowed developing countries to greatly reduce load times for web and news aggregate sites.

  It hurt so much because Wednesday was what Torie had always wanted to be; the successful business woman. Torie wanted to be the person who was equal to her spouse in love and business. Wednesday was the type of woman that Ward had said he didn’t want. He had always wanted his wife to stay home and take care of the house. The more successful they were, the more he domesticated Torie. The fact that Wednesday was so power driven and business focused was one reason she had flown in under Torie’s radar.

  She wasn’t a threat in Torie’s eyes.

  Torie didn’t think twice when she would drop into the fifth avenue office to see her husband unannounced. She would be relieved to see the perky little blonde sitting at her receptionist desk just outside of Ward’s office. She would breathe a sigh of relief to hear that Ward was at a luncheon with Wednesday. Better her than the twenty-five-year-old secretary.

  When had it happened? Was it all the trips they took? No, they never traveled together. That was what allowed them to grow the business so fast; divide and conquer Wednesday had said. So if not then, when?

  “Torie…are you listening?” he was saying, leaning in towards her.

  She recoiled, the sight of him was making her sick. “What? No, I’m not listening, Ward. You’re leaving me? For your business partner? How long has it been going on?”

  He hesitated. “Six months.”

  What? Was that even possible?

  “Wait,” said Torie, “please tell me she isn’t pregnant.”

  “No. Of course not. I guess…I mean, I know it sounds quick. But it’s been building for some time now. It was the night we celebrated the acquisition of that start-up from Belgium. We were celebrating and—”

  She waved him off. “No, Ward; spare me the gory details. So what are we going to tell S
hawn?”

  “He’s old enough now to understand things like this. I was thinking we could tell him together when he comes home for summer.”

  Torie’s mind was whirling at the thought. “No. I…we can’t ruin his summer with this. You made the decision to spring this on me without consideration of how I felt. We won’t do that to our son.”

  “So what are you suggesting?”

  “I suggest that we wait until the fall. He’s got that trip planned with his friends, so let him enjoy that. As far as he’s concerned, you’re off on a trip all summer. But we don’t tell him we are…” she hesitated, unable to force the words from her mouth. “Giving up on our marriage.”

  Tears, hot and painful, streaked her face suddenly. She threw the glass of wine she was drinking across the room, hearing it ping into a thousand shattered pieces on the marble floor of the dining room. Surprisingly, it made her feel better and allowed her to gain control over her emotions.

  Ward looked at her, his eyes wide in wonder.

  “And that’s why I thought it best that I take my things and move out as soon as I told you.” He slid himself back from the table slowly.

  “No, you didn’t. Don’t you look at me like I’m some violent offender you’re afraid will do you bodily harm.” Even though the thought was tempting to her. “You decided to run out as soon as you told me because you can’t wait to run into the arms of your…what do you even call her? Your girlfriend?”

  He seemed indignant at the implication. “She is my lover if you must know.”

  Torie scoffed. “Your lover? Christ.”

  He left her, sitting at the table, staring at a very expensive cut of swordfish. She realized that one of her favorite cuts of fish would forever be tainted now by the memory of what had just happened. She pushed the plate away from her in disgust. One more thing on the long list of things that would make her hate her husband.

  She was still sitting there when he returned, a single black Prada duffel bag slung across his shoulder.

  “Um, I’ll have the lawyer give you a call tomorrow,” he said.

  She hadn’t even thought about that. They had a family lawyer that had set up Shawn’s trust and handled all their affairs. But did she need a separate one? Would their joint lawyer handle this type of family affair? And if he did, to whom would he be more loyal? She rattled through her memories of dealings with him, remembering that Ward had thrown a lot of business at their lawyer’s firm over the years. Instinct told her she needed her own lawyer, but right now she was simply too drained to know where to even start with that.

  She said nothing as he stood there, looking at her.

  What did he want? A kiss goodbye? A handshake? She felt her rage boiling up again as she looked at the plate of uneaten food and briefly imagined him wearing it. Ward must have sensed her thoughts, because he turned his back and headed out of the dining room. She heard the tiny beep from the alarm system as he opened the garage door, followed by the vroom from the engine of his ridiculously overpriced sports car.

  Once he was gone, she let out a deep breath; one that felt like she had been holding in for an hour. Then she leaned forward, rested her face in her hands, and cried.

  She let herself grieve for almost an hour as she sat there before dragging herself up to the master suite. She looked around and decided there was no way she could sleep in that bed. If she were going to toss and turn all night, it might as well be in a bed that she hadn’t shared with him.

  She wandered into one of the guest suites and looked around. There were seven bedrooms in the house, and she realized she had never actually slept in any of them. She plopped down on the mattress, relieved to find it was surprisingly comfortable, and decided that it would do for now. Tomorrow, the first thing she planned to do was have the master bed removed from the house and burned. No, that was second. First would be a call to her best friend, Freya, and then the lawyer; and then the bed.

  Satisfied with a game plan, she went into the guest bath, filled the soaking tub with warm water, tossed in a bath bomb that exploded in an array of colors, and lazed there until she felt herself sufficiently drowsy to sleep.

  She was right; the bed was comfortable, and the thousand-count Egyptian-cotton sheets lulled her off to dreamland almost immediately.

  She awoke to the annoying buzz of her cell phone. She ignored it, turning over and bending the pillow around her head. Then the phone rang again, and she feared it might be Shawn calling. She panicked, thinking Ward had called him anyway to tell him God knows what. Bolting upright, she snatched the phone off the nightstand where she had dropped it.

  “Hello?” She was aware of how her voice sounded and really didn’t care.

  “Hello, Ms. Spitz, it’s Lawrence, Ward’s lawyer.”

  Suddenly she was as awake as if someone had set off an air raid siren next to her. The greeting wasn’t lost on her; Ward’s lawyer.

  “Oh, hello, Lawrence,” she managed. “Ward said I would be hearing from you, but he didn’t say it would be this soon.”

  “May I speak to him please? He isn’t answering his phone.”

  Now she was even more awake and confused. “No. He isn’t here…isn’t that what you’re calling me about?”

  There was silence on the other end, and Torie thought she heard whispering. She pulled the phone away from her ear enough to see the time on the screen; 7:15. Why would Ward’s lawyer be calling her this early? The offices weren’t even open until nine.

  “Lawrence, what is this about that it can’t wait? I’m sure whatever papers you have drawn up don’t need to be signed at this hour. Plus, I would like to have my own attorney look over them first.” Even though she didn’t have an attorney at the moment.

  “Ms. Spitz,” he started, “Torie. What papers are you talking about?”

  “The divorce papers,” she said. “Lawrence, what are you talking about?”

  More silence on the other line. “Torie, I hope you’re sitting down. Ward has been involved in running a Ponzi scheme and using his company to funnel the funds. He’s liquidated everything that is in both your names and…disappeared.” Silence on both ends of the line. “Ms. Spitz are you there? I think we need to talk. Immediately.”

  2

  The law offices of Lawrence Tillman were located on the twenty-second floor of a modern, mixed-use building in the hip Chelsea area of Manhattan. There was no denying that he was successful; but as she sat in the posh waiting area, Torie

  couldn’t help but wonder how much of that success was the result of his dealings with her husband.

  She resisted the urge to bite her nails, or even worse, smoke a cigarette; a filthy habit she had given up decades ago, before Shawn was born. But she felt like she was a bundle of nerves, strung too tightly and waiting for just the right pick in just the right place before snapping apart.

  She could see their lawyer through the open door of his office. He was speaking with someone in a suit and that worried her. No one wore a suit this early in the morning unless they meant business. Even Lawrence was in casual attire, attesting to how quickly he had rushed into his office. He nodded, shook hands with whoever he was speaking with, and escorted the suited man to his office door.

  “We’ll talk soon,” he said, patting the suit on the shoulder. The taller, official-looking man walked past her, nodding slightly before exiting the office.

  “C’mon in, Torie,” he said, motioning for her to join him in his office.

  She entered, and he closed the door behind her, motioning towards the leather couch that sat against one wall, facing a bank of windows that overlooked the Hudson.

  “I’d offer you a drink,” he said, “but it’s a little early.”

  “I’d take you up on it, but…” she shrugged. Honestly, she didn’t care what time it was, but she had the feeling she would need all her wits about her for this conversation.

  “First, I’m sorry,” he said. “For whatever crappy thing Ward has done and dragged you
into. First, you said he told you I was going to reach out to you?”

  “Yes. Let me back up. He left me last night. For Wednesday. I assumed when he said you would be in contact that it would be about the divorce papers he had you draw up.”

  Lawrence shook his head, one hand over his mouth. “He never mentioned anything to me about leaving you.”

  Torie had stopped trying to figure out what was going on at this point. As soon as she had hung up with Lawrence, she had tried calling Ward on his cell, only to have a recording tell her that the number was no longer in service.

  “Yeah, I got the same message,” Lawrence said when she told him about the attempted call.

  “Lawrence, what is going on? You said something about a Ponzi scheme; and who was that man that was just here?”

  He sighed deeply. “That was an FBI agent. One of many that has been assigned to this case. They will be back anytime now with a search warrant to seize my records and…”

  “And what?”

  “And one for your home, and the apartment here in the city.”

  Torie felt like someone had knocked the wind out of her for the second time in the last twelve hours.

  “What are they looking for?” she asked.

  “Anything that can tell them where he is now, and what he’s been up to. They’re looking for money, Torie. A lot of it. We don’t have a lot of time before they come back, so I need you to level with me right here and now; do you know where Ward is?”

  She felt the sting of tears in her eyes as she shook her head. “I swear, I have no idea. He told me he was leaving me, we argued, he left; said he couldn’t stay in the house. And that was it. What do you know?”