BEHIND THE BLUE DOOR: 230 Periwinkle Place

Coming March, 2013:

Can you have a future if you can’t remember the past?

When Skye Crenshaw Whitmore is shown a picture of a house with a blue door, she recalls living there as a young girl.  At first the memories are of the warm and fuzzy variety; little moments spent gardening or reading with her mother.  Upon learning that the house on Periwinkle Lane is where her mother died, darker memories bubble to the surface but fail to assemble into a complete picture.  With more questions than answers, she sets off to find out what exactly happened in that house thirty years ago. 

Skye soon learns that old memories never die, they just wait…Behind the Blue Door.

Click on Read More to read an excerpt:


 

Chapter One

                      “You’re not gonna believe what happened to Mudge!” 

            That’s just like Libby Abernathy, my randomly assigned college roommate at University of Virginia and my BFF for the fifteen years hence, to get right to the point.  No small talk for that girl.  

            Snuggling my iPhone up to my ear, I continued pushing my cart down the frozen food aisle of my local Piggly Wiggly.  As I passed by the pizza section, I reached into the freezer bin and pulled out two Stouffer’s Deluxe French Bread pizzas, my favorite go-to choice for a “home-cooked” meal.  Hey, if I have to turn the oven on—and I do because nuked pizza just doesn’t cut it for me—then it’s “home-cooked” in my book.    

            “Go on, guess,” Libby said.

            “Knowing Mudge, it could be just about anything.”  Mudge, whose real name was Marcus Lee Abernathy III, was Libby’s husband, and the total opposite of what you might think a “Mudge” would look like.  

            “So you give up?”

            “Yup.”  I added a Stouffer’s family size stuffed green peppers to my basket for the next time I feel like “cooking.” 

            “Mudge’s Aunt Alice died,” Libby said.

            I stopped my cart and let the news process.  “My condolences on his loss.”  I’d known Mudge as long as I’d known Libby, and had attended many of their family parties and was an honorary member of the Abernathy clan.  I tried to invoke an image of Aunt Alice, but nothing came to mind.  “Wait, which one is Aunt Alice?”

            “You don’t know her because she’s from the Patterson side and lives down North Carolina way.  His grandmother and Alice were half-sisters.  Turns out Mudge was her only surviving relative, and even though the last time he saw her was back in eighty-three when he spent a summer down there, she left all her worldly belongings to him.  She actually died last June but he’s just hearing about it—”

            Two small beeps indicated I had an incoming call.  I checked the screen.  My twelve-year-old son, Blake.  Cue the impending doom music. 

            “Hey Libby,” I said into the phone. “That’s Blake ringing in.  He’s only supposed to call me if it’s an emergency. Gotta run.”

            “I hope everything’s okay. Call me back.”

            “Will do.  Love ya.”  I connected over to the incoming call, my stomach doing flip-flops imagining what emergency situation had arisen.  “Blake?”

            “Mom?  The dogs are blowing chunks and I don’t know what to do.”

            I sighed.  Emergency is in the eye of the beholder.  “Just clean it up and I’ll be home as soon as I can.”

            “I’m not touching it.” The tone of voice made it clear that no amount of cajoling or bribery would get him to change his mind.  It’s been my experience that the willingness to perform those “gross” types of tasks is a Double-X chromosome trait.    

            “Well, do something.”  I thought about the new white carpet in our cozy new home.  The house had come with the carpet because don’t think for a second I’m the type of woman who’s delusional and thinks it would stay that color for more than a day, what with two dogs and a boy who never met a puddle he didn’t think needed stomping through.  We’d only lived in the house a few weeks and it still looked decent.  But if the puke stains weren’t cleaned up quickly and properly, it would mean new carpeting.  And that just wasn’t in the budget right now.   “I’m on my way.”

            I abandoned my half-filled grocery cart and raced out the door.  As I sped along the snowy streets of Danville, Virginia, the conversation with Blake niggled at my worry button.  Had that been a note of hysteria in his voice?  And a curious thought:  Banshee and Bella-Boo, our precious pound puppies, had never gotten sick like that before.  I dug my phone out of my purse and called him back.  “How’re you doing?” I asked.

            “Fine.”

            “Did you get everything cleaned up?”

            “I turned trashcans over it so I don’t have to look at it.”

            If all of life’s problems could be solved so easily.  “Any idea what made the dogs so sick?”

            “Probably because they licked up some of the fire extinguisher foam.”

            “Fire extinguisher foam?”

            “Yeah.  I had to put out a fire.”

            “What fire?”  My foot pressed the accelerator to the floorboard.  The whine of the engine almost drowned out the sound of my heart hammering in my chest.  Almost. 

            “The fire in the oven,” Blake explained as if it were an everyday event.  “One of the chicken nuggets slid off the pan and burst into flames.  But don’t worry.  I put it out so the house didn’t burn down or anything.”

            It felt like the movie Drumline was battling in my chest as I drove across town.  Something about fires—or even the mere possibility of one—scared the beejezus out of me.  I had no explanation why, though.  Maybe something devastating had happened to me in a previous life.  Not that I believe in past life regression or anything, but really, what other explanation is there for my innate fear of house fires?