Protector - Laurel Dewey [210]
Emily softly cried as she walked forward. Slowly, she made her way toward the house. Jane got out of her car, never once taking her eyes off of Emily. She peered across the Mustang’s shimmering roof as Emily neared the house. The child suddenly stopped walking and bowed her head.
“Don’t,” Jane whispered. “Keep going, Emily. Don’t look back.”
Emily lifted her head and continued her journey up the driveway. Her aunt and uncle ran toward the child and cradled her warmly in their arms. Emily’s aunt looked toward Jane’s car and waved. Jane returned the gesture, taking in the familial scene. Once they were inside the house, she climbed back into her car and lit a cigarette. After several long drags, she turned on the ignition and drove down the road.
Jane could have headed straight home. But thirty miles down the road, she pulled off the rural highway, got out of her car and lay on the hood of her Mustang staring into the night sky. For the first time in her life, she had no clear mission planned—no sense of where she was meant to be. But she felt something close to her—like a heavy page turning. The sounds of the warm night echoed in the distance. The soft hum of trucks in the distance blended with a lone red-tailed hawk circling above her three times before disappearing into the distance. Jane lay there for three hours waiting for an answer that never came.
She got back in the Mustang and drove south toward Denver. Lighting a cigarette, she checked the time and flicked on the radio, turning to the familiar station.
“. . . And so it is, my peripatetic voyagers of the unconscious mind,” Mooney said with his characteristic warm resonance. “Like all cycles, my time with you has come to an end.” Jane felt a twinge of sadness at Mooney’s announcement. “Your regular host will be back tomorrow from her time off and I will wander off toward my next uncommon foray into the marvelous unknown.” Jane smiled at his atypical tangle of the English language. “To fall into that place and allow the current of synchronicity to sweep me toward my destiny, ah, now that is true bliss. My, my . . . I think I just got a chill. But then again, did you ever have an experience that gave you a chill and then wonder if you were just standing in a draft? How do we connect the dots between what we know from what we can’t understand? Do we chalk it up to a strange moment in time? Or do we trust, quietly holding that experience against our heart and protecting it in that sacred space when, for one implausible instant, we saw the face of God in our own reflection?” Jane let Mooney’s voice wash over her. “If not now, my friends . . . then when?” There was a long, thoughtful pause. “When?”
Jane drove into the night and let the towrope slip gently from her hand.
Here’s an excerpt from Laurel Dewey’s next novel featuring Jane Perry.
REDEMPTION
On sale in hardcover from
on June 16, 2009
“Barmaid!” Jane Perry yelled above the din of the smoke-lacedbarroom. “Two more whiskeys for me and two tequilas for my friend!” Jane came to an unsteady halt in front of the waitress, her back to Carlos. “You got that?” Jane said, her eyes asking another question.
The waitress cautiously looked at Carlos before quickly locking back on to Jane’s iron gaze. “Yeah. I got it.” The waitress headed back to the bar.
Jane nervously lit her fifth cigarette of the hour and surveyed the sparse crowd mingling in the center of the bar. The dim lighting painted heavy pockets of darkness across the tables and chairs, making it difficult to discern faces. A dozen beer-splattered Christmas garlands hung carelessly against the nicotine-soaked walls. It was the bar’s inept attempt to define the holiday season, but the cheesy decor reminded Jane of topping a dead tree with a broken angel. The Red Tail Hawk Bar was located on East Colfax in Denver, Colorado—a location that supported seedy establishments and attracted drug deals, bloody brawls, and twenty-dollar hookers.