Dead Awakening by John Luciew

Author:John Luciew
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: political thrillers, paranormal mysteries, good indie thrillers, great new authors, authors like david baldacci, authors like james patterson, authors like john grisham, authors like michael connelly, good indie mysteries, mysteries set in pennsylvania
Publisher: John Luciew

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PART IV:

LEFT FOR DEAD

Chapter 43

NOVEMBER – ELECTION DAY

“These shrimp taste funny,” declared Maddie, my wife, right in the middle of the election-eve party of an old friend.

“Try one, Leonard. See what you think.” She dangled a limp, translucent article of seafood in front of my face, then looked disappointed when I pursed my lips and turned my head.

“I’m not here to be a food critic,” I muttered, then raised a glass of Yuengling Lager to my mouth, so she wouldn’t try to force-feed me anything else.

“I’m just sayin’, the shrimp’s not fresh,” she snorted, then took another bite, just to be sure. “Guess wintering in Florida these last few years has spoiled me for the seafood up here.”

I was about to inform Maddie that her blessed winters in Orlando had spoiled me, as well, but I thought better of it. The last thing I needed was to start another argument and cause a scene in front of George and Grace Ann. They had enough problems of their own right then, judging by the lop-sided vote totals coming in from Harrisburg and beyond. George Packard, thought to be invincible as the capital city’s Republican voice in the U.S. Congress for going on two decades, was getting his ass kicked by some Democrat-come-lately that pundits had dismissed as “the Hershey Kid.”

To say that the outcome had cast a pall over the proceedings would’ve been a gross understatement. The banquet hall had all the solemnity of a funeral. I wasn’t about to disturb it by quarrelling with my wife. Besides, I had once dated Grace Ann in what seemed like a lifetime ago. I badly wanted Maddie and me to project the illusion of domestic tranquility. I should have known that no one is that good of a magician.

There was no denying that I had gotten far too accustomed to the freedom afforded by Maddie’s extended stays down south. Each year, her returns to Harrisburg had become more and more difficult, an annual dose of heavy stress and cut-it-with-a knife tension. There were her usual gripes about the slipshod way I kept house. And, of course, there were the constant digs about my drinking, and more recently, the time I liked to spend with Jacquelyn Towers at the old reporters’ bar, the Passway Café. But more than anything, it was Maddie’s insistence upon dusting off and putting out all the old photos of Jesse, our only child. The daughter who ran away from us at fourteen.

Each year, those pictures of our daughter frozen at age fourteen looked sadder and sadder, as if she were the ghost of my mistakes, stalking me to the end. I’d put up with it for those months in the summer and fall when Maddie was home. But sometimes, when the face of my daughter would catch me in an unguarded moment, my stomach would ache with loss, emptiness and regret. It was as if that old photo had just knocked the wind, and everything else, right out of me.

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