Salvation by I. Beacham

Author:I. Beacham [Beacham, I.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781626395497
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books
Published: 2016-02-27T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

It was mid morning as Claire parked the sit-on mower under cover back at the potting shed. There was a summer storm brewing. The air was humid and draped around her like a heavy winter coat. When she looked up she saw how dark the sky had become.

Something wicked this way comes, Claire thought as she saw a flash of lightning and heard a distant rumble of thunder.

This was no time to be out in the open with machinery; it was an invitation to an electrical storm, and not one she wanted to proffer. She wanted to die old, and not as a burnt offering in the middle of a freshly mown lawn.

As she walked from the machine to the shed door, she saw Regan stomping down the lawn toward her. Everything about her body language told her she was fuming. She looked like an Icelandic volcano about to blow its top.

Claire figured it might have something to do with Karen’s unwelcomed appearance. She drew breath, expecting Regan to start venting. But as she drew closer, some inner intuition warned her that Regan’s ire was focused on her. By the time Regan came to an abrupt halt before her, a thousand warning signals were blasting beware. She didn’t need to be a student of human behavior to recognize that Regan’s anger was directed at her. Why? She’d done nothing, unless Regan had spotted her in town watching her with Karen. Claire was certain she hadn’t been seen, but maybe? She didn’t have to wait long for an answer.

Regan didn’t shout, and her quiet, composed voice belied her barely contained rage.

“You’re a de Vit,” she announced.

The few words hit Claire like a southpaw to the stomach. Air sucked from her lungs as she struggled to breathe. This was not what she was expecting to hear. She swallowed uncomfortably, and a distant memory reminded her that the last time she’d felt this bad was when the consultant announced that Rosie had Alzheimer’s.

Regan’s accusation sounded heavy and unacceptable.

When Claire failed to answer, Regan said, “Don’t want to answer that?”

“Yes,” Claire replied. “Yes, I’m a de Vit.”

She’d known in the car on the way back from Torquay that Regan might take her hereditary ancestral line badly. Now she wished it had been her who’d told her. She was going to tell Regan, along with who Rosie was, when they had dinner that day, but the opportunity was stolen by Karen’s untimely arrival. Now struck with the gifts of Mystic Meg, fairground mind reader extraordinaire, she could see that Regan thought she’d deliberately tried to hide that fact.

“You couldn’t tell me that, could you?” Regan said, confirming Claire’s psychic abilities. Regan didn’t wait for an answer.

“Neither could you tell me that you’re the owner of Simon’s apartment, the one who wiped his rental debts.”

Claire frowned. Nobody knew this except the letting agent, and she’d left implicit instructions with him that this information was not to be released. Had someone there ignored that instruction?

“I found out from public files, Claire.

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