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“Departures” is a supernatural thriller and love story published as a serial novel with new episodes dropping every Tuesday morning. Anyone can read or listen for free. Paid subscribers gain early access to new episodes. Watch the trailer or visit the table of contents to browse all the published episodes.
Previously…
In the last episode, Wild sat on the beach after his brother-in-law returned to Atlanta for work, reeling from the revelation that he had only a year left to live. Millie called, interrupting Wild’s meditation. Looking to help, she convinced him they needed to return to the Amazon rain forest where he took his first ayahuasca trip at twenty-three. He reluctantly agreed, and she began making plans for them to leave in two days. She also requested that her new girlfriend, Raina come along.
“What have you always wanted to do but never done?”
Wild felt it was a fair question to ask someone you love on a routine Tuesday night, but June didn’t seem to be in the mood. They were sitting on her couch with the television muted during a commercial break.
“How much time have you got?” June asked.
“It’s a long list?”
“Not really long, just complicated, I guess.”
“I would expect nothing less. So, what’s at the top of this complicated list?”
“I don’t know. I’ve always wanted to have one of those montage days. You know, like where two people in love do a ridiculous number of activities all in a single day. Like they’re eating hotdogs at the ballpark and catch a ball and then they’re suddenly in an expensive boutique and she’s trying on all these crazy dresses and then she’s wearing that dress and they’re drinking champagne at the top of the Eiffel tower…”
June was staring off into space with a serious look on her face. She appeared deep in thought and was going to keep going when the tiniest hint of a smile rounded the corner or her lips.
“You’re totally fucking with me, aren’t you? Come on. It was a serious question.”
“I don’t know, dude. I don’t think about my life like that. I like this, right here,” she said, bringing the back of his hand to her lips. “Why, have you got some kind of secret bucket list?”
Wild should have been prepared for her to turn the tables quickly, but he had been so focused on her that he couldn’t fake anything believable. All he had been able to think about for weeks was one burning question and before he could rethink it as he had a hundred times before, he blurted it out.
“I want you to marry me.”
“Oh shit, really? Just like that. That’s how you’re going to ask me, during a commercial break while we’re watching Twin Peaks?”
Wild’s face flushed. He swallowed hard and dropped his eyes to the floor. What was he thinking? He tried to imagine ways to backtrack. How could he have been so stupid? He didn’t think she was the type who wanted the big engagement party, especially with the spectacle it would be with his family but maybe he was wrong.
“Wait, you’re serious?” June reached for the remote and switched off the television. “Oh my God, you’re serious.”
“I mean, yeah. I’m sorry, it was stupid. You want me to do it the right way. Or maybe you don’t want to…”
June didn’t speak for a full minute and that minute might have been the longest of Wild’s life. She just stared at their intertwined fingers in her lap. When she finally spoke, her words came out in a whispered rush.
“Yes, Wild. Yes, I want to marry you.”
She pulled him to her and kissed him. Her cheeks were slick with tears, and she was trembling beneath his hands. The surge of relief and joy Wild felt in that moment was enough to crush the guilt and crippling doubt he had been carrying for weeks since he had first deceived June about the date of her death.
Wild offered to do it all, the engagement party, the big wedding in a church and anything else she wanted, but none of that interested June in the least. I don’t have that many friends, she’d said. When he suggested they have a small ceremony at the beach, she jumped on the idea, and they planned it for a weekend in late September. Her father had been excited about the low-key wedding, but her mother had campaigned for a couple of weeks to get June to consider more of a fairytale affair with all the stations of the cross including six weeks of newlywed counseling with the pastor from her church. But June had held the line, and her mother relented, accepting the consolation prize of having a barefoot man of the cloth in rolled up trousers officiate as the waters of the gulf christened the feet of the small wedding party.
Wild’s mother and father were so relieved to have their weird son performing at least one of the expected hallmarks of a normal life that they were on their best behavior for the entire weekend. Wilder senior insisted on putting all the guests up at the nearby resort and ensured that everything was covered. Wild’s mother, Beatrice hosted a day at the spa for all the women in the wedding party. Your mom’s so sweet, Wild. I don’t know why you’ve kept her from me, June had said afterward. Wild hadn’t argued. He was certain his mother would prove otherwise in the years to come. Throughout the weekend of the wedding Wild had experienced a cross-current of emotions. At times it felt good to be meeting the expectations of Wilder Emerson Thorne III but at other moments, he felt the same stifling suffocation he had experienced his whole life at family gatherings. Unlike the gatherings of his childhood though, there was the added bonus of being barraged with the date of everyone’s death as they shook his hand or kissed his cheek. He prayed no one was going to drop dead until they had navigated safely through the weekend and for once, his prayers had been answered.
“I don’t know how you managed it, son, but you got yourself a good one. That June, she’s a pistol. Beautiful and smart.”
Wild was standing on the upper deck of the beach house with his father as they surveyed the large pool deck where wedding guests drank champagne and ate wedding cake beneath the glow of a constellation of paper lanterns that swung in the sea breeze.
“Yeah, she is. I’m lucky,” Wild said.
He was sure his father hadn’t pulled him aside and invited him up to have a private drink just to commend him on his choice of a bride. There was always the thread of the conversation to be picked up that they had been having since he was twelve. Why should his wedding night be an exception?
“Son, have you thought more about what you’re gonna do? I mean now you’ve got a bride. You’re starting a family. A man needs to have a vocation.”
“What do you want me to say, Dad? You know I don’t want to work in the business. Can’t you just let me enjoy my wedding day?”
His father grimaced and took another sip of his whisky. He looked a hundred years old to Wild. He could have been Wilder Thorne II, the patriarch who had died two years earlier on the eleventh hole at the Piedmont Driving Club. Maybe it was because this was the happiest day of Wild’s life or maybe it was because he was a little drunk, but Wild saw his father in a more forgiving light. His father hadn’t signed up for this anymore than he had but he had taken the legacy from his father and pushed the Thorne empire forward, fulfilling all the expectations demanded of the post.
“We all have to do something with our lives. You can’t just choose not to participate. We are privileged, son. To not do some work for that privilege is not good for a man. I’m not asking you to take an executive post. I’m just asking you to do something.”
Wilder Senior delivered this last statement with a heavy hand on Wild’s neck. It was a rare physical display of affection.
“Alright, Dad. I promise to try. I want to be a good man. I want to be a good man for June.”
As if she had heard her name, June looked up from where she was standing at the far end of the pool talking with her mother and her aunt. She smiled and raised her glass.
Later that night, after all the guests had gone back to the resort and they had the place to themselves, June and Wild sat by the pool, dangling their feet in the water.
“What was your dad talking to you about?” she asked.
“Same thing he always talks to me about. But this time, I think I heard him differently.”
“How do you mean?”
“I need to do something with my life. Until I met you, I didn’t give a shit about anything really. But you make me want to be more.”
“Honey, I think you’ve had a lot on your plate. You know I love you for who you are. It doesn’t matter to me what you do.”
“I just want to be able to see you every day. I want us to see the world together. Nothing else really matters.”
“I want to be with you every day too. But we can’t just travel the world and live like every day’s our last. I’m not built for that. I don’t know anyone who is.”
Wild felt the poison inside him creep up like bile in his throat. The urge to spew it out, to tell her she didn’t have decades to waste on committee meetings and therapy sessions with patients who would never improve was so strong he had to bite the inside of his cheek. If it was this difficult to hold his secret on what might be one of their best days together, how in the hell would he manage on the really rough days or just the days that disappeared into the mind-numbing routines that made up a life?
Wild didn’t allow himself to go any further down this hole. The last thing he was going to do was sour their wedding night.
“Well, I think you might know someone who is built for it,” he said.
“Really? And what would that person do right now?”
“I don’t know. I think he’d assess the situation and improvise.”
“I see.”
She smiled and it was a new variation on the hundreds of expressions of hers he had cataloged since she first graced him with a smile that he had earned. This was her playful smart ass grin, hampered by exhaustion and alcohol, and juiced with wedding night libido.
He wrapped his arms around her as if to hug her and slowly leaned over pulling them both into the pool fully clothed. June squealed and struggled to get free but Wild wouldn’t let go. The sheer white gown floated around them like a jellyfish in the luminescent water and she wrapped her legs around him. Wild lost himself in the act of kissing her and there was no death, no fear of death, no father’s expectations, no legacy to bear. There was no pool, no house, no sea breeze or surf, no moon or stars. There was only June, the universe of June of which Wild was now a part, his sense of self, blown out into a billion tiny constellations in her orbit. His love for her was an insatiable ache that made it hard to breathe. Kissing her was an act of resuscitation. After a moment she pulled away and looked into his eyes.
“I am officially a Thorne now,” she said.
“No, you are a country unto yourself and I’m officially a citizen.”
“I never imagined this in a million years. Not just this with you, but this at all. I thought I would always be on the outside. I kind of liked being on the outside. It was my thing.”
“You can be on the outside, as long as I can be there with you.”
“Always,” she said.
“Always,” he said.
He had to kiss her again, to be anchored to her for fear that he might float away into the expanse of darkness.
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Want More? Check Out My Other Novels
If you’re enjoying “Departures,” chances are you will also like my two previously published novels. I’ve made the first two episodes of each free for you to preview. If you prefer reading the old fashioned way, you’re in luck because “The Memory of My Shadow” is now available in print, ebook, and audiobook anywhere you purchase books. I give you all the details in this announcement post.
In 2052, Magdalena, a brilliant programmer invents a device for telepathic communication with AI, seeking to decode the mind of her twin, the shooter in a school massacre she alone survived, but when she resurrects his consciousness, she unleashes a malevolence that could destroy her. Fans of the movie “Ex Machina” will love this story.
In the reality show competition for Houze, a revolutionary eco-home, six contestants face a winner-takes-all challenge. Beneath the surface of sustainability, altruism battles greed, turning a hopeful vision into a life and death struggle. Fans of “Nine Perfect Strangers” by Liane Moriarty will love this story.
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