“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’s deep involvement with Eileen and her dying little boy Marvin caused tension between June and Wild. They fought bitterly. Later, at the hospital, in a moment of weakness, while waiting for the surgery Wild knew her boy wouldn’t survive, he all but told Eileen about his dilemma of whether or not to tell June he had foreseen her death. She had no clear answer for him, but she was beginning to understand more about the mysterious man who had swooped in at the most dire time of her life.
Eileen used to miss Boots terribly whenever he was out on tour. She would wait up for his post-show call every night, and if for some reason, he didn’t call, she wouldn’t sleep, worried that either something had happened to him, or he was up to something he shouldn’t be. But these days, she was happy to have the house to herself. For the eighteen months they were both stuck at home during the pandemic, she thought she might put a pillow over his head while he slept.
He would be getting home anytime now, and she would have to learn to live with him all over again. He would want to cuddle. He would show his quiet disdain for her laptop and the sprawl of papers spread across their bed. She would nag him about too much sugar and too much salt, and he would roll his eyes about the number of times she texted Rhiannon and Jacob throughout the day. But he understood and he had always tolerated her overindulgent worrying over their kids. Every sniffle, every cough, had sent her into a panic. But that’s what having your little boy die before his sixth birthday did to a person. Marvin would have been thirty-two in October. Watching Jacob grow into a man, she was able to imagine how Marvin might have been. He would have made a great older brother, kind and funny. The ache of his absence never left her but some days, like her arthritis, it flared up worse than others. Today had been a bad day and the thought of having to mask her sadness for Boots made her exhausted.
Eileen shut her laptop. She had left a pile of comments in the acquisition agreement that would be clear for any one of the junior associates to address. Her days of being essential at Thorne Enterprises had long since passed, but at sixty-three she needed something to get her out of her head. Neither her nor Boots had to work as hard as they did, but neither was ready to consider full retirement either. On the desk in her home office, she kept a photograph of each of her kids. She kissed her hand and placed it gently on the oldest one where Marvin was smiling in front of the Monster Mansion ride at Six Flags. In one fist he held a half-eaten cloud of cotton candy. His other hand was attached to a blonde little girl who squinted in the sunlight. Millie Thorne. That little girl was effectively her boss these days though she rarely ever interacted with her. Millie’s ascension to Chief Operating Officer last year was a move to position her to take over the top role her father, Gerry, would vacate sometime in the near future. Life was strange.
She switched off the lamp and crossed the darkened room, deciding it would be easier if she was on the couch with a cup of tea in front of the television when Boots returned. These small adjustments and performances they did for each other as a way to maintain the illusion of a life together. In another life, she might have divorced him years ago, but Boots had given her a reason to live after Marvin’s death and she could never forget that.
In the kitchen, before turning the lights on, she looked out through the French doors at the light of a small boat bobbing across Lake Washington. She loved this view and had never once regretted the move out here even though it had been highly disruptive to their young kids. She had been done with the South for a long time but had stayed because there hadn’t been a better option. When the new position in the company opened up in Seattle, it had liberated her from a lifetime of memories as sticky and oppressive as an August in Atlanta. She hadn’t realized just how much she had been slowly suffocating for years until they were settled into their new house for a month, and she hadn’t encountered multiple reminders every day of her old life and the grief that drained all the color from it. Of course, none of this new life would have been possible if Millie Thorne hadn’t bitten Marvin that day.
She hadn’t thought about Wild in a long time until a few weeks back when Boots called to check in and told her they had had dinner together. The mention of Wild had cracked open a window somewhere deep inside her and the cold current of memories had seeped in and distracted her for the past few days. As a policy, Eileen had survived by not looking back. But as she waited for the kettle, she surrendered to them.
The first time she laid eyes on Boots, something stirred in her. He smelled of patchouli. His eyes were kind, but he had the presence of an actor or a rock star rather than simply the man who lit the stage for them. When Wild had introduced them, she was close to rock bottom and living, much less dating was the last thing she wanted. She had been sleeping in Wild and June’s guest room for months, barely leaving the bed and eating only when forced to. She had taken a leave of absence from law school and had no plans to return. If anyone had told her a year prior that she’d be living in the guest room of a rich white couple, she wouldn’t have accepted it. But Wild wouldn’t take no for an answer that day after he had come by to check on her and found her in a near-catatonic state on the ratty couch of her one-bedroom apartment surrounded by piles of Marvin’s clothes and toys. When he finally snapped her out of it and forced her to eat a bowl of ramen, she had come undone, wailing and crying and clinging to him with a fierceness that made her flush just thinking about it now. She had been so vulnerable. He could have taken advantage of her. God knows, there was a time when she wanted nothing more. Had she tried to kiss him that day, her face soaked with tears and snot and her body odor ripe from days of not bathing? She had and he had allowed it, but only for a beat. There had been something there, but not anything like he felt for June. Maybe he was just being a gentleman by not pushing her away immediately. Either way, it made things that much more awkward when she left her apartment and went to stay with them.
Thinking back on it, Eileen was sure the introduction to Boots was engineered by June. As kind and as emotionally evolved as Dr. Juniper McGowen was, she was not above jealousy and suspicion. It must have been hard to go to work and leave her husband at home with this sad, desperate woman every day. So, on a crisp October evening, just five months after her sweet Marvin was gone, Eileen found herself sipping a beer on a porch swing next to a handsome man with shoulder length dreads while Wild bumbled around with a shiny new grill in the backyard. It was a party with an odd collection of guests. She remembered Boots joking that the two of them were probably the only black friends June and Wild had. Boots had arrived nearly an hour before the rest of the guests which was more evidence that June’s intentions were clear.
Eileen hadn’t made it easy on him at first, but he was patient, and she appreciated his soulful gaze as she talked about everything but the death of her boy. Of course he knew, had probably been fully prepped by Wild, but he never once looked at her pitifully. In his eyes, behind the genuine warmth, there was an undeniable hunger for her. As the night progressed, she allowed herself to smile and laugh and to let her hand linger on his arm. Under the guise of it being too late to get a taxi and Wild being too drunk to drive him back to his hotel, Boots had stayed the night with an earnest plan to sleep on the couch. But she had taken him into her bed after Wild and June had bid them goodnight and retreated to their bedroom.
After that first night, things accelerated quickly. By Christmas, Boots had packed up his tiny apartment in Brooklyn and the two of them moved into a comfortable two-bedroom in one of the rental properties Thorne Enterprises owned. It was in a neighborhood that was walking distance to Emory where she returned in January to resume her studies. Somehow, Eileen had managed to hit the reset button. The distraction of new love and the exhausting challenge of finishing her law degree while working at Thorne allowed her little time to wallow in her grief.
As she settled onto the couch with her cup of tea and blew across the top of it, Eileen wondered how things might have been different if she had not taken the shortcut and moved so fast with Boots. Would she have found someone more compatible? Would they have been a better fit had she taken the time to heal? It wasn’t his fault. He fell in love with a woman who was shattered and put back together too quickly. In some ways, their marriage was like a broken bone that wasn’t set properly so it healed in a way that made them limp through their lives together. Even thinking these thoughts filled her with guilt. Boots had been a wonderful husband and more of a mom to their kids than she had. It was him they called about their heartbreaks and anxieties. It was her they called about worldly concerns and matters of finance. Before each of them started preschool, Boots had completely stopped working so he could be home with them. He bonded with them in a way she had not allowed herself to. Death did that to a person. She knew that for a fact after watching Wild completely implode when June died.
It was strange to think of him so much after more than a decade of him never crossing her mind. It had taken a concerted effort to achieve this distance because the connection she felt to him had only been made stronger once they had the shared experience of such loss. It had been hard not to ask about him every time she was in meetings with Millie, but she had resisted and eventually Millie forgot they ever shared a meaningful connection. To her, Eileen was just a brilliant attorney who, like her parents, had always been there playing a supportive role.
Eileen saw the headlights sweep across the wall in front of her and she flushed, her ears burning as though she had been caught in a lie. She flicked on the television and turned it up loud. The garage door opened and closed and then the door to the mudroom.
“Hi baby, I’m home!”
She set her tea down on the coffee table, rose to her feet, and crossed the living room to greet her husband. He dropped his two bags on the floor and took her in his arms, lifting her up slightly to plant a kiss on her forehead. He smelled of airport terminals and business class and below that, the familiar hint of patchouli.
“How was your flight?”
“It was great, thanks for sharing your points for the upgrade. I may never be able to fly coach again.”
“You want some tea?” She turned and walked toward the kitchen. “I can also warm up some leftovers if you’re hungry.”
“No, thanks babe. I just want a shower and bed, I think. It’s been a long day.”
“Okay,” she said, flipping off the kitchen light and heading back to the couch.
He picked up his bags and began walking toward the hall that led to their bedroom, before stopping and turning around. “You okay?”
She hated when he did this, tried to break their contract of don’t-ask-don’t-tell. It wasn’t fair to force her into openly lying when neither of them was okay.
“Yeah, I’m good,” she said. “Just tired too. I worked on a tricky contract all day and I just want to veg. I'll come to bed in a bit.”
He frowned and nodded slowly before turning to walk away. They both knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep next to him. She would either fall asleep on the couch or go into the guest bedroom down the hall. It would take a couple of days for them to reacclimate to each other. Like deep sea divers who must surface slowly to avoid catastrophe, they needed time to repressurize and leave behind the dark universe of their solitary thoughts.
She turned her attention back to the television and didn’t watch it but stared through the screen and into the past where memories of Wild crowded out everything else. Why had he suddenly penetrated the firewall that had protected her for all these years? She was too old and tired to be stirred in this way. She was too old and tired to carry the guilt. Had something happened to him? All Boots told her about their conversation was that nothing had changed. He was still a hermit living above the theater and she knew better than to ask her husband for too many details.
She took a sip of her tepid tea and turned down the volume on the terrible reality show that felt as unreal as her own life. She decided the next time she had a moment alone with Millie, she would ask after Wild.
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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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