Relatively Rainey
Titles from R. E. Bradshaw Books
Rainey Bell Thriller Series:
Relatively Rainey (2015)
Colde & Rainey (2014)
The Rainey Season
(2013) Lambda Literary Awards Finalist
Rainey’s Christmas Miracle
(2011) (Short Story-ebook only)
Rainey Nights
(2011) Lambda Literary Awards Finalist
Rainey Days
(2010)
The Adventures of Decky and Charlie Series:
Out on the Panhandle (2012)
Out on the Sound (2010)
Molly: House on Fire (2012)
Lambda Literary Awards Finalist
Before It Stains (2011)
Waking Up Gray (2011)
Sweet Carolina Girls (2010)
The Girl Back Home (2010)
Relatively Rainey
By R. E. Bradshaw
© 2015 by R. E. Bradshaw. All Rights Reserved.
R. E. Bradshaw Books/June 2015
ISBN-13: 978-0-9903760-5-7
Website:
http://www.rebradshawbooks.com
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https://www.facebook.com/rebradshawbooks
Twitter @rebradshawbooks
Blog:
http://rebradshawbooks.blogspot.com
For information contact
[email protected]
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author and publisher.
Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
To my family and friends who know just how long this year has been, thank you for standing with me when I had a hard time standing by myself. To the readers who waited patiently, thank you. Much love to you all.
Terrors come during vulnerable moments in the night. While lost in sleep, demons arise to expose our deepest dreads. Happiness is not a deterrent to the treachery of memories and fears.
Having suffered a traumatic event nearly five years prior, Rainey has settled into contented family life. When a body tied to JW Wilson surfaces, the compartmentalization Rainey Bell practices proves to be her near undoing. As the buried demons of her past come to call in nearly nightly terror-filled dreams, self-doubt becomes a constant companion.
Rainey endeavors to juggle life as a devoted parent, a loving spouse, a big sister, and a successful entrepreneur. Currently, she is using her behavioral analysis skills for the multi-jurisdictional task force hunting a fetish burglar turned murderer while trying to resolve her resurfacing post-trauma issues before Katie sends her packing. Rainey is also attempting to keep the youthful enthusiasm of her half-sister, Durham Police Officer Wendy King, from torpedoing her young career and endangering her extended family.
REB
Dedicated to the woman whose hand rests gently in the small of my back—encouraging, sheltering, and sure.
PRELUDE TO A NIGHTMARE
“There are moments when even to the sober eye of reason, the world of our sad humanity may assume the semblance of Hell.”
― Edgar Allan Poe
7:00 PM, Monday, September 2, 2013
Chancery Court Subdivision
Durham County, NC
The small window screen in Dr. Kent Barker’s hand puzzled him. His profound bewilderment drew the attention of his neighbor.
“What’s the trouble there, Kent?”
“I’m sorry, what?” Kent, half listening, still tried to make sense of things.
The smiling neighbor pointed a dripping hose nozzle at the screen.
“You’ve been standing right there since I started watering this flowerbed. I was so caught up in watching you, I think I over-soaked it.”
Kent looked at the perfectly maintained bed of flowers edging the driveway next door. The flowerbed exemplified the order in Kent’s upper-middle class, manicured subdivision. The homeowners’ association made sure everyone conformed to the neat and tidy rules. Upon returning an hour ago from a Labor Day weekend trip to the beach with family, the Thomas Kincaid-ness of his cul-de-sac struck him once more. The French Country style homes formed a perfect jigsaw puzzle picture of the American dream. No matter how many times Kent made that corner, the image remained the same.
He remarked to Marilyn, his wife, “I could take a picture of this street every day, and it would only reflect the change in seasons.” He smiled at his college freshman daughter’s reflection in the rearview mirror, adding, “There is comfort in that sameness.”
Hannah was almost on her own now, soon to relegate her time with the family to weekends when she could manage it. She was the last of the Barker brood to leave the nest. Kent had just turned fifty, and the slower pace of suburban living suited him. None of his medical school buddies would believe beer-bong champ Barker would prefer the mundane and routine in his later years. But after a long day of surgery, surprises were the last thing an anesthesiologist wanted. Spotting the screen out of place interrupted the solace Kent felt in his world of comfortable banality.
The neighbor persisted, “What happened? Did you get that off and now can’t figure out how to put it back?”
Kent asked, “Reece, were you around this weekend?”
“Yes. Well, I was. Travis took his mother to see his brother on Sunday, but I was here all weekend. Why, what’s wrong?”
Kent glanced back down at the screen and the basement window it should have been covering.
Shrugging, he answered, “I don’t know. This screen was off, but the window was still locked on the inside, and the alarm was active. Marilyn says it just feels like someone was in the house, but we can’t find anything missing.”
“Now, that’s disconcerting. I sure didn’t see or hear anything. Is she sure?”
Kent’s nineteen-year-old daughter, Hannah, came screaming out the front door with the answer.
“Daddy, some pervert went through my laundry and stole all my underwear, all of it, bras, and everything.”
Hannah left her first week’s worth of college laundry in the basement, before joining the family for the beach holiday with her older siblings and their spouses. Kent knew this because he carried the bulging duffle bag down the stairs Friday afternoon.
Kent’s wife fled the house close on Hannah’s heels, phone to her ear, and in mid-sentence, “...broke into our house and stole our teenaged daughter’s underwear. And if I’m not mistaken, there is some genetic material you need to come collect.”
At that moment, everything in Kent’s banal world changed.
#
10:00 PM, Friday, July 25, 2014
Buckhorn Road, Chatham County, NC
Arianna Wilde climbed into her grandmother’s farmhouse canopy bed, sinking into the feather top and down pillows. A source of countless fond memories, she felt the bed cradle her as it had on those special occasions when she came to visit the farm. Snuggled under Nana Wilde’s arm, Arianna would listen to her favorite books read aloud. Her war bride grandmother maintained her cultured British accent throughout her life, even after spending the last sixty-nine years of it near the banks of the Cape Fear River. Arianna believed a genuine appreciation achievable for Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan only when the texts were read aloud by a British grandmother.
She inherited the farm and her grandmother’s feather bed in January. After finalizing her divorce and the sale of the matrimonial home, Arianna moved into the farmhouse in May. The money from the settlement helped restore and modernize the old place. Having lived in Chapel Hill since her college days, the move twenty-five miles south to her family’s ancestral country home was a welcomed one. Wherever her laptop received a signal became an office, and the solitude of country living appealed to her at this juncture in her life. Relocating seemed the answer to the question Peggy Lee sang over and over in her mind for the last few years, “Is that all there is?”
The intense stress of living on site during a remodel was well worth it. Arianna relearned the self-sufficiency of her youth after too many years of living dependent on the skills of others. Now in the final stages, she was down to the cosmetics of painting the interior and trying to get a handle on the overgrown grounds. Beating back nature to the wood line in the massive yard by day and painting the two-story interior by night, Arianna worked her body to its limits over the last few weeks. She had no spare moments to dally in the past. The work focused her and kept her old friends Regret and Dread at bay.
Arianna regretted she didn’t love her husband. He was sweet and kind, but it wasn’t enough. She regretted that she’d stuck it out for thirteen wasted years and dreaded the thought of dating again at forty-one. She regretted she hadn’t spent more time with her aging grandmother. She dreaded the weekly phone calls from the ex, ostensibly to make sure she was all right, but it was more about propping him up.
He ended almost every conversation with some form of, “I could understand if it was someone else, but you just stopped loving me.”
Arianna regretted ever being honest with him about her feelings. She had contemplated telling him there was someone else, in hopes that he would move on with his life. She regretted that she didn’t care enough to lie.
Today she added a new bit of remorse to the list. She thoroughly regretted saying, “How hard could this be,” before turning the key on the old tiller and promptly sending it through the side of the barn.
“I should have remembered the tractor debacle,” she said aloud, following it with chuckles.
Her muscles ached but were taut. Her body looked better than it had in years. She overcame many things since the move, learning something new about herself and the farm seemingly minute by minute. She had taken back her name and worked on taking back her life one day at a time. Regrets aside, Arianna had mastered her dread of a coming new day.
Tomorrow, I will conquer the tiller.
She reached for the bedside lamp. As she pulled the old chain, plunging the room into darkness, she said aloud, “Think happy thoughts.” It was something her grandmother would say each night. Arianna thought of the happiest thing she could.