Free First Chapter - The Sin Eater's Redemption!
From the desk of Lee Ann Sontheimer
Murphy
My latest contemporary romance, with some paranormal
flavor, is garnering some attention out in the world. I explained a little of the inspiration and
history behind The Sin Eater’s Redemption
last week so I thought I’d offer up the first chapter. Readers can get a taste and hopefully want
more!
Blurb:
Death brings singer Tessa Owens home from
Nashville to her native Ozarks. But
she’s not planning to stay. Tessa turned
her back on the old ways of life for the modern world long ago. She didn’t
expect to meet her first love, Lucas Rowlands, at the visitation. Seven years wasn’t long enough to forget him
and sparks ignite when they meet again. Even worse, Tessa learns Lucas isn’t
the simple country farmer she left behind but the sin eater, an ancient
position handed down to him from his grandfather. As she struggles to
understand Lucas’ life and role as a sin eater Tessa admits she loves him and
there’s no doubt what he feels for her.
The devil wants Lucas’ sin-heavy soul and if they don’t come up with
something, Lucas is hell bound on an express ticket. If there’s any chance at a future, it’s up to
Tessa.
Chapter One
If she’d ever seen a ghost, it had been at
Tootsie’s, the famous Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge down on Broadway in the heart of
Nashville. Tessa Owens slouched in a
chair and sipped her drink beneath pictures of some of the country music
legends that once hung out in the bar.
Last time, she drank too much and swore she saw Patsy Cline. Her friends howled with laughter at the idea
since everyone knew Patsy was Tessa’s idol and no one else believed she
might’ve seen a ghost.
“Girl, you’ve got to get over your
hillbilly bullshit,” Jed, her guitar player and best friend, told her. “Nobody believes in ghosts but those idiots
hunting them on TV.”
Tessa did, though, and so had her Granny. Her late grandmother claimed to have seen
images of their deceased kinfolk more than once. But Tessa learned when to keep her mouth
closed and not let her Ozarks raising show.
She said nothing else about Patsy’s ghost or what she thought it might
mean for her own singing career. As if
he read her thoughts, Jed asked, “Did you ever hear anything about performing
here?”
“Nope,” Tessa said as she shook her head.
“I sent the email with all the info and an MP3 file but no one’s responded
yet.”
“They will,” Carin, one of her small
circle of pals, said. “You’re too damn good for them not to give you a shot.”
“Yeah, Tess, you’ve got star quality,” Jeb
added.
One review, a tiny mention buried in the
entertainment pages of The Tennessean,
said she did but it’d been more than a year ago. Tessa spent days working as a desk clerk at
one of the hotels downtown and nights singing whatever gig she could find. Over the seven years she’d been in Nashville,
Tessa sang anywhere possible. She’d done
brief gigs at a number of small bars, sang at mall events, company picnics, a
couple of adult birthday parties and in the park. Her one CD single, a reprise of an old Johnny
Horton tune, one of his lesser known numbers, “Take Me Like I Am,” earned some
airplay but not enough to boost Tessa onto the national charts.
Twice she performed as a Patsy Cline
impersonator, decked out in a dark wig and vintage dress. Some people swore
Tessa owned some of Patsy’s power and smoky, sultry quality. When Tessa trotted out some of Patsy’s
biggest hits like ‘Crazy’ and ‘Sweet Dreams’, audiences erupted in applause.
“Maybe,” Tessa said. “If not, I can always
head home, get a job at the chicken plant and buy me a double wide trailer.”
Her friends burst into laughter but she
wasn’t really joking. None of them
understood where she came from. Jed
hailed from Memphis so he grew up on barbecue, blues, and Elvis. Carin came from down Shreveport way, more
crawfish than cornbread. Staci and
Nathan both were Nashville natives, born and bred with country music in their
blood. Valerie came from Connecticut,
from the world of commuter trains and the kind of snobbery some called class.
Tessa called the Ozark Mountains home,
hailing from the southwest corner of Missouri, just a notch north of
Arkansas. A slight twang flavored her
voice, an accent different than those from Kentucky or Tennessee, so her
buddies ribbed her about being a hillbilly.
She never told them but in her heart, Tessa was redneck to the
bone. Sometimes she dreamed of recording
her own songs, poignant lyrics about home she scribbled on the back of napkins. Her melodies echoed the rugged, rocky hills
and captured the sound of the wind through the trees. So far Tessa lacked enough confidence to sing
her music because she was afraid no one would understand or appreciate it.
“Let’s have another round,” Nathan
hollered but Tessa shook her head.
“No thanks,” she said and held up her
half-full glass to show she didn’t need another.
“Aw, c’mon, just one more,” Jed teased.
“Tomorrow’s Saturday, you can sleep late.”
If she didn’t, they’d all fuss so Tessa
changed her mind. “Okay, order me another Bacardi and Coke. I need to go to the
ladies’, though so let me out.”
Carin and Valerie shifted so she could
slip out from beside the wall. Tessa
navigated her way through the noisy crowds to the restroom and waited until she
could enter a stall. On her way back,
she paused to let several people pass and as she waited, she stared across the
room. A man caught her eye and she stared,
intrigued by a sense of familiarity. He
wore bib overalls over a plain blue chambray shirt and was old. Except for a fringe of graying hair around
the edges, he was bald and he stared at her but he didn’t smile. Cold shot through her body and she shivered. Tessa would know his somber face anywhere but
he didn’t belong here.
“Uncle Calvin,” she whispered but no one
heard about the raucous din. Her uncle,
a man she’d never liked and considered to be meaner than a cornered
rattlesnake, offered a nod in acknowledgement.
Then he melted away, his form shifting from solid three dimensional to a
faint shadow then into nothing at all.
First Patsy Cline, now her least favorite
uncle. Tessa shook her head, distressed
by the experience. There wasn’t any doubt
Patsy was dead but last she’d heard, Calvin Bates remained on the top side of
the grass. Memory flickered and she
stopped in the middle of Tootsie’s. For
a moment, Tessa saw her grandmother as she rocked on the front porch and told
ghost stories.
“I
knowed he was dead soon as I laid eyes on him,” Granny told her. “There I was
at the county fair in July and I seen my boy clear as morning. He wore his combat fatigues but there was
blood around his chest and I knew he must’ve got killed over there in Vietnam.”
Her eldest uncle, Stan, died at An Khe
back in 1968, the same day if you allowed for the time difference, when Granny
saw him at the fair. Everyone said Tessa
inherited Granny’s gift. Uncle Calvin must be dead. There wasn’t any other explanation for seeing
his ghost and Tessa wrapped her arms around her torso, freezing cold with
dismay. Back at the table, she picked up her drink and downed it with one
gulp. “I’ve got to go,” she muttered to
her friends.
“What’s wrong?” Jed asked but she didn’t
answer as she headed toward the entrance.
He caught up with her and grabbed her arm.
“Tessa, what’s wrong?”
“I don’t know,” she said as she faced him.
“I think my uncle must’ve died. I need
to call home and find out.”
Jed’s lips smirked as if he might laugh
but he didn’t. Instead, he paled as
understanding dawned. “You think your uncle died? Why? Wait. Don’t tell me. You saw his ghost.”
“That’s pretty much it,” Tessa said. “Go
on back to the table. I’ll call you
later.”
He stared at her, shaken by her claim then
shrugged his shoulders. “Okay, if you want me to go, I’ll go. Keep in touch, babe.”
Tessa nodded and pushed through the crowd
toward the door.
Outside, the wind, cool for late May,
enveloped her with a rush and she sighed.
Tessa pulled her cell phone from her pocket but before she began to
dial, it rang. The familiar strains of the ‘Green Acres’ theme song blasted
into the night as Tessa took the call.
“Teresa Lou,” her mother’s voice said
across the miles from Missouri. If she
hadn’t already seen Uncle Calvin, Tessa would’ve known something serious
happened because her parents only used her full name in times of tragedy or
major trauma. “I’ve got something to tell you.”
“Who died?”
“It’s Uncle Calvin, honey,” her mom said.
“He passed away just a little while ago. You need to come home for the
funeral.”
“Mom,” Tessa protested.
Her mother wielded the one thing certain
to cut her objections down. “Aunt Vernie wants you to come, baby. You know you’re her favorite. She’s set the funeral for Monday afternoon
but we’re doing the visitation and all at the house on Sunday.”
She wanted to refuse but Tessa didn’t.
When she was a little girl, Aunt Verna kept home baked cookies in the cookie
jar just for her and she always bought little trinkets in town for her favorite
niece. As a teen, whenever she needed an ear or shoulder, her aunt provided
one. Without any kids of her own, Vernie
doted on Tessa and her brothers, but Tessa most of all. Her rambling old farmhouse felt as
comfortable as worn out blue jeans, just as long as Uncle Cal wasn’t
there. Feeling as trapped as a coon that
the hounds put up a tree, Tessa sighed.
“All right, Mama. I’ll be there.”
Emotional blackmail accomplished what
reason couldn’t. After promising to let
her folks know when to expect her, Tessa ended the phone call and trudged to
her car. She shouldn’t drive, not after
two Bacardi-and-Cokes, but her apartment was just a few blocks away so Tessa
did it anyway. Inside her tiny
apartment, a studio flat in the basement of an old house not far off Music Row,
she collapsed on the sofa which doubled as a bed. Packing and preparation for her trip home
could wait until morning. She needed sleep
now but the last thing Tessa did before crashing was set her alarm clock for an
early rising.
Most mornings she woke to music but this
time, Tessa set it to blare like a car alarm.
The sound roused her and she brushed her hair out of her face. Remembering why she was awake, she splashed
through the shower and packed. She made
one quick call to the hotel to let them know she’d miss work for the next few
shifts. By eight thirty, she headed out the door bags in tow. Since her beat up Chevy required gas and she
needed coffee just as much, Tessa headed for the nearest convenience store a
few blocks away. Fueled and caffeinated,
she headed west at straight up nine o’clock, on the old two lane highway.
Life in the fast line might appeal in
everyday living but when she drove, Tessa preferred what she considered ‘real’
roads, the ones cutting through the heart of America. She enjoyed the changing sights along the
way, the old gas stations, the closed fruit stands, the empty home places. On traditional highways, Tessa allowed her
mind to drift which was impossible on the interstate where huge trucks roared
around her with dizzying speed.
The old highways yielded some of the best
mom and pop cafes left anywhere, the occasional flea market with a real
treasure or two and the kind of people who inspired Tessa’s songs.
As she drove, Tessa calculated the hours
between here and home. Eight hours,
probably closer to nine with minimal stops, ten if she paused for lunch or to
stretch her legs. She popped a favorite
CD into the player and sang along as the strains of rockabilly filled the
car. Her Chevy ate up miles of gray
pavement as the morning passed and the sun lifted higher into the sky.
Two hours into the journey, she hit
Paducah, Kentucky. Since Tessa hadn’t eaten breakfast, she wheeled into a
Dunkin Donuts. She took her cup of
coffee and two frosted cake donuts to a big park on the northern edge of the
city. Above the picnic table where she
took a break, squirrels chattered and birds sang. After Tessa washed a little sticky icing from
her hands and used the bathroom, she called her mom.
“I’m on the way,” she told her without
preamble. “I should be there in six or seven hours.”
“That’ll be around six o’clock tonight,”
Melissa Owens said. “Do you want me to keep supper for you?”
The last thing Tessa wanted was to sit
down to a meal. She’d be frazzled and
ready for a shower. “No, but thanks. I’ll grab something on the way.”
“Where are you now, honey?”
“Paducah,” she replied. “But I’m fixing to
leave.”
Already, just over a hundred miles out of
Nashville, her speech shifted toward childhood patterns. Amazed and almost ashamed she reverted so
easily, Tessa ended her call and motored ahead.
The bridges on US 62 and US 60 crossed the confluence of the Ohio and
Mississippi rivers. Tessa craned her
neck to catch a better view but she couldn’t see much, just the wide waters of
both rivers spreading out below her.
Once over the mighty Mississippi, she entered her home state but she had
no sense of coming home.
The rich bottomland lacked the rugged,
rocky hills of her Ozarks and when she paused for gas in some little town, the
fresh air she inhaled lacked the right aroma.
Tessa motored onward, sunglasses in place, as her mind overflowed with
memories. Her straight blonde hair floated
in the breeze from the open car window and although it’d be a tangled mess by
the time she made it home, she adored the freedom. The sun baked her left arm but she wouldn’t
burn, she’d tan. Aunt Verna, Vernie to
one and all, always offered her unconditional love. Later, she always scrounged
up change so Tessa could ride the miniature merry-go-round in the Wal-Mart
lobby. In the summer, Tessa spent every
night she could at her aunt’s place.
While Uncle Cal went out coon hunting and drinking until all hours of
the night, she and Aunt Vernie curled up on the couch and watched movies
together. They always had fun, until
Uncle Calvin came home.
Tessa could be sorry he died for her
aunt’s sake but she didn’t care. She
didn’t like the man. As long as she
could remember, he treated her as a nuisance.
He never teased her like her other uncles did or told her she looked
pretty. Uncle Calvin glared at her
through the hazy smoke of his ever present home rolled cigarette and called her
down every time she giggled or laughed.
Once, hung over from a long night’s drinking, he backhanded her because
she turned a somersault across the front porch.
Afterward Tessa steered clear of him as much as she could. At holiday dinners or family gatherings, she
stayed distant and spoke to him no more than required. By the time she’d grown up, Tessa realized
he treated her aunt poorly as well but Vernie wouldn’t talk about it or dare complain.
“I made my bed,” she’d say. “Now I gotta
lie in it.”
Other snatches of memory flitted through
Tessa’s mind quicker than the changing scenery outside the window. Catching lightning bugs down by the creek at
dusk with her brothers, wading through the cold waters, listening to the
grown-ups play guitars on the front porch, and waiting for the school bus in
all weathers were just a few of the images, like still photographs in her
head. She recalled the delightful aroma
of baking ham or frying chicken in her mother’s kitchen and the way her daddy
always came home from the chicken plant in his black rubber boots. Her pink room, made for a princess, served as
her haven from the outside world.
Thinking of old times revived high school
memories, too. She’d been a homecoming
queen candidate once but she wasn’t crowned.
Tessa acted in every play possible, sang in the school choir, and also
signed up for agriculture classes. At
the annual county fair each summer, she showed a calf. By the time she headed out to Nashville,
Tessa owned her own horse, a pretty little dappled mare named Skydancer. Tessa rode in a few rodeos and practiced
barrel racing in the north field. At one
time she planned pro-rodeo to be her fallback career in case singing didn’t
work out. Now she hadn’t been on a horse
in longer than she could pinpoint.
It was then Lucas Rowlands sneaked into
her head like a midnight thief. Her
conscious effort to block him out failed and he took over her recollections,
banishing the rest away. Tessa saw
nothing but Lucas. Sunlight brought out
the highlights in his otherwise brown hair and his deep blue eyes, brighter
than the sky, crinkled with laughter in her mind. She recalled walking down a wooded path with
him, his hand wrapped around hers. His
arm around her waist steadied her as the trail narrowed and he kept her from
falling to the deep ravine below. Images
flickered past in a virtual photo gallery, one after another.
Lucas in a tuxedo at prom, holding her
tight as they danced a slow number, passion burning in her blood like
fever. Tessa and Lucas rode in tandem on
horseback to the old swimming hole. They
dived into the deep water, colder than February snow, and screamed. Her hands clutched his naked body and he
grasped her against him. “You won’t
drown, honey girl,” he’d whispered and now, driving down the highway, his voice
resonated in her mind.
Tessa lifted one hand from the steering
wheel to wipe away a stray tear. Lucas and Tessa were together through high
school and during her two years of junior college in Neosho. If he hadn’t got into his patch of trouble
and then wrecked his truck during a high speed chase with the local deputies,
they might’ve been married. The idea
horrified her, scared the dickens out of her, and yet she liked it on some
level, too. If they had married, though,
she wouldn’t have gone to Nashville. She
would be just another county wife, working somewhere and raising a few kids
along with a little hell.
Last time she saw him, he’d been in the
hospital. Two deputies were on duty
outside his room so he wouldn’t bolt even though he’d suffered such serious
injuries he couldn’t get out of bed.
Tessa spent hours in the emergency room and twice as many in a waiting
room down the hall, waiting to find out if he’d be okay or not. Tears she refused to shed now clogged her
throat until it hurt as she remembered walking over to the bed.
Lucas stared up at her, his eyes bluer
than usual, dark with pain. He’d been so
pale, his face so bruised her heart broke into pieces and she’d bent down to
kiss his mouth but he turned away.
“I hear you’re leaving,” he said, his voice
husky from being so hurt.
“You know I am,” she replied. One of her cousins on her daddy’s side
invited her up to Nashville and she accepted the offer. Nashville was her dream, her shot at the big
time. When she shared the news with Lucas, she thought he’d celebrate with her
but he hadn’t. He walked away from her
without another word, headed down to a little liquor store, robbed it and drove
away at a sedate pace. When the law
caught up to him, he’d sped up and almost eluded them when he missed a curve
and crashed.
“Good-bye then,” Lucas said.
“Come with me,” she whispered. “I’ll wait
until you heal.”
He shook his head back and forth. “I can’t but you go on, go.”
“I love you, Lucas.”
“It ain’t enough.”
They were the last words he’d spoken to
her ever.
Tessa pulled over at a little ice cream
stand in some tiny town to get her emotions under control. She couldn’t drive with her hands shaking,
her heart aching, her eyes blinded with tears.
I
can handle going home,
she thought, but I don’t want to see
Lucas.
The funeral was Monday and on Tuesday
she’d be on her way back to Music City.
Buy links:
Comments
Post a Comment
We would love to hear from you but hope you are a real person and not a spammer. :)