However, all readers - sooner or later - find for themselves a literary genre that is fundamentally different from all others. Haunted Destiny by Kelly Abell (ap literature book list txt) đź“–
Download in Format:
- Author: Kelly Abell
Book online «Haunted Destiny by Kelly Abell (ap literature book list txt) 📖». Author Kelly Abell
I. We will just need to find a way to move through each day one step at a time. It’s not easy but if you let me I can help you through this. Do you think you can rest now?” Rose knew the girl would not go back to sleep. Destiny hadn’t slept a full night since the accident. When Rose picked her up at the hospital on that dreadful night she wasn’t sure Destiny would ever come to trust her. The girl wasn’t exactly hostile but she was wary. Rose and her daughter Teresa had parted ways many years ago over the way Rose chose to earn her living. Rose felt that Teresa was denying her own destiny and Teresa thought Rose was crazy. It had created a chasm between them that not even the birth of grandchildren could bridge.
The day after the accident was the first time Rose and Destiny saw each other. No telling what Teresa filled the child’s head with over the years, but Rose was sure it was not the picture of a rosy cheeked grandmother sitting in her rocker with her knitting. The portrait Teresa painted of her own mother was probably closer to the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz. Rose only prayed she could undo the damage in Destiny’s mind.
Destiny nodded and pushed herself from her grandmother’s arms. She lay back down on the small bed as Rose straightened the sheets and blankets. She stood and looked down at the lovely girl. “You look so much like my Teresa, raven hair and eyes the color of the ocean. We may not have agreed on many things, but I’m glad she left such a wonderful piece of her behind. You get some rest now.” Smiling with tears in her faded blue eyes she backed out of the room and softly closed the door behind her.
Destiny rolled onto her side and tucked her pillow under her head. Her elbow still ached from where she slammed it into the wall during her nightmare. The single wide trailer’s second bedroom was not much bigger than a broom closet, and Destiny was constantly bumping various body parts into the furniture. She couldn’t think of it as her room yet. It was a far cry from what she was used to and the adjustment was just one more thing to have to cope with.
Here she was stuck with the woman that her mother referred to as the old crone, the biddy, the bat, and many other unflattering names of the witch vernacular. Destiny never really understood the feud between her mother and grandmother, but it must have been serious for her mother to have stayed away for over 15 years. Grams, doesn’t seem all that bad, Destiny thought. Oh sure, she was a little strange, okay - really strange, and she couldn’t think of one of her friends whose grandmother was the town palm reader and ran The Mystic Cat, a mystic gift shop and book store, but she felt the old woman meant well. She certainly had smothered her with affection since she got here. She didn’t want to seem ungrateful for her grandmother’s charity but nothing was the same anymore.
It happened suddenly on a rainy afternoon in south Florida. Her parents were driving her and her little brother Elijah to Orlando for a trip to Disney World. They were all excited, singing songs in the car, laughing. Elijah was not old enough to know the words to the songs but he would sing anyway in his precious baby voice.
The rain came down in sheets drowning away all visibility on Interstate 75 and the slapping of the windshield wipers was the last sound Destiny remembered hearing before her mother’s sweet singing voice turned into a scream. The car careened out of control and flipped over three times. Destiny rubbed her hand across the purple bruise on her chest she received while hanging upside down from the seat belt. It was only a few minutes but it felt like hours as she hung there listening to her baby brother screaming from his suspended car seat.
The oily smell of smoke mixed with rain penetrated her rattled senses and she knew she needed to get to Elijah. She struggled to reach the seat belt buckle and when she pressed the button she dropped to the roof of the van with a thump. She still had the bruises on her palms and knees from that as well. The latch on Elijah’s car seat was jammed and terror sliced through her because she couldn’t free him. She had screamed and tugged at the belt until she was exhausted but the latch wouldn’t budge. The buckle was crushed flat. She was still struggling with it when the police officer pulled her from the car. She screamed, clawing the air for him when the gas tank exploded.
Destiny curled tighter into a ball as the vision of her mother’s severed head lying in the road about six feet away pierced her memory. She couldn’t see the rest of her mother’s body and she didn’t know where her father was. When the rescue workers got there they bundled her up in a blanket and sat her in the ambulance while they looked for her parents. The police officer who’d pulled her from the car eventually returned to the ambulance and told her they were thrown from the car when it rolled. Destiny flinched remembering the look of pity and sympathy on that officer’s face.
Except for her grandmother Destiny was all alone now. Two weeks after the accident she moved into her grandmother’s trailer home in Arcadia, Florida, a small community east of Sarasota. The trailer sat on the back of a large property belonging to the local town doctor, Jeff Morgan. The Morgan’s owned the mansion and the farm along with several horses on the property. These weren’t the rolling hills and bright green grass of a Kentucky horse farm, but this place had its own beauty. The mansion was built in the Georgian style of the plantations of South Carolina. It didn’t have the same modern look of the new construction Destiny was used to in Florida. The wide porch and columns made her think of the movie Gone with the Wind.
The pastures went on and on into the horizon and the soft sandy soil would fly up behind the horses’ hooves as they pranced and played, chasing each other across the fields. Wild palms stood tall and dotted the landscape along with their smaller scrubby partners. The grass was parched in the pastureland because of the dry spring, but sprinklers kept the lawn around the mansion bright green. It set a soft green stage for the stark white house.
Destiny wondered why her grandmother wanted to live in a trailer home that sat like a boil on the smooth skin of such a wonderful property instead of in one of the many senior citizen parks that she could have chosen. It seemed to her that it would be less embarrassing. This was one of the many things Destiny did not understand about her new life with her grandmother. All she knew was she’d lost everything that was important to her. She squeezed her eyes shut and clutched the pillow closer.
She was going to have to start over in this hick town that was so different from where she’d lived in Naples. She was starting a new school in a few months and would have to make new friends. Her stomach clinched at the thought of it. She didn’t make new friends easily. Destiny knew she wouldn’t fit in here. She was used to the finer things in life and had enjoyed going to the high end malls and Starbucks with her friends. She hadn’t even been able to bring all of her clothes with her because this bedroom just wasn’t big enough to hold them all. The nearest mall to this dump of a town was at least an hour away.
Running her fingers through her layered black hair Destiny worried that she wouldn’t find anyone around here who knew how to cut it. They didn’t even sell the expensive brand of make-up she used in the local Walgreens. Everything that she liked to do was foreign to these kids. How could they enjoy the same things? Most of these kids spent their time riding horses or tipping cows, or whatever it is you do in a farm community. She missed her friends, her school, and her old house. This sucked.
Destiny buried her face in her pillow and cried until dawn.
You can purchase Haunted Destiny through www.heartsonfirebooks.com Imprint
The day after the accident was the first time Rose and Destiny saw each other. No telling what Teresa filled the child’s head with over the years, but Rose was sure it was not the picture of a rosy cheeked grandmother sitting in her rocker with her knitting. The portrait Teresa painted of her own mother was probably closer to the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz. Rose only prayed she could undo the damage in Destiny’s mind.
Destiny nodded and pushed herself from her grandmother’s arms. She lay back down on the small bed as Rose straightened the sheets and blankets. She stood and looked down at the lovely girl. “You look so much like my Teresa, raven hair and eyes the color of the ocean. We may not have agreed on many things, but I’m glad she left such a wonderful piece of her behind. You get some rest now.” Smiling with tears in her faded blue eyes she backed out of the room and softly closed the door behind her.
Destiny rolled onto her side and tucked her pillow under her head. Her elbow still ached from where she slammed it into the wall during her nightmare. The single wide trailer’s second bedroom was not much bigger than a broom closet, and Destiny was constantly bumping various body parts into the furniture. She couldn’t think of it as her room yet. It was a far cry from what she was used to and the adjustment was just one more thing to have to cope with.
Here she was stuck with the woman that her mother referred to as the old crone, the biddy, the bat, and many other unflattering names of the witch vernacular. Destiny never really understood the feud between her mother and grandmother, but it must have been serious for her mother to have stayed away for over 15 years. Grams, doesn’t seem all that bad, Destiny thought. Oh sure, she was a little strange, okay - really strange, and she couldn’t think of one of her friends whose grandmother was the town palm reader and ran The Mystic Cat, a mystic gift shop and book store, but she felt the old woman meant well. She certainly had smothered her with affection since she got here. She didn’t want to seem ungrateful for her grandmother’s charity but nothing was the same anymore.
It happened suddenly on a rainy afternoon in south Florida. Her parents were driving her and her little brother Elijah to Orlando for a trip to Disney World. They were all excited, singing songs in the car, laughing. Elijah was not old enough to know the words to the songs but he would sing anyway in his precious baby voice.
The rain came down in sheets drowning away all visibility on Interstate 75 and the slapping of the windshield wipers was the last sound Destiny remembered hearing before her mother’s sweet singing voice turned into a scream. The car careened out of control and flipped over three times. Destiny rubbed her hand across the purple bruise on her chest she received while hanging upside down from the seat belt. It was only a few minutes but it felt like hours as she hung there listening to her baby brother screaming from his suspended car seat.
The oily smell of smoke mixed with rain penetrated her rattled senses and she knew she needed to get to Elijah. She struggled to reach the seat belt buckle and when she pressed the button she dropped to the roof of the van with a thump. She still had the bruises on her palms and knees from that as well. The latch on Elijah’s car seat was jammed and terror sliced through her because she couldn’t free him. She had screamed and tugged at the belt until she was exhausted but the latch wouldn’t budge. The buckle was crushed flat. She was still struggling with it when the police officer pulled her from the car. She screamed, clawing the air for him when the gas tank exploded.
Destiny curled tighter into a ball as the vision of her mother’s severed head lying in the road about six feet away pierced her memory. She couldn’t see the rest of her mother’s body and she didn’t know where her father was. When the rescue workers got there they bundled her up in a blanket and sat her in the ambulance while they looked for her parents. The police officer who’d pulled her from the car eventually returned to the ambulance and told her they were thrown from the car when it rolled. Destiny flinched remembering the look of pity and sympathy on that officer’s face.
Except for her grandmother Destiny was all alone now. Two weeks after the accident she moved into her grandmother’s trailer home in Arcadia, Florida, a small community east of Sarasota. The trailer sat on the back of a large property belonging to the local town doctor, Jeff Morgan. The Morgan’s owned the mansion and the farm along with several horses on the property. These weren’t the rolling hills and bright green grass of a Kentucky horse farm, but this place had its own beauty. The mansion was built in the Georgian style of the plantations of South Carolina. It didn’t have the same modern look of the new construction Destiny was used to in Florida. The wide porch and columns made her think of the movie Gone with the Wind.
The pastures went on and on into the horizon and the soft sandy soil would fly up behind the horses’ hooves as they pranced and played, chasing each other across the fields. Wild palms stood tall and dotted the landscape along with their smaller scrubby partners. The grass was parched in the pastureland because of the dry spring, but sprinklers kept the lawn around the mansion bright green. It set a soft green stage for the stark white house.
Destiny wondered why her grandmother wanted to live in a trailer home that sat like a boil on the smooth skin of such a wonderful property instead of in one of the many senior citizen parks that she could have chosen. It seemed to her that it would be less embarrassing. This was one of the many things Destiny did not understand about her new life with her grandmother. All she knew was she’d lost everything that was important to her. She squeezed her eyes shut and clutched the pillow closer.
She was going to have to start over in this hick town that was so different from where she’d lived in Naples. She was starting a new school in a few months and would have to make new friends. Her stomach clinched at the thought of it. She didn’t make new friends easily. Destiny knew she wouldn’t fit in here. She was used to the finer things in life and had enjoyed going to the high end malls and Starbucks with her friends. She hadn’t even been able to bring all of her clothes with her because this bedroom just wasn’t big enough to hold them all. The nearest mall to this dump of a town was at least an hour away.
Running her fingers through her layered black hair Destiny worried that she wouldn’t find anyone around here who knew how to cut it. They didn’t even sell the expensive brand of make-up she used in the local Walgreens. Everything that she liked to do was foreign to these kids. How could they enjoy the same things? Most of these kids spent their time riding horses or tipping cows, or whatever it is you do in a farm community. She missed her friends, her school, and her old house. This sucked.
Destiny buried her face in her pillow and cried until dawn.
You can purchase Haunted Destiny through www.heartsonfirebooks.com Imprint
Publication Date: 07-23-2009
All Rights Reserved
Free ebook «Haunted Destiny by Kelly Abell (ap literature book list txt) 📖» - read online now
Add a comment
Comments (0)