Dark Legacy Jen Talty (all ebook reader txt) 📖

stop laughing. “I’m sorry,” she said. “This is a defense mechanism.” The more she talked, the less she laughed. She figured she’d better keep talking. “When I was little, my uncle Ned backed over my… my… it doesn’t matter. I laughed when I should have cried.”

“This is quite different, dear,” Annette said.

“I know.” The laughter had stopped, but tears had not replaced it. She was sad. At least, she thought she was. She should be filled with grief, but an overwhelming sense of relief made sadness something just out of reach.

Had tomorrow finally come?

That thought chilled her to the bone. If he was dead, truly dead, what did that really mean? Her life as she knew it would be different. Not different like moving, but different in an earth-shattering way.

She had dreamt of what her life might look like if her father weren’t in the picture. But now that her reality might shift, she wasn’t so sure she wanted another twist and turn of the roller coaster.

“Are you sure he’s dead? He was drunker than a skunk, and you know how that man sleeps like a rock when he’s completely wasted.”

“He’s always completely wasted.”

Annette had a point, but Shannon wasn’t satisfied. “How do you know he’s dead? I mean, really dead?”

Annette glared. “You can go look if you want. He’s in bed. Ambulance should have been here by now. Damn 9-1-1 person wanted me to try to perform CPR, but he’s cold and stiff, and I couldn’t stand to be in that room one second longer with a dead man. God only knows how long I slept next to him that way.”

That sounded pretty dead. “Shit.”

The monster started bawling. Silently, no less. Her shoulders bounced up and down, tears pouring out of her eyes, but she hardly made any noise.

Shannon awkwardly patted the woman on the back. The monster hadn’t ever been particularly affectionate—which was fine with Shannon—but that left her a lack of desire for closeness in her life.

Sirens blared down the street.

Her father was dead.

Gone.

Finally.

Shannon sat down and put her arms around Annette. In return, Annette squeezed her so tightly that Shannon started to cry.

Real tears.

They weren’t for her father. Not really. She’d honestly wished him dead many times. She doubted she’d miss him but knew her life had just changed fundamentally. She cried harder.

Once Annette let the police, paramedics, and medical examiner into the house, the two women resumed hugging...and crying. They stayed there, together, arms wrapped around each other through the police questioning, and finally, the medics rolling the covered body through the kitchen.

“Wait,” Shannon said. “Can I see him?”

“Honey, you don’t want to do that. Trust me. I will never get that vision out of my head,” Annette said. “It’s better to remember him alive.”

“No,” Shannon said. “I need to see him.”

Shannon rose and stood by the gurney. The paramedic slowly and respectfully pulled back the white sheet. Her father’s face had paled. He didn’t look dead, but he didn’t look all that well either, especially with his blue lips. Shannon stared at him. Waiting. She didn’t know what for, but she couldn’t move or say anything.

The tears had stopped.

“Please,” Annette said. “Please, take him away. She’s just a child. She shouldn’t have to see this.”

The paramedics covered his face and took him away.

Shannon just stood there. Numb. Scared.

No. She was terrified.

As much as she’d dreamed of this day, she wasn’t sure why she was so afraid to begin her new life.

A life free of suffering.

Free of her father’s dark legacy.

She pressed her hand over her stomach.

And her child would be free, too.

Chapter One

Today marked the anniversary of the day Shannon Brendel had been given a second chance at life.

She tapped her toe to the country song playing through her speaker as she waited for the steaming bitter brew to stop dripping into her mug. Today always brought a combination of excitement, anxiety, and sheer joy. For most of her adult life, she’d done everything she could to shove the memories into a lockbox inside her mind.

But today, she embraced one small piece of her past.

So much negativity had come from her childhood. She tried hard to take all that baggage and stuff it under her bed. But the older she got, the harder it became. She needed to know that she’d done one good thing in her darkest hour.

She blew out a puff of air as butterflies filled her stomach. It was time to move forward and ask her neighbor for help.

She clutched the feather pendant dangling from her neck. Her stepmonster—no—stepmother and now best friend had given it to her shortly after her father had died, telling her it represented freedom.

Her freedom.

And what she did with the rest of her life was now her choice.

She kissed the pendant before snagging her coffee and heading outside to soak in a little morning sun as it kissed the crystal blue waters of Lake George. The second the spring air hit her body, she closed her eyes and took in a long breath, enjoying the cool breeze.

Her cottage was the last of five, each nearly identical in shape and size. A line of tall, lush trees with branches reaching across the long, curved driveway, hid the cabins from view of the main road.

The hum of a boat engine caught Shannon’s attention, and she snapped her gaze toward the lake. “Oh, no,” she whispered as her mug slipped from her fingers, crashing onto the wooden deck. Hot coffee singed her skin. She kicked her feet, but her stare remained on the tall mast with a line slinking down, rattling against the metal pole like a ghost gliding across the floor, rubbing its grubby fingers together, ready to capture and never let go.

“Shit. Are you okay?” Jackson Armstrong asked, seemingly appearing out of nowhere.

She swallowed the bile smacking the back of her throat as she stared at her neighbor as he bolted across the yard.

“Is that…that…?” She squeezed her eyes closed, then opened them slowly. No