Passage to Queen Mesentia Read Free Page B

police had said; her parents had been shot, execution style. She hadn’t even picked up a newspaper in the last couple of weeks in fear it would stir the memory. She desperately didn’t want to remember what they had looked like when she’d found them.
    Forcing herself not to run out of the house screaming, she headed straight for the dresser and started going through it. She didn’t allow herself to see the contents of the drawers; instead, she searched mindlessly. She went through all four drawers and then moved over to the nightstand. She didn’t notice anything that didn’t belong, so she moved on to the walk-in closet. She looked in the pockets of her dad’s suit jackets, around notebooks, shoes, and inside boxes on the shelves. 
    When she had about given up, she kicked a neatly folded quilt on the closet floor and felt something hard underneath it. She moved the blanket, and there sat the wooden buffalo mask she remembered from childhood. It had a long decorative nose and two outer ringlets that circled huge, dark dot eyes. Although the paint had faded, its original colors were still vivid in her mind. She had seen one exactly like it in action on her first trip with her parents to Africa where they had been digging near a small village in Burkina Faso. Dancers wore similar masks along with fluffy fur costumes depicting different animals. One at a time, they became the center of attention as drummers beat out the music. It had been captivating and memorable, especially since the mask hung in the dining room and put the images of that day in her head whenever she ate.
    She picked it up. “Now how did you get way up here?”

Chapter 3
     
    Wade watched from the road and then pulled into the Steward’s driveway after Lilly had gone inside the house. He parked behind her car and cut the motor to his truck. “What the hell does she think she’s doing?” He couldn’t believe she would go to her parents’ house—where they had been murdered— in the middle of the night.
    He unbuckled his seatbelt and squeezed his hand into his jeans pocket, pulling out and opening his knife. He grabbed an apple from the bag of apples on the seat beside him and sliced a bite, grabbing it with his mouth and chewed his new cigarette.
    She was crazy, was the only way he could describe it to his brother, Colt, after he’d asked why Wade needed to crash on his couch for a couple of days. Sure he might have said a couple of things to set her off, but she was freaking out and wouldn’t even let him touch her. He was mad at first; what the hell?  He thought maybe she would want to lean on him a little bit. He had begun to wonder if her coldness was caused by something other than grief.
    It had hit him that morning while examining the diamond engagement ring that had become like his keys, wallet, or loose change since he moved out of their apartment; something he emptied out of his pockets at night and put back in the morning.
    He snapped the little box shut after Colt walked into the living room and asked if he was going to work. Born with wrenches in their hands and grease in their diapers, they both worked at Kit’s Auto Shop. Their dad would have been proud. Wade had always thought he would be running his father’s shop after high school where he received both a diploma and an automotive certification. But his father had died before he had graduated, leaving a pile of bills instead of a thriving business, and Wade hadn’t been ready for the responsibility of bringing it back from the dead.
     “I don’t know,” Wade had said. “I was thinking about trying to catch Lilly before she goes to work today.”
    “Don’t make a scene in front of her classroom.”
    “I wouldn’t do that. I just need to talk to her and find out what’s really going on.”
    “Wade, when she’s ready.” Colt sat on the arm of the couch—Wade’s makeshift bed. “Give her some time. I really think you should go on to work and try and get