| Tuesday, September 4, 2007 |
| CONTEST DAY2 |
Well, yesterday was a pretty good start and I'm all set for day two of my trivia question.
Remember, the rules are really easy:
Read the excerpt below and answer the question posted after it. See, that's as easy as it can be. Send the answers to my email cerihebert@comcast.net and all correct answers will be put into a drawing to win an autographed copy of Finally Home. I'll be posting an excerpt a day until Friday and the drawing will be on Saturday morning.
Today's excerpt is from Where One Road Leads, now available in ebook at Samhain Publishing.
“Got some other news for you.” Ed’s voice cut through his thoughts. His tone dropped and had taken on a serious note.
Matt eyed his father cautiously. Yeah, something was up. Usually Ed Burgess was a grinning, happy-go-lucky guy. Tonight he was quiet, as if caught up in some troubling thought.
“Go on,” Matt urged slowly, his hand tightening around the cold aluminum can.
“Krista Faye is back in town.”
There was a cold pit in his gut that only accompanied something particularly nasty. The last time he felt it was sixteen months ago when Rachel handed him back his engagement ring and told him that she couldn’t marry him because he was too much of a downer.
“Crap.” He wanted to choose a different, more colorful word, but his father wouldn’t approve, even if the situation called for it. He set the soda down on the table with enough force to slosh the dark liquid out of the opening and onto the tablecloth. “What is she back for?” He stared at the growing brown stain on the white material.
Ed shook his head. “Don’t know. Not my business. Maybe she’s packing things up at her ma’s place.”
Matt nodded and pushed an agitated hand through his short hair. “Hope that’s all. Although it’s kind of odd that she couldn’t even make it to her mother’s funeral. Seems she would’ve let Emily sort through all the final details.”
“You got to move on, Matt,” Ed said evenly.
Matt turned a glare at his father. Move on? Apparently his parents were more forgiving, maybe they were better people than he was. Yeah, they were. Always. But move on? No, he wasn’t moving on.
“Things are fine,” he grumbled, deciding on the outcome in his mind. “When she leaves things will go back to being fine.” If he kept believing that, he thought, nothing else could happen.
Ed downed the last of his soda and crumpled the can. “We’ll see. You do what you need to. Just wanted to give you a heads-up, just in case you bumped into her at the store or something.”
“Don’t worry, Dad. I won’t embarrass myself or say something rude.”
The older man got to his feet and patted his son heavily on the shoulder. “I know you won’t. I’ve got to get going or else your mom is going to be sending out a search party. See you Tuesday for dinner, okay?”
“Yeah,” Matt responded distractedly. “Tell Mom I’ll take a look at the dryer while I’m there.”
He didn’t even hear his father walk out and close the door. Instead he was stewing. He hated it when he thought about that night nearly fifteen years ago.
It was the first serious accident he had to deal with on the force. A defining moment, one that could make or break a cop.
It nearly broke him. No, it did break him, in a way more profound than anything else in his life before or after.
He’d been the first cop on the scene that chilly April night. It had been a two-car accident on Route 168 leading into Quail Ridge. Not the best of roads even in broad daylight, it was full of sharp curves and rises and dips. One side was a sharp incline, made up of granite ledges, dirt and shrubbery. On the other side, beyond what he thought was a pretty rickety guardrail, there was a ten-foot fall into a river, which in the spring had a pretty good flow to it.
One car’s front-end had been smashed up, windshield shattered and smeared with something dark. The vehicle had come to a stop against the incline, in the wrong lane.
The other car had gone through the guardrail on the river’s side.
He hadn’t recognized the Chevette at first. Or what was left of it. But when he did, he had to fight the nausea that gripped his gut like a rabid dog and the panic that turned his hands ice cold as he went down that steep embankment toward the battered remains. Even then he hadn’t known that his little brother had been involved. He could’ve suspected. Eddie and Krista had been attached at the hip.
But he could hope and pray.
A lot of good that had done him.
And it wouldn’t do him a bit of good to dwell on the fact that Krista Faye was back in town, for whatever reason. It didn’t have to affect him or his life at all.
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TRIVIA QUESTION:
What was the route number where the accident happened took place?
Good luck to everyone and please come back tomorrow for an excerpt from Finally Home. And please remember to email you're answers to cerihebert@comcast.net. Don't put them in the comment section. Feel free to comment about other things however. |
posted by Ceri Hebert @ 2:09 AM  |
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