Amber Morn (35 page)

Color the Sidewalk for Me

Brandilyn Collins

As a chalk-fingered child, I had worn my craving for Mama’s love on my sleeve. But as I grew, that craving became cloaked in excuses and denial until slowly it sank beneath my skin to lie unheeded but vital, like the sinews of my framework. By the time I was a teenager, I thought the gap between Mama and me could not be wider.

And then Danny came along.…

A splendidly colored sidewalk. Six-year-old Celia presented the gift to her mother with pride — and received only anger in return. Why couldn’t Mama love her? Years later, when once-in-a-lifetime love found Celia, her mother opposed it. The crushing losses that followed drove Celia, guilt-ridden and grieving, from her Bradleyville home.

Now thirty-five, she must return to nurse her father after a stroke. But the deepest need for healing lies in the rift between mother and daughter. God can perform such a miracle. But first Celia and Mama must let go of the past — before it destroys them both.

Softcover: 0-310-24242-8

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Capture the Wind for Me

Brandilyn Collins

One thing I have learned. The bonfires of change start with the merest spark. Sometimes we see that flicker. Sometimes we blink in surprise at the flame only after it has marched hot legs upward to fully ignite. Either way, flicker or flame, we’d better do some serious praying. When God’s on the move in our lives, He tends to burn up things we’d just as soon keep.

After her mama’s death, sixteen-year-old Jackie Delham is left to run the household for her daddy and two younger siblings. When Katherine King breezes into town and tries to steal her daddy’s heart, Jackie knows she must put a stop to it. Katherine can’t be trusted. Besides, one romance in the family is enough, and Jackie is about to fall headlong into her own.

As love whirls through both generations, the Delhams are buffeted by hope, elation, and loss. Jackie is devastated to learn of old secrets in her parents’ relationship. Will those past mistakes cost Jackie her own love? And how will her family ever survive if Katherine jilts her daddy and leaves them in mourning once more?

Softcover: 0-310-24243-6

Pick up a copy today at your favorite bookstore!

Be sure to read Brandilyn Collins’ next exciting novel,
Vain Empires
— here’s a sample

ONE

“Ever hear the dead knocking?”

Leland Hugh watches the forensic psychiatrist ease back, no reaction on the man’s lined, learned face. His body lists to one side, left elbow supporting the fist under his sagging jowl. Legs spread apart, right fingers across his thigh. The picture of unshakable confidence.

“No, can’t say I have.”

Hugh nods once and gazes at the floor. “I do. At night, always at night.”

“Why do they knock?”

His eyes raise to look straight into the doctor’s. “They want my soul.”

No response but for a mere inclining of the head. The intentional silence pulses, waiting for an explanation. Psychiatrists are good at that.

“I took theirs, you see. Put them in their graves early.” Deep inside Hugh, the anger and fear begin to swirl. He swallows, voice tightening. “They’re supposed to
stay
in the grave. Who’d ever think the dead would demand their revenge?”

From outside the door, at the windows, in the closet, in the walls — they used to knock. Now, in his jail cell the noises come from beneath the floor. Harassing, insistent, hate-filled and bitter sounds that pound his ears and drill his brain until sleep will not,
can not
come.

“Do you ever answer?”

Shock twists Hugh’s lips. “
Answer
?”

The psychiatrist’s face remains placid. The slight, knowing curve to his mouth makes Hugh want to slug him.

“You think they’re not real, don’t you? That in my room if I’d just padded over and opened the door, no one would have been there. I’d have seen it’s all in my imagination.” He wags his head, steepling his fingers together with mocking erudition. “Yes, esteemed colleagues.” He affects a serious, highbrow voice. “I have determined the subject suffers from EGS — Extreme Guilt Syndrome, the roots of which run so deep as never to be extirpated, with symptoms aggrandizing into myriad areas of the subject’s life and resulting in perceived paranormal phenomena.”

He drops both hands in his lap, lowering his chin to look derisively at the good doctor. The man remains unfazed.

Hugh sniffs. “Do you know, Doc, that psychosomatic pain hurts just as much as pain caused by actual physical trauma?”

“Yes, I believe that’s true.”

“Then what difference does it make?” Hugh surges forward, palms planted on his knees. His tone falls to one of cold steel. He is sick of the psychiatrist’s face, sick of these sessions in this nasty, dirty little room. “If mere guilt makes the dead knock, I hear them just as clearly. I am still reduced to a trembling idiot who can do nothing but pull the bed covers over my head.” Indignation pushes Hugh to his feet. “And they taunt me too. Whispering of the symbolic clues I left behind, insisting the explicit actions to which I was driven became my downfall.” He throws his hands toward the ceiling. “I
hate
them, every one. I wish I could
kill
them all over again!”

The gray-haired doctor inhales slowly. “Yet you do feel guilt for their murders.”

“No, I don’t! Why should I? They
deserved
it.”

He slumps back into his chair.

He slumps back into his chair.
He paces the room.

He slumps back into his chair. He paces the room.

The psychiatrist.

Hugh’s hands fist,

He cannot

He can only

He

“Aaghh!” Novelist Darell Brooke smacked his keyboard and shoved away from the desk. All concentration drained from his mind like water from a leaky pan.

His characters froze.

Darell lowered his head, raking gnarled fingers into the front of his scalp. For a time there he’d almost had it — that ancient joy of thoughts flowing and fingers typing. In the last hour he’d managed to write three or four paragraphs. Now — nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

King of Suspense
. He laughed, a low bitter sound that singed his throat. Ninety-nine novels written in forty-three years. Well over a hundred million copies sold. Twenty-one major motion pictures made from his books. Countless magazine articles about his career, fan letters, invitations to celebrity parties. Now look at him. Two years after the auto accident and still only half mobile. And wielding a mere fraction of the brain power he used to have.

What good is an author who can’t hold a plot in his head?

Darell stared at the monitor, reading over his words, struggling once more to settle into the story. Pictured the psychiatrist, his killer…

No use.

Face it
,
old man. You’ll never write that hundredth book. You’ve been put out to pasture for good.

He wrenched his eyes from the screen, reached for his shiny black cane. With effort, he pushed himself out of his leather chair to unsteady feet. The broken bones in his leg and ankle had long since healed, but the ligament damage had not. Despite painful physical therapy his left foot never regained its full flexibility. Amazing — the constant flexing of a foot to maintain equilibrium. He hadn’t realized the importance of those muscles and tendons until his were torn apart.

Daryl shuffled across the hardwood floor of his large office, repelled by his writing desk and computer. Every day they wooed, then betrayed him. At the tall, mullioned window near the far corner he stopped, spread his feet wide. Hunched over, both hands on his cane, he brooded over the green rolling hills of his estate, the untamed and capricious Pacific Ocean in the distance.

He used to go to the beach to write a couple times a week. Tapping his laptop keys as the surf pounded in rhythm to his pulse. Now he never left the house except for doctor’s appointments.

Darell Brooke had no use for a world that no longer had use for him.

The sides of Darell’s mouth moved in and out, puckering and unpuckering his lips. Characters’ faces in shadow, snippets of scenes filtered through his mind. Fredda Lee. Now there was a delectable killer. Or Leland Stone with his black hair and eyebrows, an intimidating figure much as Darell had appeared in his younger days.
Black Tie Affair
, that was Leland’s book.

No. Not right.

Midnight Madness
?

Darell shook his head. He used to know. Before the accident, he remembered every story he’d written, every character.

“You knocked your skull pretty badly,” the doctor told Darell as he watched the hospital room spiral from his bed. “The dizziness will pass, but you might find it hard to concentrate…”

As if drifting outside his body, Darell pictured himself standing in front of his office window, a shell of his former indomitable self. The undisputed King of Suspense had reveled in playing the part. Now there was no part to play. That once stern, arrogant countenance — blank-faced. His black hair now an unruly shock of white. The wild gray brows jutting over his deep set, dark eyes no longer intimidating, merely straw-like. The muscular arms — even into his early seventies — sagging. Straight back now bent.