A Saffron Sun

A SAFFRON SUN Copyright © 2023 by Vera Jane Cook Published by Indies United Publishing House, LLC First Printing: February 2023 Edited by Jayne Sullivan All rights reserved worldwide. No part of this publication may be replicated, redistributed, or given away in any form without the prior written consent of the author/publisher or the terms relayed to you herein. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Cover Art by Ebook Launch Printed in the United States of America ISBN: 978-1-64456-582-7 [Hardback] ISBN: 978-1-64456-583-4 [Paperback] ISBN: 978-1-64456-584-1 [Mobi] ISBN: 978-1-64456-585-8 [ePub] ISBN: 978-1-64456-586-5 [AudioBook] Library of Congress Control Number: 2023931206 INDIESUNITED.NET “In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.” ―Robert Frost Table of Contents Title Page Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Chapter Twenty-Three Chapter Twenty-Four Chapter Twenty-Five Chapter Twenty-Six Chapter Twenty-Seven Chapter Twenty-Eight Chapter Twenty-Nine Chapter Thirty Chapter Thirty-One Chapter Thirty-Two Chapter Thirty-Three Chapter Thirty-Four Chapter Thirty-Five Chapter Thirty-Six Chapter Thirty-Seven Chapter Thirty-Eight Chapter Thirty-Nine Chapter Forty Chapter Forty-One Chapter Forty-Two Chapter Forty-Three Chapter Forty-Four Chapter Forty-Five Chapter Forty-Six Chapter Forty-Seven Chapter Forty-Eight Chapter Forty-Nine Also By Vera Jane Cook Chapter One 1993 Like hot ash, the foreboding blood moon smoldered in the sky, making the night surreal, threatening. Dickie had the urge to stop and get out of his car, walk right up, and touch the moon, feel the fire, welcome the burn as he tried to embrace it, tried to understand it. There was a curse beneath its smile and whispers he couldn’t hear, a witch’s prophecy perhaps, an ambivalently beguiling spell put upon him that would blaze and fester in his memory like a wound. His hand shaking on the wheel, he clenched it hard, held it steady. What had his mother said to him? That Lottie was dead? That she’d died in the fire that his wife had set? No, couldn’t be so. It was preposterous, ridiculous, absurd. He wiped the tears from his eyes, eyes so sodden he could barely see two feet ahead of him. Mostly he saw the glare, just the white miasmic glare of his headlights. He drove through quickly. He listened to his tires glide over the stones. The crunching sound was a welcome deterrent to the stillness of the blood moon night. He finally saw his mother’s driveway, appearing out of the macabre darkness, leaving the moon behind him, the bleeding moon, evincing the surreal, unnatural, and untimely death of the woman he loved. His eyes still filled with tears, he made his way to his mother’s door, praying she’d been fooling with him, praying this was all some cruel joke to get him to do what he didn’t want to do. His mother’s most contemptible desire was to break them up, he and Lottie. She thought a divorce would ruin him, the scandal of it. One can’t be the brunt of scandal in a small town. Of course, what luck. The perfect solution appeared out of nowhere — death. Fate had intervened with glorious and deadly consequences. Fate would keep him in his loveless marriage. Why the hell would it matter to his mother, he wondered. Divorce was natural when the love was gone. Why the hell should she care if he took up with Lottie, his son Barnaby was a grown man, his daughter was practically out of the door, why the hell would she care? “Hello, Mother,” he said as he walked into the parlor where she stood in the center of the room, beside an old trunk. She gave every appearance of waiting for her ride to the train station, whereupon she would board the train and the trunk would accompany her, carried by a kindly old porter. For just a second, his fantasy soothed him. “Son,” she said and held out her arms. He went into them because he knew he had to. “Let’s make this quick.” “Where is she?” he asked and followed her eyes to the trunk. Dickie dropped to his knees. “No,” he screamed. He put his hands to his head and cried deeply. “Please don’t tell me she’s in there, Mother. Please.” He looked up at her with beseeching eyes. “I’m sorry, Dickie.” Dickie put his arms around the trunk and cried more bitterly. His mother’s hand squeezed his shoulder. “But she was tall, this trunk couldn’t hold her,” he said. “It held her,” Lillian replied stoically. “Can you open it?” he asked. “It’s best if we don’t do that,” she said. “I want to see her one last time. Please.” “No! You don’t want to see her, not like that, Dickie. You can’t see her like that. Remember her the way she was. For God’s sake, she was burned to death. It’s not a pretty sight.” “Oh, God.” Dickie wept some more before he was able to get to his feet. “Oh, God,” he repeated. “Go get your car and bring it round to the front door and open the back.” He looked up at her. “Maybe we should go to the police.” Lillian bent down and spoke in a whisper. “Only a matter of time before the whole town finds out about you and Lottie. Only a matter of time before they learn that Deborah finally discovered your indiscretion. Everyone knew they were the best