Edges: The Fog's End (Book One of the Edges Trilogy)

By Kacy O'Brien

“Now that they were here, it felt surreal, like she’d made her way through the fog only to find she was in a dream...”

Somewhere along California’s central coast, you’ll find a quaint little seaside town boasting fresh air, friendly locals, and plenty of country charm... just don’t overstay your welcome.
Unfortunately, seventeen-year-old Tabitha Colgan has no choice. With her father, Jack, struggling to find work, the letter informing them of her inheritance couldn’t have come at a better time.
Why would a man she’d never known, in a town she’d never heard of, leave everything to her?

It would all take a bit of getting used to — the creaky house, the local surf break, and the spotty wireless signal — but of greater concern are the malevolent forces at work in this seemingly innocent town. Cryptic warnings. Mysterious deaths. And wherever Tabitha goes, she is being watched, by the living... and the dead.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kacy O'Brien
• Release date: Jul 16, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476440927

Kacy O'Brien

I get to wake up every morning and look out over Los Angeles towards the mountains. I know I am lucky, and every day I am grateful for the life that I get to live.It wasn’t easy, and maybe that’s why I appreciate it so much. Two years ago, just nine months after my wedding, I was diagnosed with cancer. Eight months after that, (and fifteen pounds lighter) I emerged from a chemotherapy haze and counted up the books I had read on my e-reader during recovery. Ninety-seven.I am a television addict and live by my DVR. I think Sherlock Holmes on Masterpiece Classics is the best show no one is watching and I have not missed any episodes of Downton Abbey, Mad Men, True Blood or Mob Wives (like a hundred percent!).I am also completely obsessed with anything royal and challenge anyone reading this to tell me something I don’t already know about the Tudor family. I recently discovered that my gazillion times great-grandfather was the constable of the Tower of London during Henry VIII’s reign. But I am also not totally positive that I tracked the right predecessor on Ancestry.com.My family, to whom I owe all my strength and courage, live in fifteen different cities. You can imagine what my phone bill must look like. My handsome hubby Kirk and I were married on California’s Central Coast, where my first books, The Edges Series, are set. During our wedding ceremony he promised to always love and take care of me, our golden retriever, Sam, and our seventeen year old collie mix, Jessy.

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EDGES

THE FOG’S END

By

Kacy O’Brien

Copyright © 2012 Kacy O’Brien

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, scanning, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without permission in writing from the author.

This 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 events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Cover photo: Kirk DeMicco

Cover art: Robert Briggs

Smashwords Edition July 2012

Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Prologue

CHAPTERS

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9

10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18

19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24

About the Author

For Kirk

He knows the many reasons why

Acknowledgements

Robert Briggs: YOU ROCK

Drs. Ronald Leuchter and Behrooz Hakimian:

You have my eternal gratitude

PROLOGUE

Dear Mr. Colgan,

I’m sure this letter will be coming as a shock to you so I ask you to please read it through in its entirety before making any judgements or decisions. I have spent many hours trying to decide how to compose in words exactly what it is I mean to explain to you, and in the end I realized there is no correct way, to tell a man that his life — and the life of his family — will be forever changed.

My name is Walter James Brandywine. My daughter was Evelyn Rose Brandywine. She was called Eve. I say was because I am writing this letter two weeks after I learned of my daughter’s death. I also know you were with her when she died, and the circumstances surrounding it. And you would be correct to assume that I am fully aware of the existence of my granddaughter, Tabitha Evelyn Colgan.

I have enclosed the attached photograph to validate my claims. You will note the photo is only a copy. The original resides with me — in the top drawer of my office at my home. I must admit, I spend a lot of time staring at it, at her. You will also probably feel angry at the obvious intrusion of your private life. At the time this photo was taken, I was only a desperate father, searching for his lost daughter.

I have no way of knowing when this letter will reach your hands, as I have instructed my legal consultant, Donald Levitz, to send it to you upon notice of my death — which, as you may have deduced by now, means that I am already dead.

You may wonder why I never contacted you before my death. Please forgive me if I take my reasons to the grave. Maybe a lonely old man wouldn’t be able to bear the thought of rejection if Tabitha didn’t want me to be part of her life. Or you didn’t want to her to; after all, I am unaware of what, if anything, Eve shared with you about her life before she met you. Maybe I had nothing to offer Tabitha — until now.

You may or may not know that Eve grew up in a small town in the central coast of California called Brandton, and you will undoubtedly find it an odd stipulation of my estate that in order to receive her inheritance, Tabitha must live here, in this town, until she becomes of age. I have lived here my entire life, as did my father, and his before. Brandton is a very special town, one with a rich, but troubled, history, but it has been home to me, at the time of this writing, for forty-three years.

Brandton was built by Brandywines, and a Brandywine has always, always, been here. As Tabitha is the last of the bloodline, if she chooses to deny this part of her heritage, our family will disappear into the annals of the town’s history.

Mr. Levitz, or a member of his firm, should I survive him, will fill you in on the rest of the details of the estate. Tabitha is my sole heir, and you may ask why I trust you, a man I have never met, with the remainder of my family’s wealth? It is because my daughter trusted you to protect her child upon her own death, and Brandywines always protect their own.

Sincerely,

Walter James Brandywine

CHAPTER ONE

The pain had been getting worse lately, it had moved into his lungs and was with him every waking moment. He couldn’t sleep (the wheezing and coughing was worse at night) even though he would prop himself up on enough pillows that he was practically sitting upright. So he passed the dark hours watching the colors change in the sky and the tide move in and out, to the command of the moon.

At first he had thought something was in the food the caretaker had prepared for him, she was one of them after all, so he’d fired her and now relied solely on Lizzy’s weekly visits to provide him with packaged frozen foods. He knew he could trust Lizzy, she had been his daughter’s best friend, and ever since Eve had disappeared Lizzy had taken a special interest in his well being. Sometimes she even brought that son of hers to do some minor work around the house. The kid had installed some grab bars in the bathroom that Walter insisted made the house look like a retirement home but secretly he knew they helped immensely. Lizzy had a kind spirit and wasn’t like the others, but Walter knew that she felt sorry for him. Hell, he felt sorry for himself — it wasn’t his fault he was in this condition, he’d just been born into it. Being born and dying, that’s really all life was about, wasn’t it? Walter had read somewhere that a gravestone marks the dates of one’s birth and death, but it was the dash that connected the two, the space between that mattered.

For as long as he could remember, Walter had spent his ‘dash’ fearing death. He always knew it was unavoidable, but in his younger, more careless years, it still seemed like something that happened to other people, older people. Like cancer, it would never happen to you… until, one day, it does, and that’s when you realize that you are not so special, that you are just like everyone else in the world, that you are mortal.

But now that his own death was imminent, Walter couldn’t remember a day when he didn’t feel the heartache of a lost loved one, and more so, when he hadn’t feared for his own life. And so it comes down to this, he thought, slowly shuffling down the hall from his bedroom into his office.

He had always thought old age was the way to go, that the alternatives were tragic and horrible — perishing in a car accident or suffering a massive heart attack… but now these instantaneous deaths would be a welcome relief to Walter. He was pissed at the irony that he had been damn careful his entire life, even after he learned about his family’s special protection. But he was paying for that arrogance now, all right. The pain was becoming unmanageable, the medication Lizzy brought him had long ceased to offer any relief.

A few weeks ago when she had come out to visit, he finally summoned the courage to talk to her about it. He knew, of course, that she could help him, if he could just talk her into it. But she was a goody goody and her initial reaction had been such shock and horror that Walter realized he was going to have to tread very lightly if he wanted her help. He was expecting her soon and he had been silently working on his plea all morning. He would appeal to her sense of compassion, her love for him and his daughter, her humanity. She wasn’t going to want to watch him suffer.

He settled into his big leather chair and opened the locked drawer under the desk. A copy of the letter was in there, the original version was safe at his legal representative’s office. A part of him wished he could still be around when the whole town found out about the girl; it gave him such a smug satisfaction to picture the looks on their faces. All this time, they’d thought it was his fault - or his family’s rather - but when Tabitha comes home, they’d learn the truth. Walter stuck one hand in the drawer and fished around in the back, searching with his fingertips until he came across it.

It was a small photo, a three by five, and for all he knew, possibly the last one ever taken of her. It was slightly out of focus because it had been taken from quite a distance as he had instructed the private investigator to make sure his presence was not detected. Walter thought she had always looked more like him than Arabella, and in this picture her long blonde hair was laying in front of her left shoulder, having been brushed there by the hands of the man next to her. They were outside, at some sort of beachside carnival. He had one arm around her, and the other was pointing at something in the distance, and they were both laughing. Her dark eyes — his eyes — were hidden behind large sunglasses, but it was her shape that was so foreign to him, this girl he had raised. The last time he’d seen her she had been in a tee shirt and short shorts that so prominently displayed her trim athletic figure that he had told her to put on something to cover herself up a bit, and she’d laughed, telling him that was how all the girls dressed. In this photo, her belly was full and round, and she was standing erect, one arm on her back, the other protectively resting on her stomach. She seemed happy, and carefree, though she already knew when this photo was taken that her time was limited. Walter, himself, had been the one to have the talk with her only weeks before she left.

He flipped the photo over and looked at his own writing, scrawled so many years ago: Eve with Jack Colgan, 1997. This photo had been his secret a long, long time, and soon… very soon — if he could get Lizzy on board that is — they were all going to find out.

He heard the crunch of the gravel driveway and knew that Lizzy must be approaching. He hoped she was alone… as much as he did like that son of hers, it would be much easier if she were alone. This wasn’t a conversation that a child should have to hear. He had a little trouble standing up from his chair — needing to use the desk for leverage while the damn wheels kept rolling out from under him — but he managed. The exertion caused him to wheeze. Soon he was having a hard time gasping for air, and he tried to take shallow breaths between the hacking coughs.

The front door opened, Lizzy had her own key, and he heard her call to him from the entryway. Walter! Yoo—hoo! I’m here! Just gonna put some of these groceries away! His coughing had stopped but he couldn’t call out to her, couldn’t catch his breath… he took two steps towards the door…

I’ve been thinking, she was yelling from the kitchen, about what you said. I think you’re right.

She’d do it, thought Walter, he knew that she would, and he smiled between two short breaths. But she needed to know about Tabitha first, so that she was prepared when she arrived. He heard her footsteps start down the hall towards him as she kept talking. So, before I lose my nerve…

Walter took one last step towards the door. At the same time, Lizzy rounded the corner until they faced each other. Walter’s eyes went wide when he saw the look on Lizzy’s face as she realized what was happening… and his world went black.

CHAPTER TWO

It was something about the curve of the road, Tabby thought as she removed her legs off the top of dashboard. One minute, the sun shone brightly over the vast farmland and the next it became lost in the shade of pine trees that seemed to suddenly rise out of nowhere and now lined the highway. As she felt the temperature drop, she pushed her sunglasses up and reached behind her seat for her sweater. She pulled out an empty potato chip bag, and her father frowned at her from behind the wheel — he hated trash in the truck. She shrugged a shoulder at him and balled up the bag, putting it into the plastic bag Jack kept in the cab for this exact reason. After retrieving her cotton hoodie, she looked out the window at an old hand-painted sign on the side of the road:

Brandton

Where the Pines Meet the Sea.

Population 850.

Tabby couldn’t see the sea, but the pines were growing increasingly dense. Jack pulled onto an exit off the highway that dropped them below the main road, down into a shallow valley. The sun peeked out from over the hills and on the right, a middle-aged woman in a red sweatshirt sat in a lawn chair at the end of her dirt driveway and waved as they drove by. There were no other cars on the road so Tabby raised her arm and acknowledged the welcome.

The road continued on for about a mile, following the curve of the valley until it veered left at a nicely kept yellow cottage. A freshly painted white porch looked over the grass yard and purple and white flowers hung from chained pots near the front door. Behind the house was a barn — not a ramshackle wooden structure like the ones they had passed on the drive up the coast but more modern, with aluminum siding and a rusted tin roof. One wall was completely open to a large flat grassy area where Tabby imagined city people would host chic weddings in an attempt to capture the feel of that modern fascination with Urban Country.

A barking yellow Labrador chased their truck along the fence as they passed by, protecting his owner’s property. Tabby watched the dog as he reached the edge of the yard and stopped, beneath a sign hung on a weathered piece of driftwood that read: The Fog’s End. A short, redheaded woman came out the front door and whistled, and the dog wagged his tail and returned to his owner.

As the prophetic sign had warned, daylight drifted away again and soon the truck was engulfed in a thick fog. Jack turned on the truck’s low lights and she glanced at him wondering if he felt as on edge as she did. Jack was drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and gave a quick look to Tabby then returned his gaze to the road ahead.

Soon, they saw small houses lining the street that gave way to even smaller businesses. An antique store was the first sign of commerce, followed by a book store, then another antique store. They entered the main area of the town and saw more antique stores, a few restaurants, a bar, and a bank. A coffee house sat on the corner, surrounded on all sides by gift shops.

As they looked down the cross streets they could barely make out the town’s utilitarian buildings: a post office, the police station, a grocery store. Every building had a similar feel to it, like the town had all been built at the same time, and that time was quite a while ago. In the fog, the empty streets and quaint buildings felt eerie, like the set of one of the movies Jack worked on after the crew had gone home for the night, silently waiting for the action of the next day to begin again.

I thought you said it was on the ocean, Tabby said to Jack, the first words either of them had spoken since they had stopped for gas in Santa Barbara.

Jack didn’t answer, he was lost in thought, piecing together what he knew about Brandton, all of which had come from Tabby’s mother, Eve, so many years ago. He knew it was small, but that Eve’s family had been prominent here. He also knew that Eve had left this town for a reason, one that she had never shared with him, and therefore would forever remain a mystery. After Tabby was born, it hadn’t really ever entered his stream of consciousness again; Eve was gone and he was left to raise the child on his own.

Jack had never lived anywhere other than Venice Beach, and he hadn’t been much of a traveller either. He had lead a simple life up to that point, and fatherhood certainly was not planned. It was something that just happened to him, like when he was nineteen and had set out to apprentice with Laddie John Dill, one of Venice’s best known artists, but ended up building sets on the backlots of Hollywood’s lesser known studios. It wasn’t how he thought life was going to go, but he woke up each morning all the same.

And now here they were. It had come at a good time, The Letter. The economy had hit Hollywood hard and the film studios were making less movies, and even fewer were being shot in Southern California. Many were being sent overseas or farmed out to other states that offered ‘tax incentives’ to the studios. If it hadn’t been for his daughter, Jack probably would have followed many of his peers to places like New Orleans, Boston, or China even, where work would be easier to find. But having Tabby around changed things for Jack, and he knew that kids needed stability.

So they lived simply, in a rented two-bedroom cottage about a block to the ocean. Jack’s mother had helped out a lot when Tabby was younger, but as Tabby grew she became more and more self-sufficient, until she was the one keeping the house — and Jack — in order. But Tabby was still a kid and Venice Beach could be rough on a teenager. She’d had her share of scrapes. No more than Jack when he was growing up. (Probably a lot less than Jack.) So when The Letter came, it seemed to Jack that there was an opportunity to get Tabby off to a better start.

Jack had never imagined that Eve’s family had known about Tabby, thinking Eve had gone to her grave with her secret. So he was as surprised as he’d ever been when The Letter arrived and learned of Tabby’s inheritance.

Eve and Jack had met eighteen years ago, the exact day she’d arrived in Venice. She told Jack that she’d hitchhiked down from up the coast but didn’t give him specifics. He didn’t ask. She had told Jack she was nineteen but he now knew that she had really been eighteen. Jack was twenty. They were both sitting in the sunshine at separate tables in an outdoor cafe on the boardwalk — Jack drinking a beer (which he earned without being carded by giving the waitress a shy smile), Eve an iced tea. A couple of shy glances and before long, they were sharing a pitcher and a burger with a side of fries and watching the beach quiet down, settling into the rhythm of the evening. Jack said they should be calling it a night because the boardwalk could get dicey in the later hours and called for the check. The waitress had winked and said that the lady had picked up the bill, which surprised Jack because no one other than his mother had ever paid a check for him in his life.

Eve asked him if he knew of a hotel where she could stay. He told her there weren’t any around (a lie) but offered to sleep on the couch if she wanted to bunk at his place for the night. She