The Worry Trap

By Kari Kilgore

Sometimes transitions reveal more than than we imagine.

Marlene expects a bittersweet day, revisiting a house her mother no longer calls home.

Along with the joy of creating a haven for the next generation.

But her mother's reaction exposes more than the passage of time.

Find out what happens when family secrets and worries can't hide any more.

An excerpt from The Worry Trap:

Revisiting childhood, and so much more…

"Hang on, Mom," Marlene said, leaving her memories with her footprints and catching up. "That last step is tricky."

"I guess I know how to go into my own house, Marlene. Even if I don't live here anymore."

Marlene smiled, nodding even though her mother was already inside. This was a happy occasion, and she was going to act accordingly.

Even if her mom got fussy along the way.

"How's everything look in here for your granddaughter's arrival?"

Her mother stood in the middle of the wide porch, hands on her hips, turning from side to side. The sunlight caught her short, permed hair, glinting off the silver highlights.

Marlene hoped her own chestnut hair would be exactly the same color when she finally stopped getting it touched up.

Someday.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Spiral Publishing, Ltd
• Release date: Feb 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393313021

Kari Kilgore

Kari Kilgore started her first published novel Until Death in Transylvania, Romania, and finished it in Room 217 at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, where Stephen King got the idea for The Shining. That’s just one example of how real world inspiration drives her fiction. Kari’s first published novel Until Death was included on the Preliminary Ballot for the Bram Stoker Award for Outstanding Achievement in a First Novel in 2016. It was also a finalist for the Golden Stake Award at the Vampire Arts Festival in 2018. Recent professional short story sales include three to Fiction River anthology magazine, with the first due out in the September issue. Kari also has two stories in a holiday-themed anthology project with Kristine Kathryn Rusch due out over the holidays in 2019. Kari writes fantasy, science fiction, horror, and contemporary fiction, and she’s happiest when she surprises herself. She lives at the end of a long dirt road in the middle of the woods with her husband Jason Adams, various house critters, and wildlife they’re better off not knowing more about. Kari’s novels, novellas, and short stories are available at www.spiralpublishing.net, which also publishes books by Frank Kilgore and Jason Adams. For more information about Kari, upcoming publications, her travels and adventures, and random cool things that catch her attention, visit www.karikilgore.com.

Book preview

The Worry Trap

For everyone caught between two generations.

The Worry Trap

Kari Kilgore

Spiral Publishing, Ltd.

Chapter 1

The old home place had hardly changed in Marlene’s lifetime. Her childhood home could be a vintage Polaroid photo of itself, a tiny bit faded around the edges, maybe a couple of scratches or tears, but unmistakable.

A solid one-story cinderblock foundation painted to match cheerful dandelion-yellow wooden siding above. A broad porch screened in for summer sleeping. A high peaked tin roof that shed heavy snowfalls and sounded divine during rainstorms.

A few of the merry gargoyles and critters her father had delighted in carving into the wood or setting into the foundation peeked out at her, tickled she was finally home for a visit.

Countless others waited throughout the outside and inside, biding their time for greeting and recognition.

The grass in the tiny front yard was a bit shaggier than her parents kept it, the steep gravel driveway up the mountain more rutted with runoff than her father would have ever allowed. The same sheltering oak and maple trees showed off in their summer finery, though, and the chorus of afternoon birds sang and chirped in the woods and shallow frog pond beside the house.

The riotous flower beds Marlene and her sister Mary helped her mother tend still surrounded the yard and ran alongside the driveway. Aside from needing a few dead blossoms pruned away, the roses, daisies, and peonies were in gorgeous form.

Marlene hoped the birds had spared a few of the apples planted further up the lush hillside.

She popped