The Trinket

By P.M. Prior

Melba Wannock Sterling, reluctant mother and grateful widow, enjoys her twilight years in sunny Florida, far away from the cold winters of her youth, middle age and wasted life.  Now stuck in a traffic jam with no escape in sight, Melba ruminates. If only she'd never gotten married, never had children...but back then, that was expected for all nice girls of good breeding.   So many regrets... Too late to do anything about them now. But a chance find on the side of the freeway turns her life upside down. A bewitching pendant overwhelms and beguiles her, leading Melba to take risks and behave scandalously, in ways she never would have dreamed before. How has this tiny bauble taken her over so completely? What is the secret of The Trinket?

This is a novella of approximately 19,663 words. It contains mature subject matter and language, including drug use, violence and sexual situations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: P.M. Prior
• Release date: May 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201370701

Book preview

COPYRIGHT

Homunculus

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

The Trinket. Copyright © 2021 by P. M. Prior.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Published by Homunculus

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Editors: Homunculus Editing Services

Cover Design: Damonza

All things truly wicked start from innocence

—Ernest Hemingway

The soul that has conceived one wickedness can nurse no good thereafter

—Sophocles

No one becomes depraved all at once.

—Unknown

CHAPTER ONE

Melba Wannock Sterling drove her gray BMW down the freeway, going the posted sixty mile an hour speed limit. No more, no less. She hated driving. Cars were so much faster nowadays and the drivers less courteous. At least the golden oldies station made it bearable.

The morning rush hour traffic was mostly gone. Good thing too. Clear roads made driving so much easier. That is, when there was no construction. I-95 was always a mess. Although there were still two lanes going each way, the southbound cars had to cross over the median onto what was usually reserved only for northbound traffic. Both now ran on the same narrow pavement, with only a temporary barricade between them to prevent head-on collision.

Crouched behind the steering wheel, Melba felt like she was careening in a bobsled. Or was the one-person thing called a luge? She could never keep the names straight. It didn't really matter. Moving to Florida, meant she was done with ice and cold.

Just like she was almost done clearing up Bill’s estate. When her husband died, she had no idea he had so many overseas accounts: A British ISA, an Australian pension, a South African investment policy and so on. Everything she could handle electronically she did, but some antiquated entities, like Inland Revenue, insisted on sending a paper check in their currency. Those had to physically be taken to the bank--a twenty mile drive each way.

Melba rolled her eyes. Why hadn't Bill sorted them out before? He was so childish that way, always going off to play golf and leaving her behind to clean up after him.

At least this was the last time…ever.

Still, their beach-front retirement bungalow felt empty now. The housekeeper and lawn service, weren’t real company. Maybe she'd get a cat. After all, Bill was the one who'd been allergic, not her.

She'd read up on it...

The opening notes of The Beach Boys' Sloop John 'B' flowed from the radio. She turned it up, already humming along with the music.

As her hand left the knob, glaring lights flashed in her rear-view mirror. A large white SUV sped up close to her bumper. The brights blinked on and off rapidly as its driver gestured wildly at her.

Melba's her heart raced. What was she supposed to do? She was already in the slow lane. Panicked, she let her foot off the gas and clutched the wheel.

The man laid on his horn several times before pulling around on the berm and speeding past her. The SUV disappeared ahead, weaving in and out of traffic as it went. He had to be going at least ninety miles an hour.

This isn’t the Indy 500, you know! she shouted, as if he could hear her. Jackass!

She dampened down the impulse to give chase and get his license plate number. That would be dangerous and irresponsible. Melba took a deep breath to calm down.

Moron, she muttered. Your kind gets always people killed but never pays the price. Just once, I’d like to see someone like you get what’s coming to him.

Relaxing her grip, Melba concentrated on the music and willed herself to think of something, anything else.

Bill's dashboard photograph of their oldest daughter, Jules and her kids caught her eye. Their plump faces grinned back at her like slimy, week-old jack-o-lanterns.

Ugh.

It wasn't an improvement.

Jules was such a screw up, bouncing from one menial job to the next since dropping out of high school thirty years ago. Bill and Melba would have paid for her to go to college and given her a place to live rent-free. All she had to do was get the grades.

What I wouldn't have given for the same deal.

But no, Jules had to get pregnant by one loser after another. All her children had a different father, and none of them paid child support. Welfare queen is all she was. Of course, Jules's irresponsible finances, like spending five hundred dollars on Bon Jovi tickets instead of paying her rent, didn't help. Melba and Bill always had to subsidize her, just to keep the kids from being homeless.

Now that the three boys were grown, Jules only had Katie left at home. She'd be sixteen this year, but hardly sweet. Jules put Katie on the pill when she turned thirteen, then practically invited her boyfriends to spend the night. Which, of course, they did.

At least Katie wouldn't be a teen mother. There was some small comfort in that.

How the world had changed since Melba was her age. Back then, Katie would have been ruined, an outcast. Now, boyfriend sleepovers were accepted, normal even.

Melba shook her head. She'd remained a virgin until her wedding night and there had never been anyone but Bill . Yet, Katie had already been with at least three different boys—probably more.

How could anyone have sex with so many people, virtual strangers? It was disgusting.

Yet, despite herself, a sliver of jealousy crept into Melba's heart. How different would her life