Traditions Worth Keeping

By Kari Kilgore

Sometimes Everybody Needs Recovery

Lucy finds a warm Thanksgiving welcome, in her childhood home with her father's new family.
Sharing traditions strange and familiar. Creating something new, together.
But she worries about her brother Jacob facing changes while he repairs his own life.
Can Jacob help Lucy take the next step in her own recovery?

 

An excerpt from Traditions Worth Keeping:

Learning to Trust Again, Especially Herself

 

Lucy fought back a wave of guilt about not picking him up at the airport instead of listening to his calm insistence that he'd get himself there.

The next breaker rolling in on the rising guilt tide was how many huge liquor stores were between the airport and their father's house. All of them probably still open, and perfectly willing to take her little brother's money.

And his fragile new sobriety right along with it.

"Get a grip, Lucy," she said quietly. "He keeps telling you, Jana keeps telling you, your therapist keeps telling you, mom and dad keep telling you." She took a deep breath and told it to herself. "I'm not my brother's keeper."

She almost dropped the mustard at a deep voice from right behind her.

"Never thought I hear you say that out loud."

Jacob stood there, backpack in hand, grinning like the goofy, exasperating kid he'd been before so many things went wrong.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Spiral Publishing, Ltd
• Release date: Jul 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201783761

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

Traditions Worth Keeping

For everyone who understands

we all need recovery

Traditions Worth Keeping

Kari Kilgore

Spiral Publishing, Ltd.

Chapter 1

What should have been an unusual Thanksgiving seemed oddly traditional, almost normal, until Lucy spotted the strange thing in the refrigerator.

The formal dining room of the house she’d grown up in positively glowed with harvest feast cheer. The sturdy oak table that had almost always been round while she was a kid sported all three leaves, transforming it from a table for four into a long table for twelve.

A broad rusty-orange runner down the middle was new but welcome. With the heavy fabric embellished with acorns and autumn oak leaves and bundles of crimson cranberries, it made the old table feel brand new.

A line of stout golden candles marched down the middle of the runner with little wreaths of leaves around the bottoms. None of them were lit yet, but Lucy thought the candlelight would be lovely against the rippled glass in the big china cabinets.

Those cabinets—passed down through her father’s family for generations—mostly stood empty today. Twelve places were set with tan plates accented with a raised green vine all around the edges, another new touch Lucy quite enjoyed. The first kids’ table they’d needed for many years had a similar festive air adjusted for the under-eighteen crowd.

Turned out her mother had been