Dust in the Wind: First-Kiss Romance, #3

By Adri Amanti

Susan drove to the Oregon coast to scatter her parents' ashes into the west wind and let them blow across America. It wasn't her fault that a middle school science teacher from Oklahoma got in the way and ended up covered in ash. Later, when she discovers her car has two flat tires, she lets the teacher take her to dinner, and she finds more than beautiful sunsets there on the beach.

• Language: English
• Publisher: MoonHowler Press
• Release date: Feb 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215757352

Adri Amanti

Adri Amanti is a foreign transplant now living in central Oklahoma with her husband and two cats. She loves history and spends too much time researching details that don't even make it into her stories. She can often be found at events where she is served wine and allowed to paint. She isn't good at painting, or playing the guitar, but she doesn't let that stop her.

Book preview

The idea of seeing the sea – of being near it – watching its changes by sunrise, sunset, moonlight, and noonday – in calm, perhaps in storm – fills and satisfies my mind.

— Charlotte Brontë

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real people, alive or dead, is purely coincidental.

No part of this work can be reproduced without the express written consent of the author and publisher.

MoonHowler Press, Oklahoma, USA

© 2023 Adri Amanti

Chapter One

The wind blew hard and cold off the gray water of the Pacific Ocean, with occasional gusts pushing through like a rude giant hurrying through a moving crowd. Between the gray of the water and the gray of the sky, seagulls wheeled and shrieked, sometimes diving into the sea. The smell of salt water and wet vegetation wafted over the sandy beach whenever the wind lessened for a moment. Waves whispered up the sand, coming to within a yard of Susan Thompson’s bare toes.

Susan sat still, her eyes fixed on the foamy white tops of the waves rushing toward the shore. Was the tide coming in? She didn’t know. She should have asked at the hotel, she guessed. She felt like the tide came in during the evening. She’d read that, or seen it in a movie, maybe. It was late afternoon, but probably not late enough for the tide to be a factor in what she was here for.

To her right, north of where she sat, the water boomed against tall, black rock cliffs. She marveled at the difference between that loud, aggressive surge of water compared to the sibilant wash of water over the brown sand where she sat. It was no wonder her parents had loved this place. No wonder they had chosen it for ...

Her eyes moved away from the retreating wave and lingered on the gold urn to her right. A silver plate attached to the curved metal jar read William J. Thompson, 1945-2021. Her knees were pulled up between the two urns. She skipped over her jeans and looked at the matching urn on her left. Barbara A. Thompson, 1946-2020.

I knew he wouldn’t last long without you, Mom, Susan whispered, the words ripped away by the wind and blown behind her, back toward her home in Wyoming.

Cancer had taken her mother two years ago. She had fought it for a while, and after losing her hair to chemotherapy, she seemed to be winning the battle, but then the disease came back with a vengeance, and she refused to fight any longer. She asked only that when the pain became too much she would be given something to dull it. Two months after that, she was gone, a small, bent, cold and wasted skeleton of the vital, loving, warm woman Susan had known all of her life. The woman who had helped her into her wedding dress, had tended to her during two miscarriages, and had comforted and kept her sane when Susan learned her husband was having an affair and had gotten his mistress pregnant. After the divorce, Susan and her mother had become closer than ever, often sitting together and knitting and watching medical and true crime shows during the evenings. It was during this time that her mother had opened up and told Susan stories about the early years of her courtship and marriage to Bill, Susan’s father.

He was a farm boy back in those days, Barbara said, her knitting needles dipping and twisting at a speed Susan thought she would never match. He was as strong as a bull, but as shy as a bunny. I never would have known he liked me at all if his sister, your Aunt Tabitha, hadn’t told me. I remember she invited me to go get a soda with her at the Knox; that was a little cafe that’s been gone for years and years. She’s two years older than your dad, remember. I had never talked to her. She was a senior and I was just a freshman in junior high. I didn’t know what to think when she came up to me as I was walking home and asked me to come to the Knox and have a soda with her, but I went. Barbara paused and focused on her knitting, her eyes drifting far back in time.

Aunt Tabby hooked you up? Susan prompted.

Barbara laughed. People did not ‘hook up’ back then, she said. She bought me a root beer float. Not just a soda. Those were ten cents back then. We sat at a table near the window and she told me her little brother liked me and she wanted to know if I liked him and if I would be good to him.

What? Susan asked, laughing with surprise. She knew her aunt was an outspoken lady who didn’t tolerate unimportant conversation, but this seemed out of character