Thirty Minutes Past Sundown

By E. F. Brown

Following her divorce from Kenny, Eve decides it’s time to figure out what’s next for her life. After a three-hour drive to Charleston, South Carolina, she finds herself quietly sitting on a park bench overlooking the harbor. Suddenly, Eve hears a scream from the owner of a small dog that has just jumped from its owner’s arms. Having spent her entire life guarding her speech patterns, Eve wastes no time in commanding the dog to stop and to return to its owner.
Eve rarely uses her “gift,” but as a livromancer, she can command any being with a heartbeat. And even if the dog’s owner is clueless as to Eve’s part in the dog’s quick obedience; with satisfaction, Eve knows that she has just saved the small animal from an untimely death on the crowded road.
Until now, only her mother knows what Eve can do with her private gift. But unknown to Eve, her command of the dog was witnessed. Surprised, Eve finds out that her private gift is not so private anymore. Confronted by her new friend, Thomas, Eve also learns that she’s not the only supernatural being in Charleston. The folklore is real; there really are Werewolves and Vampires. And now they know that she and her gift are real too! Is this a good thing or not? What happens when greed, vengeance, and the thirst for power try to take over her life?
Eve is forced to learn who she can trust. Her mother is a given, and possibly Kenny. But what about the Werewolves and Vampires who are fierce rivals? Will she be able to trust them?
In the end, will Eve find her happily ever after? Doesn’t everybody deserve one?

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: May 9, 2023
• ISBN: 9798823007788

E. F. Brown

E. F. Brown works in technology by day and writes by night. She and her husband of twenty-nine years have two grown daughters and live in Weddington, North Carolina. Kindred Spirits is her second book and the sequel to My Name on Your Lips.

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2023 E. F. Brown. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Published by AuthorHouse 05/09/2023

ISBN: 979-8-8230-0777-1 (sc)

ISBN: 979-8-8230-0779-5 (hc)

ISBN: 979-8-8230-0778-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023908460

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Notes from Wikipedia

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Epilogue

Dedication

To my parents, Gerald and Wilma, who guided me, but never got in my way. Thank you for teaching me about the love of God, the gift of children, and the value of hard work.

Acknowledgements

- Grace leads to Faith; Faith leads to Peace, Joy, Love, and Hope.

- I completed my first draft of Thirty Minutes Past Sundown in 2019, before the outbreak of COVID-19 in the United States. There are no references to COVID in this story. In addition, several establishments have changed names. I love visiting Charleston, and I’m sticking with my 2019 version of events. I hope you enjoy!

Notes from Wikipedia

Twilight Saga Movie - a 2008 American romantic fantasy film based on Stephenie Meyer’s 2005 novel of the same name. Directed by Catherine Hardwicke, the film stars Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson. It is the first film in The Twilight Saga film series. This film focuses on the development of the relationship between Bella Swan (a teenage girl) and Edward Cullen (a vampire), and the subsequent efforts of Edward and his family to keep Bella safe from a coven of evil vampires.

Fort Sumter - a sea fort built on an artificial island protecting Charleston, South Carolina, from naval invasion. Its origin dates to the War of 1812 when the British invaded Washington by sea. It was still incomplete in 1861 when the Battle of Fort Sumter began the American Civil War. It was severely damaged during the war, left in ruins, and although there was some rebuilding, the fort as conceived was never completed.

Gone With the Wind - a 1939 American epic historical romance film adapted from the 1936 novel by Margaret Mitchell. The film was produced by David O. Selznick of Selznick International Pictures and directed by Victor Fleming. Set in the American South against the backdrop of the American Civil War and the Reconstruction era, the film tells the story of Scarlett O’Hara (portrayed by Vivien Leigh), the strong-willed daughter of a Georgia plantation owner, following her romantic pursuit of Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard), who is married to his cousin, Melanie Hamilton (Olivia de Havilland), and her subsequent marriage to Rhett Butler (Clark Gable).

Scooby Doo - an American animated franchise comprising many animated television series produced from 1969 to the present, as well as their derivative media. Writers Joe Ruby and Ken Spears created the original series, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, for Hanna-Barbera Productions in 1969. This Saturday-morning cartoon series featured teenagers Fred Jones, Daphne Blake, Velma Dinkley, and Shaggy Rogers, and their talking Great Dane named Scooby-Doo, who solve mysteries involving supposedly supernatural creatures through a series of antics and missteps.

The Walt Disney World Resort, also called Walt Disney World or Disney World, is an entertainment resort complex in Bay Lake and Lake Buena Vista, Florida, United States, near the cities of Orlando and Kissimmee. Opened on October 1, 1971, the resort is owned and operated by Disney Parks, Experiences and Products, a division of The Walt Disney Company.

Epcot (stylized as EPCOT) is a theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort in Bay Lake, Florida. It is owned and operated by The Walt Disney Company through its Parks, Experiences and Products division. Inspired by an unrealized concept developed by Walt Disney, the park opened on October 1, 1982,[2] as EPCOT Center, and was the second of four theme parks built at Walt Disney World, after Magic Kingdom Park. Spanning 305[3] acres (1.23 km²), more than twice the size of Magic Kingdom Park,[4] Epcot is dedicated to the celebration of human achievement, namely technological innovation and international culture, and is often referred to as a permanent world’s fair.[⁵][6]

Rain Man is a 1988 American road drama film directed by Barry Levinson, from a screenplay written by Barry Morrow and Ronald Bass. It tells the story of abrasive, selfish young wheeler-dealer Charlie Babbitt (Tom Cruise), who discovers that his estranged father has died and bequeathed virtually all of his multimillion dollar estate to his other son, Raymond (Dustin Hoffman), an autistic savant, of whose existence Charlie was unaware. Charlie is left with only his father’s beloved vintage car and rosebushes.

The Battle of Anderson was a minor skirmish during the American Civil War, fought in Anderson County, South Carolina, on May 1, 1865.[1][2]The battle was one of the final conflicts of the war, taking place three weeks after Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House.[

The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, LLC (NASCAR) is an American auto racing sanctioning and operating company that is best known for stock car racing.

Dracula is a novel by Bram Stoker, published in 1897. As an epistolary novel, the narrative is related through letters, diary entries, and newspaper articles. It has no single protagonist, but opens with solicitor Jonathan Harker taking a business trip to stay at the castle of a Transylvanian noble, Count Dracula. Harker escapes the castle after discovering that Dracula is a vampire, and the Count moves to England and plagues the seaside town of Whitby. A small group, led by Abraham Van Helsing, hunt Dracula and, in the end, kill him.

Notes from Other Websites:

revolutionarywar.us/year-1779/battle-battle-charleston-first/

Facts about the Battle of Charleston (First)

The Battle of Charleston (First). May 11-12, 1779 at Charleston, South Carolina.

Armies - American Forces was commanded by Brig. Gen. Count Casimir Pulaski and consisted of about 80+ Soldiers. British Forces was commanded by Gen. Augustin Prevost and consisted of about 900 Soldiers. Casualties - American casualties were estimated to be 13+ killed. British casualties were unknown. Outcome - The result of the battle was an American victory. The battle was part of the Southern Theater 1775-82.

Claddagh Ring Meaning | Kay

These elements symbolize the qualities of love (the heart), friendship (the hands) and loyalty (the crown).Wearing a Claddagh ring has become a timeless and meaningful way to express one’s relationship status. There are four ways to wear the Claddagh:

1. On the right hand with the point of the heart facing away from the hand means that the wearer’s heart is open to love (they are not in a relationship).

2. On the right hand with the point of the heart facing in toward the wearer signifies that the wearer’s heart is taken (they are in a relationship).

3. On the left hand with the point of the heart facing away from the hand signifies that the wearer is engaged or in a lifelong partnership.

4. On the left hand with the point of the heart facing in toward the wearer means the wearer is married!

Prologue

Everyone should have their own happily ever after, whatever their version of that is. I’m just not sure what happily ever after means for me. From my earliest memories, I have had the chance to get everything that I have ever wanted. You see, I call myself a livromancer. I know, I know, there’s no such word. I made it up when I was in high school. If you type livromancer into any document, the word will come up underlined as misspelled. If you Google the word, it will pull back liver cancer, so again, I’m making the word up, just to give my gift a name. But just as a necromancer can control the dead, I can control the living. See? Livromancer.

To give you a definition, I can mentally calculate the age of, and verbally command anything with a heartbeat. If you want your dog to sit, just let me know. I can get Fido to sit with just one word. If you want your husband to sit, same deal. I don’t know how my gift works, and I’m especially not sure how animals understand me. I think it has something to do with the inflection of the tone in my voice. But no matter the reason, I like the fact that bees don’t buzz me more than once.

And as for calculating a being’s age, I have called foul on many people who have lied to me about their real ages. There is just some unknown algorithm in my head that takes an individual’s heartbeat, blood pressure, and blood viscosity, and converts it to their age. I don’t have to guess how old Fido is; I just know. And in high school, when carding someone at work for alcohol sales, I only acted like I looked at the customer’s driver’s license. I knew their true age right away. I could detect the fake IDs without caring about birthdates or pictures, no matter how well the forgeries were completed.

I also have no idea how I got this gift. Since we were always concerned about how I would be treated if someone found out about it, Mom and I have kept my gift a secret. She is the only person in the world who knows I have it. And I can honestly say that after years of quietly searching, I haven’t found anyone else like me. Since Mom doesn’t have the gift, I assume I inherited it from my dad. However, every time I bring up the possibility of Dad being the source of my livromancy, Mom quickly changes the subject to the details of my birth. That always shuts me up. Believe me, I do not want to hear about that stuff, ick.

It’s obvious that my mom’s happily ever after doesn’t involve my dad. I sometimes imagine him as a magic bearing prince; but since Dad left long ago, he’s not here to ask. And please note, if he was a magic bearing prince, he didn’t leave behind any princely riches; he only left behind his part in the making of me and my strange abilities.

My mom knew something was different about me when I was two years old. At dinner one night, she told me to eat my green peas. I stubbornly told her, No, and then said, You eat. Later, when she told me about her response to my words, she said she had this overwhelming compulsion to pick up my spoon and eat them, and that she actually had. No matter how hard she tried to resist eating my green peas that evening, she said she couldn’t stop herself. We laugh about it now; but at the time, she said that it was very confusing to her.

I also don’t know if Mom had any friends before I was born; but for as long as I can remember, it has just been the two of us. We are each other’s best friend. And I know it hasn’t always been easy for her. Apparently, my toddler years were a little rough on her. Mom was constantly having to explain to me why telling someone to do something against their will was bad.

On my first day of kindergarten, Mom had to remind me to suggest to my friends that they share their crayons with me. But we both knew that if I really wanted crayons bad enough, I could make my classmates give me all of their crayons just by pointing and saying, Give them to me. Problem solved for me; I got perfect, unbroken crayons every time.

My memories of that year included Mom getting a phone call from my teacher that I had somehow accumulated items from my classmates, but my classmates needed their coats, toys, and lunch boxes returned. After the call, Mom had looked at me with her sad eyes to let me know that I had let her down by not controlling my gift. What she didn’t understand was that in the mind of a five-year-old, no matter how disappointed she was, I had to learn how to say that I wanted something without commanding the item to be given to me. It was like learning a second layer of the English language. The result was that I had become the most polite student in my class. All of my sentences started with Please hand me, or Would you mind? I had to make every sentence I spoke a choice; you either complied with my request, or not. Of course, I preferred compliance.

Middle school really stunk. I was seen by the other students as being so odd that I only had a couple of acquaintance-type friends. To my dismay, I just had to deal with the rest of the student body. Because of my speech, I got laughed at, at one time or another by just about everyone, including a few teachers. By being so polite because I had to say, Please, or Would you mind? some of the cockier students would say, No, make me. Thinking of my mom, I would walk away, mad that I had to stay quiet while they were laughing at me. Fuming, I knew that I could make every person in the school do anything I wanted with just a few well-placed words. The only thing keeping me from issuing my command was the thought of Mom’s disappointment in me, yet again.

Most of the time, there were giggles as I walked through the hallways, followed by the words, The Freak. Tears would well up in my eyes, not from any sadness at them calling me names, but from the sheer anger that I was once again having to hold my gift in-check. If those jerks only knew what I could do, they would be nicer to me, but then their friendships would be fake. At least this way, I knew who I could trust.

Also, while I can control the actions of anyone or anything with a heartbeat, what I can’t control are their emotions. I can tell someone what to do, but not how to feel about it. I can make someone go to a movie with me or be my science lab partner, but I can’t make anyone happy about doing those things. I remember many frustrated and confused looks on faces as I got what I wanted from my classmates, but they had no idea why they were having anything to do with The Freak. I also couldn’t make Mom less disappointed when she got those phone calls from my teachers.

Over time, Mom and I came to an understanding; I would try my best to control my livromancing as long as the person I was talking to wasn’t in danger or putting someone else in danger. I kept to myself though that if someone was being a complete jerk to me, I reserved the right to correct them by whatever means I deemed appropriate.

Okay, so one of my deemed appropriate corrections was in early high school. During my freshman year, I hated having to ride the school bus. Jane was a junior who lived in my neighborhood and drove her car to school every day. When I asked Jane for a ride home one afternoon, there was a crowd of students around her. She looked at her friends, laughed, and said, No, even though we had talked a few times at our neighborhood park over the summer. Surprised at her answer, I thought she was cool enough not to bow down to peer pressure. I was wrong and caught off guard at her response, so I got mad. I looked up at the cloudy sky and quietly told Jane to hang out in the student parking lot in her car until the sky cleared and she could see the stars. When the clouds finally cleared, Jane saw her first star in the sky at 3:06 AM. Since she was well past her curfew and her parents had been frantic, Jane temporarily lost her driving privileges. And while I don’t mean to be spiteful, for one whole month, Jane sat in the school bus seat, one row in front of me. Well, at least I wasn’t alone that month while riding the bus.

Mom heard there was an issue at school with one of the girls from our neighborhood. She asked me if I knew anything about it. I tried my best to not lie to Mom. It went something like, Mom, it sure was a cloudy day. (fact) I heard Jane stayed in the school parking lot until after 3:06 AM. (fact) I was at home fast asleep at 3:06 AM. (fact) What I left off was my defense, "Was it my fault the night sky was so cloudy? I’m not a meteorologist; I had no idea seeing stars would be that late." And there was no way I was going to admit that I had seen the weather forecast on the news that morning while getting ready for school, and it had shown clouds stretching far across the region that day. Mom took in my answers and looked at me skeptically; she was pretty sure that I had somehow been involved.

Fortunately, Mom stopped getting phone calls from my teachers by the end of my sophomore year. As I grew, we settled into the routine of a single mother with a teen-aged daughter and all of the rights to early adulthood that entailed. I took classes to prepare for college; I got my driver’s license along with the cheapest dependable car I could find; and I got a job at a local grocery store after school.

Come to think of it, my sophomore year was the only time Mom had gotten a phone call in all of my high school years. It was when I auditioned for a part in the afterschool play. The evening following my audition, after Mom hung up with the school, I explained to her that there was no way I could have known that a command from the character I was auditioning for, worked on the teacher listening to the audition. It was as if I had commanded the teacher myself.

I had almost disguised the incident by laughing and quickly telling the teacher to go sit down, but the Kiss me, you fool, statement made the male drama teacher jump up onto the stage to get that kiss. Too many people saw Mr. Ledbetter reach the stage before I looked up to see the determined look on his face. When he was about two feet in front of me with his arms outstretched, I told him that he was very funny and to go sit down. I really tried to play it off as a joke. The problem was, Mr. Ledbetter got all red-faced and apologized profusely. Everyone saw that he was not joking; he had intended to kiss me.

During the phone call that evening, Mom had been very understanding. She promised not to proceed with any legal action against the school. Mr. Ledbetter reported in sick the next day and was transferred to the school bus maintenance facility the next week. I felt bad, but who knew that would happen? Besides, I had no idea that Mr. Ledbetter considered himself a fool by letting the statement be addressed specifically to him. But regardless of any foolish titles accepted, another life lesson learned: no more drama auditions.

When I turned 16, I went on my first date. Mom told me to use my gift if the boy got too friendly that it would be okay to command the boy to, Stop. When I asked Mom if I could command the boy to, Start, she lost her composure completely. Mom said I would be the death of her and that I would drive her to an early grave. Although she was just joking, I had to get that image out of my head as quickly as possible to make sure that I didn’t accidentally tell her something in jest that would lead to her getting hurt, or worse.

But Mom had very little to worry about with the boys since I wasn’t the most sought-after girl in school. I didn’t go on a lot of dates, or at least not a lot of second dates where a guy might be a little more interested in getting too friendly. I wasn’t upset though, from what I could tell with the few guys that I had dated, they were more concerned about their present time in high school, while I was more concerned about my future time in college.

Since Mom and I were already having a difficult time financially, I worked really hard to make good grades because I knew a scholarship for college would be necessary. With just the two of us in our little household, we didn’t have a lot of money to spare. As a result, I worked as many hours as I could handle at the grocery store while still keeping my grades up. The goal was to add as much money as possible to my college fund. My fund was small, but with every paycheck, my bank account grew a little bit more. Mom was a very good teacher at managing money on a limited budget.

During my senior year of high school, I only applied to one college, UNC-Charlotte. UNCC had the accounting degree I wanted; was a less expensive, state supported school; and was close to home so I wouldn’t have to pay to live in a dorm. I was also in line for an academic scholarship that would assist with tuition payments.

Since I had the grades, SAT scores, and class rank, I called the UNCC Admissions Department and told them, Admit me, so they did. Mom didn’t complain. I guess she wasn’t completely tied to the idea that I should only use my gift against forward men. Besides, my college admission at UNCC was a sure thing. We both agreed that I had all the qualifications for admission, so why take any chances?

Shortly after I graduated from college, I got a job in the accounting department of a local car dealership, where I met and fell madly in love with Kenneth Eugene Stone. Better known as Kenny, he was the dealership’s Parts Department Manager. We met when he came into my office one morning to discuss the billing for a shipment that contained parts for a factory recall.

Kenny, between his sparkling blue eyes, athletic body build, and outgoing personality, he completely swept me off my feet from the first time that I saw him. Two years older than me, he was carefree and didn’t question how I spoke. Kenny seemed to just want us to spend time together and to make me happy.

When it was obvious that Kenny was going to remain in our lives, Mom made me promise to keep my gift a secret from him for as long as I could. She suspected that Kenny might not stick around if he felt like he couldn’t make choices in our relationship. Considering my dad hadn’t stuck around long, I concluded that Mom probably knew what she was talking about.

But leave it to me to almost mess things up with my over-thinking. Given my long history of feeling apart from other people, I sometimes overthink people’s motives when they’re nice to me. Because of this, I held off taking Kenny’s and my relationship to the next level. I often had those little moments when I was alone where I became concerned that, like in my past, someone from the dealership was playing a joke on me, and that perhaps Kenny was in on the prank. I had had such a hard time from my old days as The Freak that I couldn’t see myself as desirable enough to be loved by a man. Could someone really love me just for me?

Although I had never felt close to anyone but Mom, Kenny remained persistent in our dating, making me feel that love was actually possible. So after two amazing years, I finally agreed with Kenny that we were meant to be together. He was the first person outside of Mom that I let my guard down and celebrated that I could enjoy being myself, mostly. I still didn’t let Kenny know about my gift, but it really didn’t seem to matter, our personalities simply worked that well together.

One day at lunch, Kenny asked me to assist him with stacking boxes of oil filters on a shelf. I came to one container that rattled when I picked it up, and I told Kenny about it. It was then that he got down on one knee and asked me to open it. Inside the package, I found a small ring box that contained a diamond engagement ring. Laughing at my shocked expression, he said that I was a part of him that had been missing but was now found. Then he officially asked me to marry him.

Okay, his statement was a little corny, but for a Parts Department Manager, it was also very charming. What can I say? I was in love. As he slipped the ring on my finger, it was then that Kenny and I officially became engaged, in the parts department of a car dealership. I know it wasn’t the most romantic place, but I could tell that he had put a lot of thought into his proposal. He didn’t just kiss me and shove a ring at my face asking, So will ya’? No, Kenny’s request had been well planned, and that meant a lot to me.

Following a six-month engagement, Kenny and I got married and purchased an old farmhouse one mile from Mom’s house, in a small town south of Charlotte, North Carolina. Each day after work we would go home, eat dinner, and then find small projects that needed fixing around our little house. Sometimes a project would get put on hold for the evening when one of us would get a little too warm while working and would take off a piece of clothing to cool down. Well, the next thing we knew, more clothing would come off, but instead of getting cooler, we would both get very naked, and very hot… It was an amazing time in our lives; not everything was perfect about our marriage, but it was definitely off to a good start.

As with any marriage, we did have to get used to each other’s quirks. Kenny had to get used to my everyday-life speech patterns while I had to get used to his taste in décor. You see, Kenny liked everything to be in various shades of brown and beige. His taste was actually a little bland for me, but he conceded that I could leave out an occasional throw blanket or pillow to add a splash of color. His main concession was my purple sarong with a big hibiscus floral print that I had purchased while on our honeymoon in Hawaii. Kenny thought it was gaudy, but I thought it added the right touch of flare to my side of our bed. Please note, there may have been a small command on my part that had him accepting the extra dash of color. I never claimed to be a perfect person.

In hindsight, I’m glad that I had followed Mom’s suggestion about my gift. Keeping my livromancy a secret from Kenny turned out to be a good thing. We had been married for almost a year when I realized that something was different about him. Kenny had become so relaxed, he seemed to be living on autopilot.

But not me, I wanted to shake things up. I wanted someone to challenge me once in a while, to feel alive. I would leave a towel on the floor, which Kenny absolutely hated, just to get him to argue with me. Blame it on his job, but to him, everything had a place, and everything should be in its place. But me? I wanted him to get mad about having to pick up my towel himself. I wanted to see the fire in his spirit again. I wanted to see him with passion. I wanted action. But regardless of anything that I did in an attempt to stir his emotions, Kenny just remained calm.

Our relationship became so odd that we even stopped finding time to make love. If there was no passion in it, what was the use? Thinking back, I have a question; how do you know that the last time you made love, was going to be the last time?

One evening after a busy day at work, I was disgusted. It wasn’t anything dire, but I had had a difficult day with a new payroll system. After telling Kenny about my day, all he said was, I’m sorry, Babe. What’s for dinner? Deflated further by his response, I grabbed my purse and my car key and headed for the door. I told him that I didn’t feel like cooking and that we were going out for dinner. Looking back, not talking through my feelings with Kenny that evening had been a big, stubborn mistake on my part. During dinner, while Kenny sat stoically, I had a one-sided argument with him and then proceeded to introduce him to my replacement; a big, big, stubborn mistake on my part.

Was the failure of our marriage my fault? How had our marriage gone so wrong so fast? Deep down inside, I just wanted Kenny to have the thrill for life that I had fallen in love with. During the two years that we had dated, we had hiked, canoed, gone snowboarding, and even ran a couple of 5K races together. I loved our life, in the beginning. But he had become like a zombie; content to get up, work, eat, go to sleep, and repeat. I know I hadn’t commanded him to start or to stop doing anything, so it wasn’t me. He had just grown settled, and we had grown apart.

So, after a year of separation, our divorce became final last week. And after a two-weeks’ notice to the car dealership, I am now unemployed. I didn’t want to work where I would see Kenny every day. At a new crossroads in my life, I decided to go on an adventure to recapture that love for life that I felt while Kenny and I had dated. I had grown up so guarded with Mom that I felt after college, I had finally started living and I wanted that feeling again. I can’t help it; I know everything I want is out there somewhere.

While waiting for our divorce to become final, Kenny and I agreed that since he was the one who broke our marriage vows, I would live in our house during our separation period. When our divorce became final, he would then get the house back while I decided what to do next. Don’t feel too bad for Kenny though, he wasn’t homeless. During our separation, he temporarily moved in with his new girlfriend, Darla. She gladly welcomed him into her home. Also know that I’m not as mad as you might think I would be about him moving in with his new girlfriend since again, I’m the one who got them together.

Our divorce settlement was actually pretty easy; Kenny got the house, his truck, and the cat. I got my personal belongings and my new car, a red Jeep Wrangler. And although I am now homeless, don’t worry about the house and me either. I wasn’t upset; the house never really felt like a home to me. Maybe it was all of the beige tones, various single-pictured walls, and the vacuum cleaner lines in the carpet. I’ve felt more at home in a hotel. And truth be told, our cat prefers Kenny. So, our final agreement was no big deal; we parted as friends, just no longer lovers.

Fortunately for my adventure, I had a little nest egg of money to pull from for my travels. Between my savings from working and my leftover college fund money, I could travel as long as I stuck strictly to my budget.

Ready to move out, I shook my head as I packed my meager belongings in our house. Realizing how little I owned that I actually cared about, I packed one large suitcase that I would leave with Mom, and one small travel bag. That was it. The only thing I made sure I kept with me was the purple sarong from my side of the bed. Kenny didn’t like it anyway.

My purple sarong is just a body-sized scrap of material, but it brings me joy. Albeit perhaps my joy springs from the fact that its purchase was the one thing I bought during our marriage that was truly mine. The purchase didn’t involve a lengthy discussion of how tacky it would be in our home. So, perhaps it’s not just the bold colors that I find beautiful, but a sense of awe that in its beauty, I hadn’t talked about purchasing it. I hadn’t discussed with Kenny its merits of décor. I had discovered a treasure and had immediately headed straight to the cashier with my credit card in hand to make it mine.

Shaking my head at the memory, I sighed as I looked around the bedroom; yep, beige walls with a white comforter right out of a Marriott Hotel catalog. It was very elegant, but not my idea of a home. Home should be fresh-cut flowers in vases, family pictures strown across the walls, and perhaps a missed dust-bunny or two underneath the TV cabinet; there was none of that here.

Smiling at my idea of the perfect home, I took my bags down the hallway to the front door. I still needed to take care of our cat one final time. As Crunch purred, I scratched behind his ear. Well, Crunch, Kenny’s all yours. He’ll move back in tonight, so please take care of him. See, livromancy, I gave the cat a choice by saying, please. I also gave Crunch one last pat as I put a scoop of kibbles in his dish, checked his bowl for fresh water, and made sure the litter box was tidy. Then I grabbed my suitcase and travel bag and moved out of Kenny’s house.

Chapter 1

H AVING GIVEN UP MY HOUSE and my cat, I was at Mom’s dropping off my large suitcase for her to keep while I was away. I also had fun showing her my travel plans. Because of my love for the city, I would start in Charleston, South Carolina. The architecture, history, and festivals make it a great tourist destination. After three days in Charleston, I would head further south to Savannah, Georgia. After a few days in Savannah, I would then make my way to Orlando, Florida for a quick stopover in Disney World for a day in Epcot. That was as far as my plans took me. By then I would need to recheck my cash to see if I had enough to continue traveling, or if I would need to get back to Charlotte to beg for my old job back. We’ll see. I still wasn’t sure that I wanted to run into Kenny every day at the car dealership.

Plans shared with Mom, I gave her a quick hug and kiss, and set out for my first stop in Charleston. Three hours later, I checked into my favorite hotel on Church Street near the City Market. An hour after that, I was sitting on a park bench, looking at the harbor toward the island of Fort Sumter. I smiled to myself. With the early Fall sunshine warm and still high in the sky, the water was calm in the harbor today. When the tour boats passed by on their way back and forth to the fort, they would leave behind gentle reflections of the sun in the ripples of the lapping waves. I know I’m insignificant here, that I’m just part of the landscape, but I love the feeling of serenity that this town gives me. The White Point Garden Park at the Battery is one of my favorite places to just sit and be still. Feeling mellow, I adjusted my feet to sit crisscross-applesauce on the park bench.

Suddenly jolted to surprise, I heard a woman shouting and I looked over to my right. A small dog had leaped from the screaming woman’s arms, and it was running toward the street. Without thinking, I awkwardly jumped up from my sitting position and yelled, Stop! Go back! Immediately, the dog stopped, turned back around, and ran back to its owner’s outstretched arms.

Emergency averted; my smile returned. Blind to my part in her pet’s quick response, I was sure that in the owner’s mind, the small animal had shown great obedience to his master. I laughed to myself; want to bet on which voice the dog had really listened to when he returned to his owner? I may not be a significant part of the landscape in the park, but sometimes I am significant to other people without their knowledge.

Settled back on the bench to my former sitting position, I relaxed again. A moment later, I heard the deep bark of a much larger dog breed that