BooksBarbecue
Back When Darkness Loves Us
Chapters (56)
  1. CoverImage
  2. Title page
  3. Copyright page
  4. Introduction by Grady Hendrix
  5. Foreword by Theodore Sturgeon
  6. Acknowledgments
  7. WHEN DARKNESS LOVES US
  8. Part One
  9. 1
  10. 2
  11. 3
  12. 4
  13. 5
  14. 6
  15. Part Two
  16. 1
  17. 2
  18. 3
  19. 4
  20. 5
  21. 6
  22. 7
  23. 8
  24. Part Three
  25. 1
  26. 2
  27. 3
  28. 4
  29. BEAUTY IS ...
  30. 1
  31. 2
  32. 3
  33. 4
  34. 5
  35. 6
  36. 7
  37. 8
  38. 9
  39. 10
  40. 11
  41. 12
  42. 13
  43. 14
  44. 15
  45. 16
  46. 17
  47. 18
  48. 19
  49. 20
  50. 21
  51. 22
  52. 23
  53. 24
  54. 25
  55. About the Author
  56. About the Cover

“It isn’t that simple. You see, when you disappeared, Michael mourned you for a long, long time. We all did. We didn’t know if you’d run off or been kidnapped or what. But there was never any word, and so we finally had to get over it and get on with living our lives. I know your Papa prayed for you every day of his life. And Michael . . . well, he had to get on with his life, too. Once you were declared dead, he remarried. So now he has a family, and we don’t want anything to interfere with his happiness.”

“Any thing? You mean me! But if he waited so long, he can’t have much of a family yet. Oh, Momma, the only thing that kept me going down there was thinking of Michael. I’ve really got to see him. I’ve got something to tell him.”

“You’ve been gone a long time, Sally Ann. Michael and Maggie have four children . . .

“Maggie? Maggie? Michael married Maggie?” Sally threw the covers off her legs and started to get up. “You’ve no right to keep me here. I want to see my husband.”

Cora pushed her back to bed with one hand. Still so frail, she thought. “He’s not your husband any longer, Sally Ann. He and Maggie have four children; did you hear me?”

Sally stopped struggling against her mother and lay her head back on the pillow. She closed her eyes, feeling faint from the exertion. She couldn’t possibly have heard what she thought she heard.

“You’ve been gone twenty years, Sally Ann.”

The room started spinning. She heard a voice from far off saying “Clinton! Wait for me, Clint.” It was her own voice, but her head seemed stuffed with cotton. She felt a cool cloth on her forehead, and she waited until the buzzing in her ears died away. Twenty years. Twenty years of her life wasted in an underground hole. She was now thirty-six years old. And scarred and ugly and Michael was lost to her forever. Tears leaked out of the corners of her eyes and she reached for her mother’s hand.

5

5

Cora was cleaning up the luncheon dishes in the kitchen while Sally Ann did her daily exercises on the living-room floor. Her body had healed well, and though the scarred skin was pulled taut over her back, the muscles were starting to come back. She had gained weight and walked with barely a trace of a limp. Her eyes had stopped that incessant jerking, and her sight was returning rapidly.

“Momma?”

“Yes, dear?”