Chloe T. Barlow will be a featured author this Saturday, September 12th, at the Black & Gold Author Event, a gathering of romance authors at the Omni William Penn Hotel in Downtown Pittsburgh. In anticipation of this event, we’re thrilled to able to share with you an excerpt from Three Rivers, the first novel in Barlow’s acclaimed Gateway to Love series (“Love, Pittsburgh style, done right…” – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette).
For more information on the Black and Gold Author Event, visit www.blackandgoldauthorevent.com/ and check out this fantastic write-up in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
This chapter of Three Rivers is reprinted here courtesy of the author.
Griffen reached across the bed but when his hand found cool, smooth sheets instead of a warm, sexy woman, he reluctantly opened his eyes.
He looked across the room and caught sight of Althea, wrapped in a light robe, her arms gripping her waist as she stared out the window, her eyes dark and distant. The room was dark but the contours of her forlorn face were occasionally illuminated by flashes of faraway lightning.
The rain was still coming down in violent sheets outside, sliding down the window in front of her as it beat onto the rivers nestled beneath the rock face on which her home perched. It was as though the sky was listening to the sadness in her heart, crying for her and he couldn’t help but feel like he was intruding on their intimate conversation.
He walked over to her, running his fingers through his hair. She looked back at him with glassy eyes.
“Gorgeous? What’s wrong?”
“I just couldn’t sleep. Sorry I woke you.”
She looked back out the window. He stood beside her, waiting for her to share whatever was going on in her head with him. It felt like years before she opened her mouth again.
“I love that I can see all three rivers from here. Jack and I had the coolest condo in Lawrenceville. Loads of bars, restaurants, artists — it was so cool — but I could only see the Allegheny River from there. This is better.”
“Why’d you move?” Griffen asked cautiously. He could sense her mood was dark and he wanted to be careful, like he was approaching a spooked horse that may rear back and run off at any moment.
She turned to him slowly. “Carol wanted me to move here to Mt. Washington — closer to her — as soon as we found out about the baby. I fought it for a while. I couldn’t leave the house at all for weeks, selling it seemed even crazier. Then it was robbed one night while I was at school. The whole place was ruined, ransacked. Not much was taken, thank God, but after that, well, I didn’t fight Carol anymore. I just gave in — gave up — and moved. But I like it here. I like this view.”
“Is that what you were thinking about just now? Is that why you woke up?”
“No.” She looked away again, “I, uh, had a bad dream.”
Griffen touched her cheek and found his fingers came back wet. “Why are you crying? What was your nightmare about?”
“Same basic one I’ve had since Jack died.”
“Do you want to tell me about it?” he asked softly.
Her eyes moved over his face slowly, as if she was trying to make a decision about something. She finally looked deeply into his eyes for a moment and then turned back to stare at the rivers again before she answered.
“I dream that Jack is alive. Sometimes I’m big and pregnant and he’s so proud and happy. He touches my belly and we talk about baby names. Sometimes I’m telling him I’m pregnant. We cheer as we look at the test strip. Sometimes I’m holding baby Johnny. Sometimes Jack’s walking Johnny and me home from a youth football game. We both hold one of Johnny’s hands and swing him back and forth between us as we all laugh. We are so happy.
“But when I let go of Johnny and reach out to touch Jack’s hand, it falls apart in mine and turns to dust. He just…disintegrates right there. Sometimes it’s more gruesome. He’s waterlogged from the river, with hazy eyes, reaching for me. He starts to bleed, out of his eyes, his mouth, everywhere. I try to grab for him but only come back with blood and bone. Then his flesh falls away.
“The dream may be different, but the end is always the same. In the end, everything is gone. Jack is gone. Our home is gone. Our baby is gone. It’s just me, in the dark, with an aching heart and empty hands. I wake up clutching the sheet, panting, looking around. It’s ridiculous. Like I’m in an eighties TV show, or something.”
Griffen swallowed around the tightness in his throat. Her voice was eerily smooth but tears streamed down her lovely face like the rivers from which she couldn’t seem to look away.
“Do they happen often?” he managed to choke out.
“Used to be I had them all the time, every few days.” She looked at him and smiled faintly. “There is a bright side. It makes me productive. I get a lot of client work done at two- thirty in the morning.”
“You said used to. Have they slowed down?”
“This is the first one I’ve had in almost two weeks.”
“Oh,” Griffen said, pausing to let the significance of that sink in. “I’m so sorry baby,” he whispered as he kissed the tears across her cheeks.
Althea sighed and touched his cheek gently. “Don’t be sorry, Griffen, it’s not your fault. I don’t want to think about whose fault it is. It just is.”
But Griffen did feel like it was his fault that Jack was gone, leaving her here alone, and all he wanted to do was make her pain go away — if she would only let him try.
Copyright © Chloe T. Barlow
Shared here with permission of the author.
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