Death in Double Mocha - Chapter 1

War in White Chocolate is done, so I'm chugging away at the last novel in the Soccer Moms series, Death in Double Mocha. Here's the unedited first chapter.

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Irritated as hell, Dani Elante jabbed the button to open her garage door. Mark had forgotten to haul the garbage can out to the curb for tomorrow morning’s trash pick-up.

Again. Her normally conscientious son seemed to have totally lost his mind with the onset of puberty. He had barely acknowledged her presence when she marched into his bedroom and lectured him, his earbuds jammed in his ear canals and his nose firmly affixed to his phone screen as his thumbs typed messages to his friends. If her brother Marty hadn’t put her and Mark on his family’s unlimited phone plan, she would have had to take a second mortgage out on the house to pay for her son’s excessive usage.

She should have grounded Mark, but guilt nagged her. He pretended to be okay with her being the avatar of Death, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Or rather the Soccer Moms of the Apocalypse, as Wila had coined them.

But the four women’s kids only had each other to talk to when it came to the weirdness of what was going on in Oakfield over the past couple of months. Deep down, she knew she couldn’t take those relationships away from Mark. It was his only outlet for dealing with madness.

A cold wind rattled the tree branches and the handfuls of leaves clinging to them in the dark. The dang bitter breeze also cut through her sweatshirt and jeans and raised goosebumps along her skin. She should have grabbed her coat before she came out.

The scent of smoke blew along the freezing air along with the hint of the coming winter to Illinois. Someone in the neighborhood was fighting the late fall chill with a cozy wood fire.

A sense of regret whispered through her. Maybe she shouldn’t have sold the old Victorian she and Heath had started to refurbish before his accident. She loved the odor of pine and the crackle of real wood burning while cuddling with her husband in front of the flickering flames. But there was no way to pay two mortgages on just her salary, and Mark needed consistency with the loss of his father.

Dammit, Heath had been gone for six years. She was not going to wind herself into another depressive funk. Just because nearly everyone else she knew had family members rise from their graves, it didn’t mean she’d get that lucky. Except the question was almost as nagging as her guilt. Had Heath not been righteous enough to deserve resurrection with the Second Coming of Christ?

Or was he still in his grave because she was Death?

Dani grabbed the handle of garbage can and dragged it out to the curb before she went back for the recyclables container. She wheeled the blue recyclables can out to the curb and set it beside the pink trash can that promoted breast cancer awareness. Why did she miss Heath so much when she barely thought about Mom?

The better question is why hadn’t either of them risen when half of the Oakfield Cemetery’s residents had come back to life back in the middle of October. They were both good people. Why did Penny get her mother-in-law and Wila get her grandmother back, and Danielle was still alone? It wasn’t fair.

But then, it wasn’t fair she had been chosen as Death, one of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse either.

A gust slapped her ponytail in her face. It was too damn cold to bemoan her luck in life outside. She’d make a hot cup of green tea and pout under her favorite blanket. Nope, she’d binge her favorite sitcom until she fell asleep. Marty would understand as both her brother and her boss when she called in sick in the morning. She turned to head back into the garage.

The oak tree in her front yard moaned, and a shiver ran down her spine that had nothing to do with the frigid wind. It was the same sensation of wrongness she felt around one of the newly risen dead. She whirled around, looking for the cause, wishing for the first time the city of Oakfield had installed more streetlamps in their subdivision.

A dark figure stepped out of the shadow of the fence-lined right-of-way running between the Cassadines’ and the Jones’s houses across the street. She was on the verge of summoning her scythe when the shape shuffled into the square of the light cast by the fixtures in her garage onto the asphalt pavement. The blonde hair was as dirty as the clothes and face, but the piercing blue eyes were the same as the first time she met him.

Her heart threatened to choke her. “Heath?”

“Hey, baby.” He looked terribly confused. “I think I had an accident.”