Kiss of the Sun Read Online Free PDF Page B

dirt of a pitcher’s mound. She was standing atop the mound and had something clutched in her right hand. She looked at it and saw frayed red stitching. Peavy’s ball.
    “Put it here,” a voice shouted.
    Martha looked toward home plate and saw a young boy standing there. Orange baseball jersey, plastic helmet, hands gripping the handle of a wooden bat that he wobbled expectantly over his right shoulder. Behind him, a catcher squatted on his haunches, glove poised.
    “Straight across the plate,” Peavy said.
    Martha tossed the ball toward home plate, underhand. “Where are you, Peavy?”
    The ball went wide, and Peavy swung and missed.
    “A little more to the right this time,” he said.
    Martha looked down and saw that there was a burlap bag full of baseballs at her feet. She reached down, took another one.
    She pitched it carefully toward home plate, and this time Peavy connected solidly. The ball sailed over Martha’s head. Peavy stood still where he was, watching it go.
    Martha turned to follow the ball, but she’d already lost sight of it. She turned back. “Where did it go?”
    “Up there.” Peavy pointed high into the sky behind her. Martha turned and looked up. A ball of flame was moving against the sky, slowly tracing a ring of fire. Then, like skywriting, the two triangles appeared at the center of the ring, also blazing.
    The image terrified her with its apocalyptic implications. Martha gasped and clawed her way toward consciousness, ripping through the membrane of sleep. She opened her eyes, propped herself up, and looked around her bedroom. She saw the shells on the windowsill, the books on her bedside table. A purple glow filtered through the gingham curtains. It was almost morning, thank God.
    She was breathing heavily, and her heart was thumping.
    Martha pulled off the sheet and stepped into her sandals. She stumbled toward her dinette table, where her notebook and pen were open, and wrote down the dream with a trembling hand, rushing to capture the details before they began to fade. Then she gave herself a small squeeze and went to the stove to start a pot of chamomile tea.
    She looked out the kitchen window. In the predawn light, she could see Hester Alewine’s unpainted cottage across the way, the shadow of palmetto bushes and oak limbs with their hanging beards of moss.
    Had the profusion of images meant anything? The baseball diamond. The runic symbol emblazed against the sky. Perhaps a warning? Albertha’s statue, with one face looking forward, the other looking backward.
    Then she went back to the table and underlined the statement that stood out most clearly from the rest of the dream, the specific words of Lady Albertha:
He’s closer than you think.

Chapter 3
    Martha opened the top drawer of her bureau and pulled out the white envelope that contained her emergency cash: $250. She put $150 in her billfold, started to return the envelope, then took another $50. Just a loan. Her second royalty check was due at the end of the month, and she could replace the money then. The Georgia Council grant, the money for her project, was her real livelihood anyway, at least until the end of next year.
    The trip was a small act of rebellion, but it would not be a lie. She would tell Goodwin next Tuesday, in their next weekly session—after the fact. Their therapeutic relationship depended on trust, honesty. But there was a fine line between concern and overprotectiveness, and Martha felt Goodwin had crossed over it by forbidding her to visit the site of Peavy’s disappearance. Her first therapist might have had his flaws, but at least he’d had confidence in her. She would go to the place, the address the couple had given her, and see what impressions, if any, came to her. If nothing, then she could send the shoebox back, along with her limited impressions, and move on. This was something she had to put behind her before she could, per Dr. Goodwin’s mantra, keep moving forward.
    Martha tucked her