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FREE ADVANCE COPIES OF BRIGHT HILLS!

I'm looking for advance copy readers for Bright Hills. To take advantage of this offer, leave a comment. After you've read the book, it would be great if you'd scoot on over to Amazon and tell others what you thought of it. 

I've included the first chapter in this post. If it looks like something you'd enjoy reading, leave a comment and I'll send you the rest of the story.

Thanks,

Elnora

Hurricanes Do Not Climb the Hills

“Hurricane Hazel will bring dangerous wind and lots of rain,” the WeatherWorld forecaster—a forty-ish man stuffed into an azure turtleneck—blared from the flatscreen in Nesta Trillum’s entertainment room. “Now, if you’re up in the hills, forecast models show only about a five percent chance the storm could slip through that mountain gap near Foggy Pass. It’s unlikely—but not impossible.”

Nesta grabbed the remote from the cupholder in her recliner and turned off the TV. “I don’t know why I listen to that bulldoody,” she muttered into the silence of her empty home. “Hurricanes do not climb the hills around here, no matter what percentage that big-shot weather boy gives it.”

Popping the remote into its cradle, she crossed the foyer to peek through the broad window at the end of her dining room. Outside, rain drizzled, so that the front yard resembled a sauna in the waning light.

A slender, rain-soaked figure dashed by, head down.

Nesta adjusted the blinds and tucked a lock of steel-gray hair behind her ear so she could see better. The bedraggled passerby was Mignon Hardcastle, Nesta’s next-door neighbor on the left. A quiet hmph burbled from Nesta’s timeworn throat. Old Wilbur probably pushed her out the door before the storm set in so he wouldn’t have to feed her dinner.

Wilbur Bright’s three-story monstrosity of a mansion loomed to the right of Nesta’s neat, terraced hillside home, sandwiching Nesta between the two step-siblings. Or were they half-siblings? Mignon had started life not as a Bright but a Ledbetter, which made her what, besides trashy? As her petite neighbor scurried down the street, expertly-cut blonde mane plastered to her skull by the rain, Nesta let out a disgusted sniff. The intricacies of kinship in the South. Whatever you called her, Mignon was a Bright for all intents and purposes.

Women who would cut any other Ledbetter dead cold in the street treated Mignon’s tainted birth name as something to be ignored, like initials that spelled a dirty word or a slave-owning granddaddy who’d made his money in whiskey. Whereas someone with a perfectly respectable maiden name had to endure snide remarks and sudden silences just because she chose a profession instead of sitting around gossiping all day like some poodle on the beach…

A sudden chill made Nesta cross her arms and try to rub the icy feeling away. Odd how old wounds ache when you’re alone in a house that used to be filled with deep male voices and the aroma of Old Spice aftershave.

The grandfather clock tolled six times from the depths of the increasingly dark dining room. Roused from poking at tender places by those mellow bongs and a trio of unladylike rumbles from her stomach, Nesta closed the blinds and wandered into the kitchen.

* * *

Later, after a solitary supper of steak, baked potato (with lots of sour cream and real butter), and green peas in Bearnaise sauce, Nesta watched two episodes of Black Sails while wind whined outside. She’d stumbled onto the high seas drama one afternoon while in search of a religious broadcast and had been quietly ogling Captain Charles Vane’s shirtless torso ever since. Of course, she’d never let on to her neighbors how much she enjoyed that sort of thing—rural Bright Hills was not the kind of community where seventy-year-old women admitted to much. Even something so innocuous as a proclivity for dark chocolate or a passion for baking could cause flutters, depending on who was involved.

Nesta glanced at the blinds to make sure they were closed, just in case someone from the Women’s Club drove by.

Around ten o’clock, she flipped over to the feed from her security cameras. Number eleven—Right Side Yard—was darker than usual. Nesta tilted her head, trying to figure out why. Of course, she thought. The lights in Wilbur’s TV room aren’t on. Odd. He never goes to bed this early. Maybe he’s in that office of his, plotting which cow pasture he’s going to cover with cheap houses and motels next.

She thought about checking one last weather report before snuggling in for the night but decided she could learn all she needed to know by looking out the window while brushing her teeth. 

Only a fool would pay any mind to those city-boy forecasts. Hurricanes simply do not come to the upcountry, she told herself as the TV screen went black. Heck, if they call for rain, you might as well go on and pack a picnic lunch.

Moments later, beyond the octagonal bathroom window, lightning revealed a mountainside disco scene with trees gyrating to the heavy beat of thunder. With a shrug, Nesta turned back to the mirror to slather cream on the wrinkles between her arched nose and pale, thin lips before stepping into the bedroom.

Using a small white remote control, she lowered a metal storm shutter over the glass doors leading to her upper deck, as she did every night. Her late husband, Norm, had insisted on installing the thing during a windblown autumn—three years before he died. Its grating groan sounded like a lion’s protective roar.

At 3:22 a.m. by her bedroom clock, Nesta woke to a muffled crash and the faintest of shudders beneath her floorboards.

She lay still for a moment, listening.

Probably just a branch, she decided, smiling at her own fearfulness. The elm near the gazebo had been dead for a while—it was bound to drop a branch or two come a good blow. The noise might even have been a piece of Wilbur Bright’s tacky poolside decor, left unsecured no matter the weather. Served him right if it was. Dang fool didn’t have the sense God gave a gnat. Even though hurricanes didn’t ever blow into the mountains, the wind could gust mighty strong. Nobody but Wilbur left things lying around outside.

Nesta pulled the comforter to her chin and stretched her arthritic right knee to relieve its ache. “Told that kid on TV nothin’ would happen,” she mumbled into her pillow.

* * *

Morning stole around the edges of the storm shutter and pounced on Nesta’s eyelids. With a groan at the pain in her lower joints, she tottered to the bathroom, where sunlight streamed across beige tile. Beyond the small window by the john white cloud-dumplings scudded across a smoky blue sky.

A huge expanse of sky gleamed on the other side of the glass. Where was the gazebo roof? Standing on tiptoe, Nesta caught a glimpse of white. Breath rushing out, she cupped her hands against the glass to cut the glare.

“What the heck?”

Her summerhouse, almost completely intact, leaned against Bob Dilfrond’s storage shed, which had jammed itself into an uprooted oak halfway down the mountain. Just beyond that mess, brownish water glinted as it sped past an overturned RV.

Insistent bangs came from the front of the house. Nesta threw on a pink terry bathrobe and rushed to the door, ignoring the pain in her knees.

Bob Symington and Frank Roucher, her plump and balding neighbors from the , stood on the blue boards of her porch.

A chainsaw dangled from Frank’s left hand. “Are you okay, Nesta?” he asked.

While she nodded, her eyes on an elm and a birch making an x across her driveway, Bob piped up. “We’ll get you out. Don’t worry. Gonna make a path for you soon as we get the road—”

Frank continued as if Bob’s lips had finished moving. “So emergency vehicles can get in. Got to clear the roads first. Driveways later.”

Behind the two men, branches prevented any view of the street. A thick black electrical line dangled beyond an oak’s enormous root-ball. Nesta’s hands—of their own accord—crept to the lapels of her robe and grasped thick terry. She shivered as she pulled the cloth tight across her chest.

A lump had formed in her throat. “I don’t think there’ll be any emergency vehicles coming by for a while, Frank,” she said after swallowing. “The creek’s up. I doubt the road off the mountain is passable.”

With tan work gloves covering his hands, Frank adjusted his grip on the chainsaw. Nesta imagined blisters forming under the gloves. Neither Bob nor Frank had ever done any outdoor work that she knew of. They were accountants.

“We can at least call in that power line.” Frank glanced over his shoulder as a sudden gust jiggled the heavy wire. “Likely to start a fire.”

“I already tried.” Bob frowned, removing heavy gloves to thumb his phone. “No signal.”

Nesta pulled her own phone from her robe’s pocket, checked, and slowly shook her head. The signal was always weak there on the mountain. But now there were no bars at all. Not even a red SOS.

Above the desolate scene beyond her porch, the air was still. Nesta blinked back tears as the men clambered toward the street.