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  CONTINUUM

  THE SOUTH BEACH CONNECTION

  A. R. Hadley

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prelude to Chrysalis

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Prelude to Saddle Up

  Chapter 7

  Prelude to Swim

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Prelude to Fasten

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Prelude to The Paradox

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Indefinable

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Also by A. R. Hadley

  Acknowledgments

  The Ocean in His Veins

  Playlist

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2018 by A.R. Hadley

  Published by Chameleon Productions

  All rights reserved.

  This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission from the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Definitions cited are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to definitions found in dictionaries or online is purely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-0-9996527-4-9

  Cover Design: Najla Qamber http://www.najlaqamberdesigns.com/

  Cover Image: Deposit Photos, Shutterstock, Unsplash, and Pixabay. Used with permission.

  Editors: Monica Black http://www.wordnerdediting.com/

  Jenny Andreasson Babcock

  Proofreading: Devon Burke https://www.joyediting.com/

  Formatting: Erica Alexander https://serendipityformats.wixsite.com/formats

  for the boy who taught me patience

  take me with you

  where will you go

  I am not alone

  you will never know

  the interworking

  of my heart

  the chains

  the gears

  the buttons

  I am not alone

  you will never know me

  unless I let you

  I say

  I give permission

  unless

  I change my perception

  unless

  I give up my stronghold of unreason

  I am not alone

  I'll go forward

  pretending you understand me

  believing you

  help me believe in me

  Chrysalis

  pupa of a butterfly

  protective covering

  sheltered state or stage of growth

  Beads of sweat tickled Cal’s neck as he grabbed his luggage from the back of the rental and closed the trunk.

  It was the middle of September in Ojai. The weather was seasonably warm, and the air smelled like the valley: crisp and dry with a hint of citrus blossoming.

  The citrus reminded him of Annie.

  The house reminded him of everything he’d chased, trapped, caught, and brought to his mother’s doorstep … for years.

  He hesitated a moment, pausing to look at the pale two-story brick home — the color of a fresh tortilla off the press.

  He didn't just look at it. He’d seen it plenty of times. He’d grown up here. No, he stared at it, seeing it in a new yet familiar way. His eyes scaled the walls, stopping on a window on the second floor.

  His window. His room.

  It was the window on the left, not the right. They both appeared the same from the outside: white shutters with flower planters below them, buds blossoming.

  Always shiny on the outside.

  Everything always perfect.

  Cal shook his head and slipped the keys into the pocket of his slacks. As he wheeled his luggage along the stone path weaving through the yard, a butterfly fluttered by, reminding him of days past.

  Days upon days spent in that yard trying to catch butterflies, reading about butterflies, studying them. He recalled wishing he was a butterfly, wishing he could fly. Sometimes, that little boy mused he actually could fly, and on some of those long-ago days, that same precocious little boy was secretly convinced he had flown.

  Cal smiled at the child within, times he’d forgotten, and in the blink of an eye, in the breadth of his smile, the beautiful swallowtail disappeared, probably off to kiss a tall, golden flower; its yellow, black, and astoundingly blue wings became camouflaged in the garden.

  After passing under a tall, white, vine-covered arbor and climbing four steps toward the porch, his things in tow, he stopped at the front entrance. A realization took hold. Several.

  He couldn’t camouflage himself like an insect.

  He couldn't deny his feelings or mood.

  He was unable to fly.

  In silence he stood, wondering what it might be like inside. His cousin Michelle had said Constance could no longer talk. He shook his head… That couldn't be right. Talking was a birthright. His mother's voice was her identification. Her stamp.

  Cal put weight on one foot. He massaged his temple. The sweat on his brow and nape multiplied.

  What would be filling up all the available space: the cracks, the bricks, the hallways? Death? Was it traveling through the drywall and the attic, choking life from the house the way the vines over the arbor choked the lattice?

  God fucking dammit.

  Would he be strong enough to stand it? How could he already feel so weak? Dropping his head, he fiddled again with the damn keys. He wasn't weak. Or if he was, he wouldn't show it.

  It had to have been the flight.

  Sitting on the plane for five fucking hours had given him time to think. Purposeful thinking. Feelings. Alone with his thoughts for several uninterrupted and undistracted hours; sans the flight attendant bringing him a drink.

  It had been too much time.

  More than he’d wanted.

  Standing at the front door of his childhood home — his ailing mother only steps away, reminders of a life he’d fled from time and time again — he didn't know what to do with himself or his fucked-up feelings.

  He’d shoved two books in his carry-on but had been too crawling-out-of-his-skin to read. He had no escape. No crutch. Stuck in first class, high in the sky on an ordinary — correction, an anything but ordinary Tuesday afternoon. The Jameson he’d consumed on the plane was a poor match for the aimless wandering of the madman skirting the gray matter of his brain.

  Gathering a deep breath
into his lungs, he opened the heavy door. The hinges screamed, but he stepped inside quietly, barely pressing his wingtips to the floor. Letting go of his luggage, he took a few steps and glanced at the sitting room to his left.

  His mother had always called it that. Tradition rendered it so.

  The curtains were drawn. Late-afternoon sun sank closer to the horizon on the opposite end of the house, but despite the canopy of gloom, the goddamn sturdy elephants were still visible. They sat on the corner shelf. Some big, others little, but all of them pointed toward the front two windows, displaying strength and pride. She had collected them for years.

  A sliver of light shining onto the floor about midway down the hallway caught his attention. He could hear a low hum of a woman's voice. He began to walk toward it — the noise and the light — managing to make strides without causing the old wooden floors to creak.

  His feet came to a stop in front of the door to the guest bedroom, but he didn't enter. He couldn't. His person wouldn't budge. Motionless and quiet, he peered through the hairline crack between wall and door, glancing around the room as best he could. He covered his lips with his palm.

  There, propped up in a double bed, was his mother. A fucking guest in the guest bedroom. His throat swelled from the lump taking up residence there.

  What had it been? How many months since he’d moved to Miami? How could she have changed so drastically?

  Cal's cousin, Michelle, stood at the side of the bed, combing her aunt's gray-streaked hair, still humming a familiar song he couldn't place. The pale blue of his mother's eyes focused on nothing.

  A straight-line gaze of blankness had replaced her grit.

  His head fell against the doorframe while one green eye remained peeking through the splinter of a crack. Stuck there. Staring.

  How could she have faded so quickly?

  Constance Prescott — always bold, opinionated, and full of her version of life … always a take-no-bullshit ironclad anchor — was dying.

  He could see the truth for himself now and could no longer continue to deny reality. Fuck. Some sort of old woman, a weary creature, inhabited her body. It wasn't Constance Marie Prescott, his mother, the woman who’d raised him alone. This woman in the guest bedroom had no spark. No bombast. No spunk. She looked ... what the fuck? He thought he’d seen the worst of this fucking disease before.

  He hadn't.

  She looked like the inside of a nutshell: empty, frail, cracked.

  As he inched away from the door, his heart sank. He could feel it slide — dropping, dropping, dropping — as bile shot into his throat. He clawed at his neck and choked it down: the burn, the bullshit, the weakness.

  He dragged himself back down the hall, then entered the kitchen through the Old West-style doors on his left. Not a single item had changed since he’d last stepped foot into the charming room. The kitchen had always, unequivocally, belonged to his mother.

  It was boxed in on all sides. A single window above the sink looked out beyond the porch into the yard, and a second set of swinging doors, opposite the first, led to a formal dining room that had been converted into a den. In the center of Constance’s kitchen was a modest oak table and six chairs — the hub — where family and close friends gathered to share home-cooked meals, sarcasm, and stories.

  Cal pulled one of the rustic, ladder-back chairs out, and rested his palm over the top rung as he continued to survey the room. Copper ladles and pans dangled above him around the light in the center. But he wasn't thinking about the utensils or cookware. He was thinking about a drink.

  And it wasn’t water.

  His eyes roved over the cabinets, wondering if any of them contained what he sought.

  Ode to the liquor.

  Ode to the drink.

  It had become the one constant in Cal’s life … on which he could fully depend. Faithful and loyal, never letting him down. He wanted a swallow now more than ever, but instead of lingering on his thirsty palate, he walked to the fridge and opened it, shoving his true appetite to a place he could revisit later.

  As he stared inside the cold, rectangular appliance, hunched over and examining its contents, he wasn't actually thinking about any of the food on the shelves. He was trying with desperation not to think about anything, but the thoughts kept barreling toward him like wild horses galloping across an open terrain, covering a vast distance in his mind with no fucking end in sight.

  "Calvin Prescott," a nagging voice said from behind.

  Standing tall, he shut the refrigerator, turned around, and grinned. "Hello, Michelle."

  He stepped toward his cousin — his older cousin, and he never let her forget it — who stood in the center of the swinging doors, an arm over the top of the frame. Michelle was tall, stout, and had mid-length, bleach-blonde hair. Smart and tough — but with a heart as wide as the ocean — she looked like a cowgirl barging into a saloon.

  She eyeballed Cal, giving him the I'll-give-you-plenty-of-shit look — the one she’d perfected over the years. Oddly, Michelle was one of the few people on the planet he would take it from. To a point anyway. He had his bullshit limit.

  "You look like you came from a funeral.” As she entered, the slatted doors creaked behind her, then tapered off and stilled.

  Cal looked into Michelle’s tired eyes. Sure, she teased him, but the crow’s feet surrounding the corners of her blues seemed more pronounced than he’d remembered. Her face couldn’t lie.

  As she approached, she visibly softened. Decompressed. He wasted no time pulling her against him, wrapping his arms around her body and squeezing.

  "Jesus, don't kill me." She sighed into his shoulder.

  He exhaled in return, attempting to release whatever had consumed him since he’d arrived. Then he pulled away, shook his head, and pinched his nose.

  "Really, Cal”—she tugged at his shirt—“all black.” Her eyes rolled.

  The eye rolling...

  Was there a woman in his life who didn't mock him? Fuck his clothes. He hadn't given any thought to them, or the color, and he didn't give a damn what she thought about it.

  "I saw you … in the room with Mom just a few minutes ago. She looks..." He turned his head. He drank air. "She looks gone."

  As he gripped the nearest chair, his knuckles whitened. His body filled with anger, and he felt the same helplessness that had seized him when he stood near the opening in her door.

  "It's been more than six months since you were here last." Michelle touched Cal’s back, making soft circles.

  "I know how long it's been."

  And he was appalled his mother had disappeared inside herself — completely — in such a short amount of time. It was unforgivable. The disease. His absence. Death.

  "She barely eats and doesn't speak anymore." Michelle struggled with the words. "Well, I suppose I told you all that on the phone." She paused, then inhaled. "It's more than I can handle.”

  Cal furrowed his brow. "You have help. Did someone quit?"

  "Yes, of course. No one quit." She smacked his hand, then fanned away tears. "You're here five minutes, and you already have me about to cry." She shook it off. "What I meant is it's more than my heart can take." Michelle wrapped a hand around his bicep and leaned her head against it. "I'm glad you’re here now. Home." Her breaths had grown shallow.

  Cal placed his arm around Michelle’s back. "You want that hug now?"

  "Stop." She bumped his hip.

  "I'm not going anywhere." He squeezed her waist. "I'll be here," he said with a clip, not wanting to say "until the end."

  "Where do you want this to go?" Rosa tilted the heavy cardboard box toward Cal.

  A few papers were scattered across the entire length of the coffee table. He was distracted, sitting on a cream-colored settee, scrolling through several messages on his phone, laptop at his side and glasses at the end of his nose. An additional settee was to his left: bold, red, velvet, and empty. Both pieces were original, well cared for, and pristine … tradition
al and picturesque — typical Constance.

  "Should I just leave it in here for now?" The large turquoise stone on the chain around her neck swung as she spoke, catching the sun's rays.

  Cal had to lift his hand to block the light coming from it and the two front windows. Sunshine splayed across the floor and splashed the walls. It was so bright he could barely see. Not the damn box or what was in it. And so, he stood, set his phone down, and removed his glasses.

  "No, I don't want that left in there." He smoothed his fingers over his jaw, thinking about where he wanted to keep it.

  "Your mother … she would like this music." Rosa pointed her chin to the record player. Her bright-white capris and hot-pink top kissed her beautiful skin. Her hair-sprayed curls never moved. "You should put something on for her."

  “That’s a splendid idea,” Michelle said, entering the room. “I have lunch almost ready.”

  “Splendid?” Cal’s tone deepened, mocking her, as he slid his hands inside the box, lifted his most prized material possession, and set it on the coffee table behind him. On top of his papers.

  Michelle smacked his shoulder while making eye contact with Rosa.

  “I’ll come help you with lunch,” Rosa said while taking a few records out of a different box and setting them on the table.