Read Moon Underfoot for Free Online Page A

JAKE, THE past eighteen months had been difficult, to say the least. He kept his worries, fears, and anxieties bottled up. He never shared any of it with anyone—not the multitude of counselors, therapists, and doctors—not even Morgan. It was ten hours of hell. Jake had tried to avoid a confrontation, but when cornered, he had killed a man to start a night of terror and then killed another to finish it. Jake had done what was necessary to survive and to protect the lives of Katy and Elizabeth Beasley, a young woman who also happened to be in the wrong place at the worst possible time.
    The night’s aftermath could have easily broken Jake and Morgan’s already strained marriage; however, their relationship became noticeably stronger. The episode served to bring them together and make each appreciate the other more.
    Jake maintained to Morgan, and to anyone else who asked, that he was doing fine and suffering no ill effects. But he was slowly deteriorating from boredom. Every day he went to work, watched computer screens, and held the hands of his clients, who expected him to see into the future. He was in the rat race, chasing cheese, and he cared nothing about it.
    The events of that night in an Alabama swamp—being stalked, lying in wait to kill a man, running for his life in the inky darkness, and being responsible for other lives—had purged Jake of normalcy. He now needed more from his life and out of it; but at forty, with a huge mortgage, two car payments, and private-school tuition, a career change was not in the cards. He had no financial reserves or assets to sustain any deviation from his current path.
    He missed the rush he experienced in those deadly encounters, and he had begun dreaming that he worked as a federal game warden, tasting the adrenaline.
    For the past eighteen months, almost every morning before work, he had eaten breakfast with a group of older men—in their seventies and eighties—all veterans, at a gas station diner. They noticed the change in Jake but didn’t discuss it in front of him. Jake could sense that they knew, and he felt at peace in their company. The only thing that appeared to matter to the old men was their newfound respect for him—for his character and what he had been willing to do when faced with evil. Jake was beginning to feel as though they now considered him a peer.
    He poured himself into a career that he didn’t love and strove to be a better husband. He paid more attention to Morgan, he began teaching a young-adult Sunday-school class, and he went to a Southern Baptist couples’ retreat where he badly wanted to fish in the scenic mountain lake but didn’t, which killed him; he knew it had to be the most underfished lake on the entire North American continent.

CHAPTER 11

    I T WAS A dreary, rainy day about fifteen minutes before noon when Morgan and Jake walked through the front door of the Old Waverly Clubhouse. The Sunday buffet, loaded with quintessential Southern cooking, was a family favorite, and they rarely missed it. With Katy at her grandparents’ house in Columbus, the couple was alone. Morgan requested a table near the grand piano.
    The stately dining room was about half-full of mostly Baptists, since their church let out earlier than those of the Methodists, Episcopalians, and Catholics. The only other folks eating were golfing guests. Jake spent most of the meal daydreaming of slipping off to deer hunt that afternoon, but he didn’t know how Morgan would react, since the police hadn’t caught the Peeping Tom and didn’t have any leads. He knew deep down he probably shouldn’t go.
    “That was delicious,” Jake said as he leaned back.
    “As usual,” Morgan replied with a smirk.
    “I ate too much macaroni and cheese.”
    “As usual.”
    “I love it.” He sighed as he tossed his napkin on the table.
    “It’s on the kids’ buffet,” Morgan observed, smiling.
    “So?”
    “I’m just saying. It’s on the kids’ buffet; not all adults