Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 121146 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 606(@200wpm)___ 485(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121146 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 606(@200wpm)___ 485(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
Their husbands weren’t much better. They all just talked stocks and bonds and sports and whether it was more prestigious to go to Harvard or Yale. Celia had attended USF—a state school—on a scholarship for students in extreme poverty. So she had nothing to add to these conversations.
The kids her skinny sister-in-laws had produced were little terrors—every one of them had a nanny who couldn’t seem to keep them in hand. They tore through the house yelling and screaming at each other while the adults ignored them and the aforementioned nannies ran after them, begging them to behave.
All in all, the Thielgoods were a pretty unpleasant and unrelatable family and it was Celia’s Mother-in-Law-to-be who was the head of them all. Since Peter’s father was dead, she ruled the family with an iron fist hidden inside a velvet glove. It was a well-known fact that she could and would change her will at any time, which meant that all of them had to do whatever she said. The minute she cried or pouted they all jumped to attention, afraid of getting cut off.
Which is probably the only reason they all came down here to spend Thanksgiving in the first place, Celia thought to herself as she peeled yet another potato. Wish they would have stayed home!
She loved Peter—he could be so kind and spontaneous and generous. But she was getting sick of his family.
Celia glanced at the window again, but this time she looked at her reflection instead of the road outside. A tired-looking woman with big brown eyes and long, dark brown hair, wearing a simple red wrap dress stared back at her. She’d been up since five that morning, working on the “Thanksgiving Feast” that Mother Frances demanded and she was beginning to wonder if she was going to get it done in time.
She’d assumed that at least one of Peter’s sisters would offer to help but that had turned out to be a mistake. Could she make dinner for 25 people all by herself in time to sit down by six? Celia was betting she would be completely exhausted no matter what the answer turned out to be.
Come on now, Celia—getting up early to make Thanksgiving dinner isn’t the only reason you’re tired, whispered a little voice in her head. What about all those weird dreams you’ve been having? Haven’t you been waking up half a dozen times a night and having trouble getting back to sleep? Admit it—you have!
Celia tried her best to push the thought away…only it wouldn’t quite go. It was true that in the past couple of months her dreams had gotten extremely strange. She had read once that you could never dream of anyone you hadn’t seen at least once in your life. But the faces that kept popping up in her dreams were definitely not of people she’d ever met. Faces she couldn’t fully remember once she woke, but they filled her with a strange emotion she’d never felt before—a kind of dread mixed with longing, which made no sense at all. They—
Suddenly there was a loud knocking at the front door—so loud that Celia could hear it even all the way back in the mansion’s kitchen.
“Dickie—go see who that is, won’t you?” she heard Mother Frances call to one of her daughter’s husbands. “Honestly—who bothers people in their home on Thanksgiving?”
There was more mumbling and grumbling that Celia couldn’t quite make out. She became aware that she had stopped peeling potatoes and was listening intently to what was going on in the other room, though why it should interest her so deeply, she didn’t know.
She heard the creak of one of the solid oak front doors swinging open and then her soon to be brother in law’s voice saying,
“What can we do for you? I’m afraid I need to let you know right now that we donate to charities of our own choosing and we don’t have any cash on hand.”
“Don’t want your fucking money,” a deep, somehow familiar voice growled. “We came for our mate.”
“What my brother means to say is that we’re here for Celia Alvarez,” another voice—still deep but not quite as growly—said more politely. “Can you get her, please? We’re here to Claim her.”
2
CELIA
At the sound of her name, the knife in Celia’s hand slipped and she gave a little gasp as she felt a sharp pain.
“Dios!” she muttered, looking down to see blood welling from her index finger. Who were the men at the door and why were they looking for her?
Before she could answer the question, she heard her brother-in-law-to-be say,
“Who? What are you talking about? There’s nobody named that here.”
“Yes, there is!” a female voice said—Peter’s oldest sister, Celia thought. “She’s that chubby Mexican woman in the kitchen. The one Peter swears he’s going to marry for some reason.”