Lucky Charm (Lucky 1)

The curse.

He’d given her an opening to question him, and Gabrielle glanced around to make sure they were alone. Holly was busy finding shampoo to wash the dog, Derek was in town and Hank wasn’t home, either. She might not get another opportunity.

“Do you mind talking about it?”

“The curse? Why not? You’re going to write this book, so you might as well hear the true version of our family history. Besides, I’ve read your work and I know your history with Derek. I don’t believe you’d hurt us.”

“Thank you,” she said, warmed by his apparent faith.

“Let’s sit.” He gestured to an old scarred picnic table with benches on either side.

She lowered herself onto the hard wood.

Fred ambled up to her and plopped himself on the floor at her feet. She gave the dog’s head a few strokes before turning to Thomas, who sat beside her on the bench.

“I know about your generation. Who married who and when, who passed away, who got divorced. The dates and specifics I can get from county records. What I can’t figure out is the rationale behind the belief.”

“Why grown, intelligent men believe in witchcraft?” he asked, surprising Gabrielle with his deep laughter.

“Exactly.” She nodded, glad he’d put it that way and not her. “Why would all of you prefer to believe your family was cursed rather than see your history as an unfortunate set of circumstances?”

Thomas rested against the table. “Because those circumstances keep replaying themselves in every generation. That adds up to a curse, if you ask me.”

Fred pushed his nose into her calf, insistently urging her to give him more attention. She leaned over and petted him some more. “You know the expression, when it rains it pours?” she asked Thomas.

“Of course.”

“Isn’t it possible that your family’s just had more than its share of misfortune? That this is the hand you were dealt?”

He glanced out at the yard. Together they watched Holly retrieve the bucket and shampoo from the garage, along with other things for Fred’s bath.

Thomas met her gaze. “My father laid eyes on my mother and it was love at first sight. My mother said the same thing about him.”

Gabrielle placed her elbow on the table and propped her chin in her hand, listening intently.

“Like the Corwin males before him, my father was determined to beat the curse. His father, my grandfather, died not long after catching his wife cavorting with the neighbor, a widower who’d lost his wife and was lonely. My grandmother would go help him with the kids. A little too much helping went on, if you get my drift. My grandfather walked in on them when he came home from work early one day. He shot the neighbor and my grandmother died of a heart attack right there on the spot.”

Gabrielle blinked. “Seriously?”

“Sounds like a comedy of errors, doesn’t it?” He tapped his foot against the dirt on the ground, discussing the tale as if it had happened to another family.

Gabrielle had seen that kind of behavior before in her interviews. Subjects often found it easier to detach themselves from things that haunted them, rather than let themselves face the emotion. Especially men.

Gabrielle inclined her head. “It does,” she admitted.

“We haven’t even gotten to my parents’ story,” Thomas said. “Mom and Dad married and had their kids pretty quickly. They were happy. Even they thought they’d conquered the original Mary Perkins curse.”

Gabrielle knew what was coming next. “Until…”

“A huge storm hit the East Coast. A nor’easter, probably, though I’m not sure if they called it that back then. Wiped out most of the town and my father’s business.”

“What did he do for a living?” Gabrielle asked.

“He was a blacksmith, an extremely talented one. His shop, his tools and equipment—all gone.” Thomas slashed his hand through the air.

Nature, Gabrielle thought. A storm, which she knew from growing up in New England, often devastated the coastline and businesses along with it.

But before she could point that out, Thomas continued. “The storm hit late afternoon. We were all home except for my father. Since my grandmother—my mother’s mother—lived with us, Mom left us kids with her mother so she could go out and look for my father. She never made it.”