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25: Blessings
Sean
For as small as this town is, I have to hand it to the medical personnel and non-medical allied health staff in Candlewood. They take patient privacy and protected health information seriously. Not a peep, or a rumor or a whisper anywhere in town gets back to me about Ian and Darby visiting Dr. Myers for a fertility consultation. In fact, by the time I start wondering about Darby’s recurring atypical headaches and mood swings, and the subtle but potent change to her scent, then use Big SIS to hack into the hospital’s information system again, she’s been taking the medication for over two weeks.
It’s an estrogen blocker Darby’s taking, a drug to stimulate ovulation. “I should have known,” I whisper to myself in my office. After Ian’s medical visit, it was only a matter of time.
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Where Wild Things Roam 27: Disasters
Sean It takes the valley four days to stop burning, and by that time, nothing there is left alive.“Sweet Arianrhod,” I whisper, following Jack as we sort through the rubble of the cottage for anything salvageable or that Darby may want or need, but there’s nothing. The few pieces of intact stoneware we unearth from the kitchen pulverize to powder as soon as we try to move them. The stone knives splinter to razor shards. The supernatural fire was so hot even the glass is fused into brittle, glistening drips and puddles, the mortar between the cottage’s stones baked into choking dust.A few charred tree trunks twist skyward in pained supplication like the shriveled, blackened hands of the damned, all that remains of the once achingly beautiful orchard. Of the younger, smaller trees, only piles
Where Wild Things Roam 28: Secrets
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Where Wild Things Roam 29: Wronged
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Where Wild Things Roam 30: Baby
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Where Wild Things Roam 33: Futures
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