Page 1 of The Write Track
PROLOGUE
TWO YEARS AGO
“How can you want to leave all of this?”
My mother, Taffy Oakley, fixed me with a grave look. Sometimes it was hard to tell when she was being serious because she wore her hair in twin braids—Laura Ingalls style—underneath a glittery pink witch hat. Her makeup was caked on to the point it had to be scraped off every night. Her false eyelashes were metallic silver. Her lipstick was midnight blue.
I looked at her, hard. “You can’t be serious.”
If my mother was the sun, I was the moon. She spent her days smiling and embracing the campiness of Salem, Massachusetts, and I trailed behind, always glowering. The kitsch of the town made her happy. I, on the other hand, felt itchy whenever Halloween season rolled around. At least now. There had been a time when I’d embraced it all.
In summer, Salem was just like any other East Coast city. Well, mostly. We had water sports and good food. The streets were still flooded with tourists, but less than a quarter of them were dressed in Halloween costumes. Yes, all the witchystorefronts were still open during that time. But the vibe was somehow different.
The second August rolled around, and people could drink pumpkin lattes without getting some serious side-eye, Salem transformed into the sort of town I’d loved as a kid. That love had been driven out of me in adulthood.
Was I even an adult? At twenty-five, I didn’t feel very adult. I still loved all things paranormal.
I’d had to hide my love of pumpkin everything—along with my daffy mother—for three years while dating Preston Martin Charles III. Yes, three first names isalwaysa red flag. When you add numerals after a name, that takes you into unbearable territory.
When I’d met him fresh out of college—Northeastern University, thank you very much—I hadn’t realized he would be the one to ruin my life. I’d seen potential in him. He’d gone to Yale, after all. That meant he was smart and going places. You couldn’t graduate from Yale and turn into a dud in life. It just wasn’t allowed.
Preston had been charming and often feigned baffled amusement when I talked about growing up in Salem. His parents lived in Boston, so he was familiar with my town. It was only twenty minutes away. At the start, his little digs hadn’t bothered me. I didn’t always like Salem either. But I’d already fallen head over heels in love with him—or I thought I had—before I realized his “little digs” were actually a huge problem.
Preston came from the sort of family that did not dress up for Halloween in anything other than a three-piece suit, complete with a pocket scarf and an ascot. I’d heard stories about rich Boston families throwing over-the-top Halloween parties and assumed Preston would loosen up in a social setting.
That had been a mistake. Preston never loosened up.
Then I’d told myself he was so serious because he had something to prove to his father, Preston Martin Charles II. Never junior. I’d learned that the hard way. If you have enough money, you are never a junior… ever.
The father was hard on the son because he had a legacy to live up to. If the third Preston failed, it would reflect badly on the second Preston. The original Preston was still alive, and he was a real turd. Once the third Preston, my Preston, opened his own boutique real estate company under the family’s umbrella, he would relax. I just knew it.
That had turned out to be a miscalculation too.
I’d soldiered through three years of bad moods, judgement, and pointed looks. Preston’s mother was always nice but in a very remote sort of way. She would compliment my funky fashion sense in one sentence then suggest a shopping spree in the next. When shopping, she would steer me away from the places with nifty platform boots and boho shawls.
Before I knew it, my entire closet had been transformed. When I visited my mother—something I had to do on the sly because the one and only meeting between my mother and Preston’s parents had gone so poorly—she didn’t recognize me.
My mother was not the judgmental sort. She lived in a bubble of happiness and firmly believed that the energy you put into the world would be returned to you tenfold, which was a Wiccan tenet. She’d even tried to explain Wicca to the Charles family.
That had been yet another mistake. They’d immediately marked her as a nut, and there would be no swaying that initial impression.
My mother was also not a normal mother. She was a free spirit who asked me which animal I was feeling like every morning when I woke.
If I felt like a cat, she encouraged me to embrace my cat energy and stalk around staring at people from isolated corners.If I felt like a butterfly, she insisted I flutter up and down the streets. That had been fun when I was six. Not so much when I was sixteen. Thankfully, most of the families in Salem embraced the weird. They might not always get it, but they didn’t really care, either.
As soon as you crossed over into Boston, though, that mentality changed. Preston’s family had taught me that.
Yet I still—still—hadn’t put the distance between us I should have when I realized he was a world-class jerk. No, I’d toughed it out, all the while telling myself he would get better as he matured. His behavior was all temporary because he felt too much pressure.
At the start, Preston had always acted bemused by my hippy-dippy ways. He would say, “you’re such a flake, Bella,” and I would pretend it didn’t bother me. It was a term of endearment, after all.
I, Belladonna Oakley, wasn’t actually a flake. I just enjoyed life with the same verve my mother had always taught me to embrace.
Slowly, Preston had drained that vitality from me until I was a shell of my former self. I’d gone through the motions and worked as a secretary at his father’s company. I’d dressed how they wanted me to dress and pretended it didn’t bother me that my whole wardrobe was gray, black, and white. Not even a splash of color.
Preston and his parents—not me, but his parents—had started talking about an eventual engagement. That would be worth it, right? That’s what I’d assumed, anyway. I’d been wrong, of course, but I’d told myself it was true.
Then, three weeks ago, the facade of what I’d built had come crumbling down.
