Traveler trilogy Book 2.
Five years after killing Levi Cornwall, Arthur Morgan is happy. He has a wife who loves him, an honest job he enjoys, and two beautiful children named Sadie and Hiram. All of it is turned on its head, however, when Francis S...
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Arthur stood on the front porch of their little shack in Saint Denis. It was just before sunrise, and the steaming cup of coffee in his hand let loose swirls of fragrant mist into the muggy, humid air.
It had rained last night, and unlike in the mountains where rain made the air smell of rocks and pine and earth, rain here in the swamp made everything smell of mud and sulfur because of the thick coating of sticky, gumbo-brown pluff mud that formed the foundation of the nearby marsh. Precipitation aerosolized the scent, and it made the air smell like rotten eggs. Almost as if Arthur was in hell.
He hated Saint Denis. In fact, he'd always hated Saint Denis. The swamps had their own kind of wild charm, but cities like this were filthy, full of death and sickness, and made him feel almost claustrophobic because of the towering buildings and bustling sidewalks.
"What are you doing up so early?" Tori asked, materializing behind him. He heard her come though the screen door, but said nothing. Something inside his heart was quite melancholy this morning, and he couldn't help but think of Sean MacGuire for some reason.
She wrapped her arms around him from behind and pressed a kiss into the center of his back, handling him as gently as she would one of their children.
"Couldn't sleep," he replied gently. "Figured I might as well get somethin' done instead of wakin' you up with my tossin' and turnin'."
"What's wrong?" was his wife's next question. "You look tense."
Arthur shook his head and took another sip of his coffee. "The other me that's running around right now is in a mood, I think. I can... sort of feel what he' feelin' in a much more muted way, if that makes sense. I keep thinkin' about Jenny and about Sean, and both of 'em make me even sadder."
"Why?" she questioned. "Did something happen?"
"What day is it?"
"August 2nd."
He nodded in shame, remembering what had happened on that day. "Sean died yesterday. I think Jenny is still alive, but I think the other me knows somethin' about her that upsets him." He thought for a minute longer. "Somethin' to do with Micah."
For indeed, when he thought of Micah, there was a feeling of white-hot anger that hadn't been there before. It ate at him the way a thorn ate at living tissue and turned it into an angry, pus-filled sore. But he couldn't quite put his finger on what it was that made him so intensely angry. It was like trying to see the bottom of a creek through murky water; there was a blurry outline, and nothing more. There were no more clues for him to go off either, and it seemed every stone had been overturned.
There was something between him and Jenny now, something unromantic and secretive that brought them closer than they'd ever been before. He felt protective of her in much the same way he did with his daughter, and he'd be damned if he let anything happen to her, in spite of his very clear memories of never having said more than three sentences to her before, and having buried her lifeless body himself.
