My heart caught. For just a moment, it was like nothing had ever happened. Like Elizabeth had never been gone. Like Lauren and I had never divorced. As if they were coming back from a long weekend and I was just there to pick them up. Like I’d never missed a day.

I knew the moment was fleeting. I knew it would dissolve and we’d have to go back to dealing with the present. Life didn’t let you tie a nice little bow on things in that way.

But, for a moment, it was nice to pretend.

Lauren reached me first. She dropped her bag and hugged me.

“Hi,” she whispered.

“Hi.”

She pulled back from me, but kept her arms around my neck, her eyes showing concern. “Are you okay?”

I nodded. “Fine.”

“Joe?”

“Fine,” I said, pulling away from her gently.

She let go, but her eyes stayed on me.

Elizabeth set her backpack down and we stood there awkwardly for a moment. Then she stepped forward and hugged me.

I wrapped my arms around her and shut my eyes.

“Did you run today?” she asked.

Her hair smelled like lemons and soap.

“No,” I said. “Not yet.”

“Maybe we can go tonight then?” she asked.

I held onto her, felt my heart catching again.

Like life hadn’t gone off the rails for so long.

“Sure,” I said. “Whatever you want.”

I knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but I’d do my best to give her whatever she wanted. I wasn’t naïve enough to think we were out of the woods yet, just because she and Lauren were getting along and she’d wanted to come back to Coronado. There was still a long road in front of us.

I opened my eyes, still hugging her tightly. My vision was blurred through the tears and I looked at Lauren.

“Are you alright?” Elizabeth asked. “Your voice sounds funny.”

I laughed and kept my arms around her.

I smiled at Lauren.

“I’m fine,” I said.

THE END

AUTHOR’S NOTE

After I wrote the third book in the series, THREAD OF BETRAYAL, the number one question I received was, “Will there be a fourth book in the series???”

The obvious answer, if you’ve read this far, is yes, because you just read it.

(And, by the way – thank you. A myriad of folks turned down the first book in the series, THREAD OF HOPE, for a myriad of reasons. My wife, because she is brilliant, told me they were wrong. As usual, she was right and THREAD OF HOPE is, by far, the most widely read book I’ve ever written. So thank you for reading the books and supporting the series.)

And I assume that now, even though all of the questions asked in the first book have been answered, the number one question I’ll be receiving is, “Will there be a fifth book in the series?”

I’m happy to tell you YES.

THREAD OF FEAR will be available in December of 2014.

You can sign up for my monthly newsletter if you’d like to make sure you hear about all my upcoming releases. I promise to never use your email for any other reason or to sell it to anyone else.

And, if you’ll, keep reading, I’ve included a description and excerpt from THE MURDER PIT, the first book in a brand new humorous cozy mystery series I’ve started.

Here’s a description and excerpt from THE MURDER PIT, the first book in a brand new humorous cozy mystery series by Jeff Shelby.

THE MURDER PIT

 

Daisy Savage finally has everything she wants. A new husband. A bunch of kids. A charming old house.

              What she doesn’t want is a dead body.

              When a frozen pipe in the basement of her century-old home leads her and her husband downstairs into a newly discovered crawl space, they find a coal chute they didn’t know they had. And a corpse inside of it.

              Things become complicated when Daisy realizes she knew the victim. And things get even worse when it becomes increasingly clear that the body was placed there to make Daisy look like the killer.

              Against her husband’s advice and her own common sense, Daisy makes it her mission to prove to the denizens of Moose River that she is innocent. But doing so may be more dangerous than she planned.

ONE

I wanted an old house.

I did not want an old house with a dead body in it.

“Move the light a little,” Jake said.

It actually seemed more like his butt said it because at the moment, he was on his hands and knees, trying to fit into an elevated, three-and-a-half foot crawlspace that appeared to not have been entered in close to 150 years. Given that he was a little over six feet and two hundred pounds, he was…struggling.

And being stubborn.

“Why don’t you just let me get up there?” I said, trying to move the light to wherever he wanted it. “I’m half your size.”

“More to the left,” his butt said. “Because we have no idea what the hell is up here.”

“Well, we know there’s a frozen pipe up there,” I said.

He grunted, which I knew was his way of telling me that he didn’t think I was funny.

I got that a lot.

My husband of six months was in the crawlspace of our 150-year-old home for a couple of reasons:

The aforementioned frozen pipe, which is more or less a regular thing when you have to deal with Minnesota winters.

And because we owned a 150 year old home.

When I got divorced, I also divorced myself of the 5,000 square foot modern monstrosity that had been forced upon me by first husband. I’d made mistakes in both husband and house choosing. So when we finally cut the cord, I decided I wanted a house with character. It took me two years to find the right house and during that time, I’d also found the right husband. Jake, the one boy I’d truly loved in high school had found his way back into my life and we’d picked up right where we’d left off twenty years earlier. And right before our wedding and merging our families, I’d found my house with character.

A century and a half old. (Have I mentioned that already?) Right next to the railroad tracks. One bathroom. A dilapidated garage. Doors that didn’t close properly. A hole in the roof. Bats in the attic. A much-rumored ghost.

Jake stood outside with the realtor the first time he saw it and said, “This might have…too much character, Daisy.”

But it didn’t. I’d fallen in love with the original wood floors and the narrow staircase and the small rooms and the stories that were lurking in the walls. I wanted it and when he saw how much I wanted it, he relented with a smile and a shake of his head.

And now he was trying to get a hairdryer close enough to a frozen pipe to thaw it out. I couldn’t see his face, but I was fairly certain there was no smile.

“I can’t reach it,” he said.

“Which is why I should be up there,” I reminded him.

He muttered something and slid himself backwards, his feet coming out first. He lowered himself down to the ground, easing his way over the concrete ledge that made up the floor of the crawl space. I tightened the elastic wrapped in my hair, tugging the ponytail to make sure it was tight.

“You look like one of those people,” I said to him.

He surveyed his dirt and dust covered body. “A coal miner?”

“No, one of those people in Pompeii. The ancient massive volcano?”

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

“I know,” I said, taking the hair dryer from him. “But I still love you. Now boost me up.”

He lifted me up and I slithered into the dirty, concrete space. Spider webs clogged the wooden beams above my head and the dust lifted up into my eyes and mouth. I coughed and wiped at my eyes.