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 witchy storefronts 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 is always a 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.

I’d planned a trip to Salem to spend the night with my mother.

She had a new tour routine she wanted to try out on me, and truth be told, I needed a break from Preston.

He was in a particularly bad mood, to the point where we hadn’t had sex in almost a month.

He blamed the dry spell on work pressure.

Since he was terrible in bed, something I’d tried to address with careful lessons he ignored, I wasn’t all that disappointed.

He jumped at the idea of me visiting my mother.

So I made the drive to Salem, watched my mother’s routine, then begged off when she suggested a night of dancing under the full moon. Those nights always devolved into nudity—she and her witchy friends were big fans of nudity—so I made my polite excuses, turned around, and headed home.

The moment I walked into the apartment I shared with Preston, I knew something was off.

I heard grunts—the sort of grunts you only hear when somebody is either having sex or watching porn—so I stepped lightly when making my way to our bedroom.

Was Preston watching porn? That seemed unlikely, but if he was, maybe that proved he was ready to loosen up in the bedroom.

Frankly, I was desperate for that.

It wasn’t porn.

I stood in the bedroom doorway, watching with dumbfounded disbelief as he railed one of the other secretaries from his father’s office. She was a buxom blonde with the brain capacity of a turnip.

Tiffany.

I didn’t say anything then. I was filled with too much rage.

Instead, I turned on my heel and grabbed the few things of value I cared about from the apartment.

Most of my stuff, including the clothes I was afraid he would dump if he got it into his head to go crazy one day, were at my mother’s house anyway.

On my way out, I put all of his spoons into the garbage disposal.

I didn’t turn it on. I left that for him.

I walked out of his apartment, and life, and suddenly felt freer than I had in years.

I went straight to my mother’s apartment, and she and her friends decided it was time to put a hex on Preston.

I didn’t stop them.

It took him three days to realize I hadn’t come home. Three freaking days. I had no idea how he’d explained the spoons. When he asked why I wasn’t coming home, I told him I was home. Then I proceeded to explain what I’d seen when returning to his apartment.

That apartment had never been mine. I realized that after the fact. It had always been his.

Did Preston apologize? Did he say it had been a lapse in judgement? No. He blamed it on me, like all champion gaslighters. He said he loved me but needed a little thrill in the bedroom. He figured it was something I would overlook. I was with Preston Martin Charles III, after all.

I told him goodbye. Okay, my language was much more colorful. Cutting him loose wasn’t nearly as hard as I’d thought it would be, though. Then I spent the next few weeks debating what I wanted to do.

It had come to me fairly easily.

“I need to be on my own for a little bit, Mom,” I explained. I wasn’t being unkind to her. This was just something that had to be done. “I need to figure out what I want to do with my life.”

Her answer came quickly. “Be a writer. You always wanted to be a writer.”

That was true. “Maybe.”

“You can do that here.” She grabbed my hand. “There’s no better inspiration than Salem.”

She wasn’t wrong. I really did need distance, though. “You have your friends, and I need to find something for myself. I promise to call.”

“But I just got you back.” She was desperate.

“You’ll never lose me again, Mom.” I meant it. “I just need to figure a few things out. Then I’ll be back.”

“Do you promise?”

I hesitated. Could I promise that? “I promise I’ll keep in touch,” I said finally. “I’ll figure out where I want to be, who I want to be, and then we’ll make it work. I’ll be back for visits at least.”

She managed a smile. “He was never worth your time. You know that, don’t you? You’re not the one who was unworthy.”

I did know that. “I still lost myself. I need to find myself again. I don’t know what that will look like, but I’m excited to figure it all out.”

She sighed and nodded. “I’ll be here when you’re ready.”

“I know. You’ve always been here. Finding you was never the problem.”

I left her standing there, watching me drive away. I had no job and no idea who I was. He’d stolen that from me.

I would find answers though. No matter what.