Making Midlife Magic: A Paranormal Women's Fiction Novel (Forty Is Fabulous Book 1) Read online

  Making Midlife Magic

  Forty is Fabulous 1

  Heloise Hull

  Henwin Press LTD

  Contents

  Making Midlife Magic

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Afterword

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2020 by Heloise Hull

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Any appearance to real people is purely a coincidence and should not be inferred.

  Making Midlife Magic

  After finding my soon-to-be ex-husband together with my soon-to-be ex-assistant, I realize his “for better or for worse” didn’t include my forties.

  An extended vacation on a remote Italian island sounds like the perfect antidote to a midlife crisis—until I arrive. I’m expecting Chianti and pasta. What I get is a run-down bed and breakfast with the oldest Nonna in existence.

  There’s something about this island. Something odd. Like how everyone keeps calling me Mamma or how I’m the first tourist in decades.

  And that’s before I wake up to a talking chipmunk holding a glass of wine. He says I have something ancient in me, and for once, it’s not my creaking joints.

  When I finally discover the island’s deepest secrets, I know my forties are about to be fabulous, if only I can survive long enough to enjoy them.

  Fans of K.F. Breene, Robyn Peterman, and Shannon Mayer will love this new twist on paranormal women’s fiction. For those who want experienced, seasoned characters in a whole new, magical world, book a trip to Aradia now! A little bit campy, a little bit epic, but 100% fun.

  “Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.”

  -Albert Camus

  Chapter One

  I’d give anything to be wrong in this moment—my full spectrum night goggles, my thermal camera, even my EVP meter. They never helped me find a real ghost anyway. I’d even allow my sniveling, ex-husband, who never loved any of my hobbies, to crow for the rest of his miserable life that he was right and I was wrong. Then, I wouldn’t be staring at a dead body while its haunting residue floated inside my once very delicious glass of Italian red wine.

  If only.

  Three Days Earlier

  * * *

  “Where’s Marla? I need my wrong coffee order for the five hundredth day in a row,” I joked. Nobody in the office laughed. Tough crowd.

  That was fine. Nothing could derail me today. For the first time in almost a year, I’d booked an entire afternoon alone. A little treat to myself for dropping my twin sons off at college last week and only crying once, alone in their mixed-gender dorm bathroom.

  Today, I’d finally use my gym membership to swim a few laps, maybe sit in the sauna, get a massage, and cap it off with one of those expensive wheatgrass açai protein shakes. Or whatever was cool these days. Just thinking healthy thoughts made it feel like those stubborn ten pounds were already melting away. Maybe tonight, I’d even feel relaxed enough to seduce Jim. With the lights out, obviously. It wasn’t that I was overweight, merely a little fluffy, as my sons used to say when they were younger.

  Oh no. Don’t think about the boys. They’re excited to be on their own. They had each other. It was fine. Everything was fine.

  Before any seducing could happen, I needed to do a little grooming. I could thank my Mediterranean heritage for all the hair, I guess. Or curse it. I tanned easily, but good Lord, the hair. My eyebrows had only gotten more out of control with age. Whereas other moms complained about thinning eyebrows and cursed their zealous, over-plucking days, I’d given up on taming the beast a decade ago. Maybe two. If I was into honesty.

  “Seriously, anyone know where Marla is?” I asked. Nobody looked up from their desk.

  I may have been a senior sales associate at our insurance company, but everyone thought of me as Jim’s wife. At some point, I’d stopped trying to impress them with sales numbers and nursed the hurt with Cheetos.

  I checked my watch and considered my options. If I wanted to make my massage, I’d have to leave Marla a detailed email, text, and voicemail and then re-do everything tomorrow morning.

  “Okay, if she decides to do her job today, have her call me.”

  Crickets.

  I resisted the urge to strip and shimmy across a row of desks to see if anyone was alive, but I already knew the answer. This office sucked the life out of everything. Even the ferns and succulents we’d brought in to spruce up the place only lasted a month before they realized they preferred death to hanging out here day after day. I shuddered to think what a goldfish would do to escape.

  I grabbed my purse and headed for the stairs. Step one: take more steps. I was already doing so well in this new phase of my life. October in St. Louis was among the best in the country. Upper seventies, blue skies, crisp air, and beautiful ridges of trees all going out in a fiery blaze of glory. I sucked in a breath. Beautiful.

  As I reached for my car door, a gentle bump rolled across the asphalt parking lot. Odd. It was so slight, it could’ve been my imagination. Except a second, stronger wave rippled across the ground, and I hugged the car for support. My chest felt tight and panicky as fear squeezed my lungs. This was it. The big one.

  St. Louis sat on the New Madrid fault line, and local authorities had been warning residents for years that it wasn’t a matter of if, but when. What had they told us during earthquake drills in school? Something about doorways and… getting high? Or low? Open space, definitely open space.

  The ground groaned awake like a beast rising from its slumber. I looked longingly at my car. Surely the parking lot wouldn’t swallow it. Another surge threw me backwards, and I skidded across the ground, ripping my favorite skirt. Trees creaked and swayed, while animals chittered and squawked, all racing to take cover.

  “Open space,” I muttered, steadying myself between jolts. I rocked back and forth, trying to stay limber and sway with the rolling until it stopped. Consciously, I knew it had been a minute at most, but I felt trapped in a recurring loop of shaking and groaning.

  Finally, it subsided, and I wondered how long I needed to wait for aftershocks. Also, why wasn’t everyone streaming out of the building screaming?

  I pulled out my phone for updates, giddy in my survival of the Big One. Scrolling only took a moment because there was… nothing. No mention. I paused to digest this. Maybe Twitter was slow to report because the earthquake took out important systems. Or something like that.

  Whatever it was, I needed to check on my employe
es. My hair was disheveled and half of my leg had an angry looking scrape. A button had popped off my blouse, exposing my no-nonsense cotton bra, but after that quake, I doubted anyone else would look runway ready.

  I pushed my way through the doors and took the stairs two at a time, adrenaline still coursing in my veins. When I burst into the office, my eyes bulging and my chest heaving, everyone’s heads snapped up. Mouths dropped. Huh. So that’s what it took to finally get their attention.

  Rick, the office manager, guided me to a chair. “God, Ava, what happened?”

  I stared at him. “Are you serious? An earthquake happened.” Wildly, I searched for obvious signs of damage. No overturned filing cabinets, no broken glass littering the floor. Once again, nothing.

  Rick’s hand moved slowly to the phone beside us. “Maybe I should call Jim.”

  “He’s not answering,” I said. I ran to the window, dragging Rick with me. “There, see?” I pointed to a crack in the parking lot. From here, it looked like a giant scar.

  “That is strange,” he admitted, “but I think we would’ve felt it had there been an earthquake.”

  All eyes were on me in undisguised interest. Damn our open floor plan. Jim had insisted on it to keep an eye on everyone. I didn’t realize the downside until now.

  I patted my frizzy hair, feeling even crazier than it. “I think I need to go.”

  Rick looked concerned and almost reached out to stop me. I cut him off before he could usher me back to my office while he called 911.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said and ran.

  I hopped over the cracked asphalt—yes, it was cracked, I double-checked—jumped in the car, and turned the key. I drummed my fingers on the wheel as I screeched out of the lot toward home. This was all too weird. Thankfully the boys decided to go to school out of state, but I sent them a quick text message letting them know I was fine if something did hit the news.

  Nothing seemed damaged as I drove. In fact, our neighborhood looked oddly normal. Two-story homes with three car garages were lined in a perfect row while black walnut and oak trees stood upright. I got to our house at the end of the cul-de-sac and froze.

  Marla’s red Subaru sat in the driveway.

  My panic from the earthquake took a backseat as I double-checked the license plate, then my address. Not that I didn’t know my own way home, but nothing about this day felt right.

  I tried to remember if Jim had mentioned needing to borrow Marla. Had I forgotten? It was possible, but deep down, suspicions webbed my mind, spreading out and gathering all the evidence I had chosen to ignore for two years.

  Like when the boys told me that Jim had talked to Marla way too long at the last family day BBQ, or how she had a small smirk the last few times she’d gotten my coffee order wrong. I always thought it was because she was blonde and embraced the stereotype, but maybe I was mistaken. Maybe she knew exactly what she was doing.

  Quietly, I parked, eased the front door open, and slipped inside.

  I stood in the silence of the living room and took in the remnants of my life. While it no longer contained the twins, with their sticky finger prints and Curious George cartoons in the background, there was still an uneven workload. Work, laundry, dinner, sleep. Repeat.

  That was my life.

  I had already received my starter pack of menopause. Infrequent hot flashes. Weight gain. Chin hairs. Apparently, there was a thing called perimenopause, so that was frightening. I didn’t feel old enough to be there. And yet, some days, I felt ancient.

  A thud from the bedroom caught my attention, and a feeling of cold certainty washed over me. I knew what I was going to find, but I still wanted the reality of it. Seeing them together would make it easier in court. And easier to get over.

  I made my way up the stairs, barely hesitating at my bedroom door. It was my bedroom, after all. Plus, it was like ripping off a Band-Aid. The quicker the better. I hadn’t been in love with Jim when I married him, unless intense gratitude could be considered a kind of love. On the other hand, I never expected this.

  The moment I saw them together in my bed, intertwined like two crabs wrestling in the surf, I knew I had made a mistake. This did suck. It was not like a Band-Aid in the least. This pain lingered. So I did the first thing I could think of. I threw a shoe at his hairy backside.

  The shoe banged into the headboard, startling the lovers. Jim saw the shoe and, honest to God, cackled. No apologies, no groveling from my soon-to-be-ex-husband. Simply a, “Maybe if you went to the gym more, your aim wouldn’t be so terrible.”

  Okay, so we were doing this.

  “Maybe if you made more money, I’d have more time to go to the gym instead of having to work,” I replied calmly. Then I threw a lamp. “It’s every little girl’s dream to grow up and sell insurance.”

  He caught it before it crashed to pieces against the wall. “Yes, your horrible life is all my fault.”

  “Well it’s certainly not all mine!” Honestly, it was impressive how quickly we could morph into our old arguments, as if one of us wasn’t butt naked with an audience.

  A young voice piped up from the corner of our bedroom. “Maybe I should go.”

  I whirled on my soon-to-be ex-assistant, who was currently cowering and attempting to cover herself with my expensive bamboo sheets. I tried not to look too closely, but her taut skin with its astonishing lack of cellulite called to me like an annoying siren song. I couldn’t stop gawking.

  “What gave you that impression?” I asked. “Was it when I walked in on you blowing my husband or once the pottery started flying?”

  Marla bunched the sheets in her hand and started feeling around for her underwear. “All of the above?”

  I shot a fake finger gun at her. “I always said you’d go far. I just didn’t imagine it to be so far up my husband’s—”

  “Ava.” Jim gave me a reproachful look.

  I couldn’t believe it had come to this. Where was my happily ever after? My fairytale ending? When I married Jim, it wasn’t stars in our eyes and moonlight in our wake. It was safety and security. But it was solid.

  I should have known better. I guess part of me did. After growing up bouncing between foster homes and the street as a teenager, I always knew when the water got high, the survivors got higher. Now was the time to bail out.

  As much as I wanted to fling more things at him, I was done making a scene. They didn’t deserve the show.

  “Fine. You know what? Stay. I’m going to remove myself from the conversation.”

  “And go where?”

  “Anywhere.”

  Jim barked a laugh. “To do what? Ghost hunt full-time? I really don’t know how I put up with your idiosyncrasies for so many years.”

  “Twenty,” Marla interjected.

  We both stared at her. She shrugged. “What? I have you down to buy flowers for your twentieth anniversary next month.”

  I threw up my hands. Oh, that was it. I went to the closet and yanked down the biggest suitcase we owned, and with no regard for what I was packing, threw in clothes and toiletries alike. “Marla, cancel the anniversary flowers and book me a ticket to Italy. I literally do not care where. I’m taking a vacation.”

  Thankfully, I had squirreled away a little money in a secret bank account from every paycheck over the past few years. As a wise psychopath once said, “I will never go hungry again!” Thank you, Scarlet O’Hara. Neither will I.

  Marla, finally comfortable with something she knew how to do, dropped my sheets and grabbed her phone. I only peeked twice at her non-saggy, un-stretched boobs while her fingers flew across the touchscreen. Kids these days didn’t appreciate what they had when they had it. She was in her mid-twenties, but anything under thirty felt like a kid to me.

  Jim leaned against the doorway of the closet, arms across his chest. “So that’s it?”

  “That’s it,” I agreed.

  “You’re going to run away?”

  “Sad that half of your money is r
unning off with me to a beautiful, sun-drenched Italian island? Marla, make it an island.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Jim rolled his eyes. “Take your money. I don’t care if you spend it all on phony gauges, thermal cameras, and EMP recorders.”

  “It’s EVP, you idiot.”

  “Whatever,” Jim said. “Ghosts. Aren’t. Real.”

  “Why do you hate my hobbies so much?” I held up a hand. “Wait, don’t answer that. I don’t care. Your hate is not my problem anymore. And you know what? I hate insurance. I’m never selling it again. Buy me out so I can go fan dollar bills over a dark, handsome stranger.”

  “Now you’re just being stupid. What Italian man would want an over-the-hill forty-year-old woman like you? They have Italian women. You’re nothing but a harpy, always harping on everyone around you about something. Why do you think the boys wanted us to leave so soon when we dropped them off?”

  I clenched my hands to stop from breaking his nose. I did not have it in me to go with grace. “Jim?”

  “What?” he asked. “Finally seeing the real light?”

  “Go to hell, you over-compensating dick.”

  “After you—”

  “Done!” Marla chimed in, looking to me for praise. It was all I could do not to throw the other lamp.

  Chapter Two

  I looked up from my printed folder of reservations and check-in times at the dilapidated cottage on a rocky coast in the middle of a dirt road and swore eternal revenge on Marla.