Title: The House Guests
Author: Emilie Richards
Publisher: MIRA
Genre: Mystery, Contemporary
Release Date: 29th June 2021
BLURB supplied by Harlequin Trade Publishing
Teenage Savannah's father passed away recently and she has been rebelling against her stepmother, Cassie, since. When she happens upon a pouch filled with cash in a parking lot with some new friends she's trying to impress, she decides to keep it in an act of defiance. When Cassie learns of her crime after Savannah has already spent the money, and learns that the money belonged to a woman, Amber, who has since been evicted along with her teenage son Will because they couldn't pay the rent after losing the pouch of money, she invites Amber and Will to move in with them. As they become involved in each other's lives, the teenagers develop a friendship while the mothers do the same. But while Cassie is trying to figure out what happened to her husband in the months before he passed away - why he was becoming distant and draining the funds in their bank accounts, leaving them destitute upon his death - Amber is clearly trying to outrun something dark in her own past.
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EXCERPT
1
Amber Blair had spent most of her
thirty-four years trying not to think about luck. Her daddy had told her there
were only two kinds. Either you came into the world with the luck of the early
bird or the early worm. The kind he’d been born with was obvious. Nothing that
had gone wrong in all his years had to do with simply hanging around the edges
of life, waiting for something good to fall in his lap. It was all about luck.
Her mother, tight-lipped and seething,
had rarely voiced opinions. As a receptionist at the Halfway to Paradise motel,
she had been too busy checking people in, and giving out room keys—and probably
a little extra—to worry about luck.
Like most people, Amber had acquired
something from both parents. She had inherited her father’s early worm luck,
oddly coupled with her mother’s work ethic. Against tremendous odds she had
scrambled to support herself and her son on her feet in restaurants, instead of
on her back in cheap motels. Her mother had been remote and disinterested, but years
of watching her determination to survive had helped.
“Haven’t seen you for a while.” The
manager at the cash register of Things From the Springs greeted Amber with a
wide smile. She was middle-aged and overweight, refreshingly unaware that
spandex and sequins weren’t good choices for minimizing either. Her plastic
nameplate read Ida, but Amber had never told Ida her own name, a habit she’d
developed after leaving home at sixteen. Still, Ida never forgot a face.
“It has been a while,” Amber said.
“You feeling better?”
Amber wasn’t surprised that Ida
remembered the day two months before when she had fainted facedown in the
women’s clothing aisle, strawberry blond hair spread wide on a table stacked
with shorts and T-shirts. The manager had insisted Amber go right to the
hospital. Amber had thanked her, then headed to work instead. Three days later,
though, she had seen a doctor after Will, her son, gazed at her in horror and
announced that her green eyes were rimmed by an ominous yellow.
Of course, the news hadn’t been good.
Hepatitis A had arrived with a flourish, and she had been so dehydrated that,
despite all her protests, she’d been hospitalized for a day, a bill that had
nearly sunk them.
Health insurance was a luxury she had
never indulged in.
“Yes. Definitely better,” she said now.
She didn’t add that she still tired easily or that she was struggling to regain
the weight she’d lost. Jaundice, the colorful bonus, was finally gone, and she
was back at work.
“You were caught up in that hepatitis
thing, weren’t you? The one at that restaurant…” The manager snapped her
fingers. “Electric something?”
“Dine Eclectic.”
“You closed for a while, right?”
Because two of the kitchen staff had
also been infected, Dine Eclectic, the much promoted addition to restaurants in
Tarpon Springs, Florida, had closed until health inspectors had given
permission to reopen. Amber had been forbidden to go back to work until the
jaundice and other symptoms disappeared. During most of the weeks of illness,
she had been far too sick to work even if she’d wanted to. She certainly had
needed to, because from an armchair in the apartment she shared with
sixteen-year-old Will, she’d watched the savings she had so carefully hoarded
dwindle to nothing.
“We’ve been open again for a while now,”
she said. “We’ve passed all the inspections. The problem was an infected line
cook. Luckily hepatitis A is almost never fatal.”
“I imagine the publicity wasn’t good for
business.”
More customers arrived, and Amber headed
for the rear of the store and the men’s section.
Things From the Springs was smaller than
many thrift stores she’d frequented. They were loosely affiliated with a local
children’s charity, and volunteers did much of the sorting and pricing.
She liked visiting Things because she
could be in and out in less than an hour, often with vintage clothing she could
cut and use for crafts to sell in her Etsy shop. An example was tucked securely
in her purse today, a zipper pouch created from a brocade jacket and
embroidered with the name of her landlord’s wife. It had turned out so well she
posted a photo on her shop’s page, hoping to get orders for more.
The pouch bulged with money, mostly tips
she had carefully collected to pay one of the two months of back rent she owed.
Even after she’d showed her suspicious landlord a letter from the health
department, he had begun eviction proceedings. She had managed to stave him
off, promising to pay the first month today and the second in two weeks. She
hoped the additional gift for his wife might make him feel better about his
decision.
Her son had been more than patient
during her months of unemployment. Will was a straight A student at the local
high school and held down a part-time job stocking shelves at a local grocery
store. He had taken on additional hours during her illness and brought home
expired or damaged food that was destined for salvage stores or landfills. He
had treated his quest like a treasure hunt and never wished out loud that his
life was more like the easier ones of the other teens in his advanced placement
classes.
Will wasn’t perfect. He was sometimes
messy, sometimes oblivious, often determined his way was best, but they’d been
a team, just the two of them, from the very beginning of his life. And Amber
knew her son would do anything for her, just as she had done everything for
him. Much more than Will knew.
Today if she had early bird luck, she
was going to buy him a surprise. Things From the Springs had a special rack
dedicated to sports teams, and there was always a good selection. She was
hoping to find one with the pirate flag of Will’s favorite professional
football team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. For the first time, her tips from the
night before had been nearly as large as pre-hepatitis days, and she was
hopeful she might be digging her way out of trouble. She would be happy just to
pay rent on time, put a full tank of gas in the car and buy fresh food at the
grocery store now and then.
Fifteen minutes later she was on her way
back to the front of the now-empty store, a paper-thin but appropriately logoed
T-shirt clutched under her arm. The size and price were right, and while Will
wouldn’t get much wear before it fell apart, he would be delighted.
She was starting to feel lucky. Her
landlord had begrudgingly given her a little time to settle their account.
After everything she still had her job, and restaurant traffic showed signs of
improving. Today she had just enough extra to buy the shirt.
“You found something,” Ida said. “I saw
you heading to the back.”
“It’s for my son.” Amber laid the shirt
on the long counter. “He’s a Bucs fan.”
“These have been going fast. Apparently,
he’s not alone.” She rang up the amount as Amber reached down to unzip her
purse.
Only the purse wasn’t zipped.
She spread it wide and peered inside.
Without ceremony and with more than a touch of panic, she dumped the contents
on the counter. Keys fell out. A pack of tissues. Her tiny coin purse, which
held the extra money she hadn’t put into the zip purse destined for the
landlord and his wife. Nothing else.
“Run into a problem?”
Amber gazed at the concerned woman’s
face. “I had a zipper pouch in here, dark green silk, a name embroidered across
it.”
Ida read her expression correctly. “Did
you open your purse here in the store? Could the pouch have fallen out?”
Amber knew she’d had the zipper pouch
when she left her apartment. She’d so carefully slipped it inside the purse.
Surely she’d zipped it closed. She always did. She had lived in cities with
pickpockets. But by now panic had obliterated all memories of the past hour.
“I had it when I left my house.”
“We’ll look together.” As Amber scraped
her belongings back into her purse, the manager walked to the door, turned the
lock and flipped the Closed sign. “That will buy us some time. We’ll find it.”
Half an hour later, though, they were
still empty-handed. They’d looked under tables, sorted through all the shirts
in the back, followed Amber’s route through the store four separate times
peering at the ground.
“I’m so sorry,” Ida said. “But I have to
unlock the front door. The high school lets out about now. They’ll start
banging on the glass. I just know you’re going to find it somewhere. Your house
or car maybe?”
Amber knew she wasn’t. The truth was a
tight knot in her stomach, all too familiar. She’d been slapped down again. The
landlord wouldn’t believe her, and who could blame him? He probably didn’t need
the money right away, but he would be furious she’d lied to him.
She and Will would see that eviction
notice after all.
“Thank you for helping me look.” Amber
cleared her throat. “I don’t think I’ll buy the shirt.
“Why don’t I just let you have it?”
“No.” Amber took a breath and softened
her tone. “But thank you.”
She followed the manager to the front
door as she unlocked it. “You’ll let me know when you find it?” Ida asked.
Amber managed the tiniest of smiles. But
in her mind she saw the early worm being swallowed, inch by wiggling inch. And
somewhere, after the meal, a fat, happy robin was looking for more just like
it.
Excerpted from The House Guests by
Emilie Richards, Copyright © 2021 by Emilie Richards
McGee. Published by MIRA Books.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
USA Today bestselling author Emilie Richards has written more than seventy novels. She has appeared on national television and been quoted in Reader’s Digest, right between Oprah and Thomas Jefferson.
Born in Bethesda, Maryland, and raised in St. Petersburg, Florida, Richards has been married for more than forty years to her college sweetheart. She splits her time between Florida and Western New York, where she is currently plotting her next novel.
AUTHOR LINKS
Author website: https://emilierichards.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authoremilierichards
Twitter: https://twitter.com/emilierichards
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emilierichards/
