Blog Tour and Book Excerpt for "Fraying Skeins"

BOOK EXCERPT:

Fraying Skeins – A Stupefying Dilemma.

Sitting down alongside him, Margaret forced his attention. “Johnny. There’s something bothering you. It’s been a problem brewing for ages but we have to talk about it.”

His eyes when they slid towards her were guarded. “There’s nothing wrong.”

She grabbed the fingers of one of his hands and squeezed to get some reaction from him. Refusing to back down, she forced him to maintain his gaze on her. “I vowed after living with Sandy’s lies and mistruths that I’d never allow myself to be in a similar vulnerable situation where someone close to me was lying to me. I know there’s something wrong.”

A flicker of despair was there before Johnny shuttered his feelings once more.

“I’m sure you still love me and the children as much as ever, Johnny, so I don’t think it’s that.”

His head bent again, but not to read the newspaper.

“I’m also sure it’s not because you’ve gambled away your wages. Or our savings.”

She watched his head shake mutely from side to side.

“I want to help with whatever is causing you this anguish. But you have to tell me what it is.” When he still said nothing she persisted. “It doesn’t matter if I find it painful, or unpalatable. We can surely work it out, together, whatever has happened.”

His head eventually lifted, the look in his eyes bleak.

“I’m not sure this can be worked out, whether we’re together or not.”

The sneering laugh that then rumbled from him shocked her in its cruelty. “You and me, together, is the problem that I can’t work out!” he scorned.

“You don’t want to be with me any longer?” She couldn’t believe that he wanted to be free of her. She just wouldn’t accept that was his problem.

His abrupt rise from the table was unnerving. His fingers clawed through his hair and he had the demented look of a trapped animal.

“It’s because I desperately do want to be with you, Margaret. You! That’s what the problem is!”

“You’re not making any sense, Johnny. You have to make me understand.” She jumped up to catch him in his roaming around. Her arms encircling his taught body stopped his strides.

She knew when his forehead touched down on her own that he was near to a breaking point, his furious torso trembling.

Edging him towards a chair, she forced him to sit down again, then perched sideways on the chair next to him, his hands held firmly in her own. Though her insides were churning, she ensured her tone was encouraging and not threatening in any way. “Start at the beginning.”

Ten minutes later, after a horrifying explanation, she was no longer holding his hands since he’d wrestled them free of her attempts to soothe him. He sat as still as a statue, his gaze blindly facing forward.

“And this letter you received today from Artie says that Jane Forbeson has given up on the Kirk Session finding you, and she has paid for adverts in the local and national newspapers?”

“Yes.” He still stared directly ahead.

“Her hope being that the newspaper adverts will widen the search for you?”

The slightest of nods broke Johnny’s immobile posture.

Margaret’s mind was in a whirl but showing she was devastated wasn’t going to help. They needed to discuss the situation even more, to work out what to do.

“And Artie’s indication is that the local paper states that you are her legal husband, and she has certification to prove it?”

Again the nod was so tiny she could have missed it, his whole body held so rigidly in the grip of his fury. “It’s in my pocket.”

She took it that he wanted her to read his letter. Going to the door she fished out a crumpled piece of paper and flattened it on the table. The writing was, of course, unfamiliar since he’d never let her read any of his Kirriemuir correspondence. However, what Artie had written showed his deep concern about the ongoings. And it also showed his faith in Johnny, who Artie clearly believed to be innocent.

“But…If you really did marry her, then…we…”