Free The Witches Of Denmark by Aiden James Page A

we’re at it.
    “Mom’s home!” Alisa announced, as our recently purchased Mustang convertible pulled up. Frankly, my sis and I had hoped to drive it that day, but Meredith had wanted to take a spin in it, leaving the Escalade to us. Fortunately, Mom had already dropped off her new pal across the street before pulling around to the long drive to the back of the house from Chaffin’s Bend.
    Maybe Meredith wouldn’t have noticed Grandpa’s antics from where Mom dropped her off, at the front gate across from ours. Likely, Julien wouldn’t notice either, buried in his bookwork inside their house. And unless things got loud, Sadee, living on the other side of the Beauregards, might not notice Grandpa’s presence atop the roof either.
    But….
    “Father get the hell off that roof!” Mom shouted, soon after she vacated the car, wearing an angry frown. “Get off the roof—Now!”
    She sounded unusually infuriated. When Alisia cast a wary glance her way, and Grandma ran to meet her, I realized something else had set my mother off. Then, seeing her father-in-law carrying on like a fool atop the neighbor’s roof destroyed her tender façade. Granted, it wasn’t intuitive for me… it was seeing her nearly collapse when my grandmother reached her.
    “Mom— what’s wrong?!”
    My heart shouted the same words that Alisia uttered as we ran to where Grandma and Mom held each other. I couldn’t immediately recall the last time I had seen Mom this upset, and she wouldn’t tell us anything. She didn’t stop shaking until Dad came outside and gently took her in his arms from Grandma. She whimpered the entire way up the stairs, and as soon as they were both inside the kitchen, she bawled like a baby.
    By then, Grandpa had rejoined us; his moment of childishness had passed. And, my grandmother didn’t resist his efforts to take her in his arms and lead her inside the house. The look on their faces told me they already understood what had upset Mom so much, and I looked to Alisia for an explanation. But she was weeping, too.
    After casting a cautionary glance toward the surrounding houses, and not seeing the Mays, Deans, or Crawfords outside their homes, I followed everyone else inside our house. Didn’t see the crazy man or his oppressed family either. Even if the neighbors heard my mother’s anger and subsequent wails of grief, escaping their direct notice was far better than it would’ve been otherwise. We could come up with numerous alibis for my mother’s cries. But, seeing an old man float to the ground from a fifty-foot roof would’ve been another issue entirely.
     
    * * * * *
     
    It took nearly an hour before Mom was ready to share what had upset her so badly. We were all seated in the living room—my sister and me sharing the loveseat, and Grandma and Dad sandwiching our mother in the middle of the sofa, while Grandpa looked on from behind them.
    Fortunately, Meredith Mays was unaware that the news from the real estate agent who sold the house to our family was significant in any way. Or, so Mom hoped, since, as I’ve noted, Meredith enjoys similar intuitive abilities to the women in our family. They had run into Julie Paris at the beauty salon, and Julie mentioned off hand that a wealthy family from Chicago had inquired about Denmark’s most prestigious in-city property that had recently been put on the market: The Dorothy Bresden home on Dewitt Street.
    Nothing worried Mom at first, until Julie mentioned that this family from the North chose Denmark as their new intended destination, so they could remain in contact with some old friends who had recently moved here. My mother almost didn’t ask for a name… and soon regretted that she had, though inevitable that she would eventually find out the identity of the new Denmark transplants.
    “Why, it’s Simion and Magdelena Matei!” Julie drawled warmly, without a clue she had unwittingly plunged a verbal dagger into Mom’s heart. “Now, the offer is