Chapter One





Eleusis, New York-1998




Be open-minded," my editor Tom Riley said in his best editorial voice when I spoke to him last month about the article on Maggie and her kin. "Consider, at least for a moment, all possibilities. One can hope."

    "Too many hope," I told him. "Usually for the wrong things. Hope is sister to faith, and faith is a guest of honor who leaves too soon or never arrives, but only keeps you waiting and looking like a fool."

    "You sound like a jilted Victorian virgin," Tom said. "It doesn't suit you. At least it didn't use to. I'm not certain you should take this assignment."

    He cleared his throat loudly so that the phone against my ear rasped and scratched. In my mind's eye I saw him in his Forty-second Street office, sitting behind his battered oak desk, half hidden by books and manuscripts and back issues of Savant, pencil in hand, tap, tap tapping ... read full excerpt from The Sweet Bye and Bye ebook