I didn’t believe my Smart phone weather app. It predicted a 50% chance of thunderstorms in half an hour. But the sky was as blue as innocence and I’m smarter than Siri. No way was there a storm coming, even though June is notorious for quick micro bursts. They roll in unannounced, take out trees and leave a mess of debris in their wake.
In fact, that’s how Chapter One in House Key opens. Jordan is cleaning up after a particularly violent thunderstorm. Storms are a recurring theme in House Key, and we have enough of them around here that you get to know their habits. Here’s one example on page 303:
“Monday’s indigo sky was a blue so deep it wanted to be black. Not yet nightfall, the sky was electric behind the vivid green of the trees. The landscape was luminous, and the trees, submissive, respectfully showed the underside of their leaves. Their auras glowed incandescent against the minatory backdrop of the sky.”
On this particular Monday, I convinced my friend to go for a trail ride through the woods, but the sky had turned steel blue by the time we got to the end of the driveway. A deafening clap o’thunder set us on a 180 back to the barn. And if that weren’t enough, the lightning snapped like a whip through the sky behind us. We hopped off our horses without a chance for a full stop, barely getting through the barn doors before the sky opened up and dumped all its wrath on us.
Oh yes, and the power went out, too.
Twenty minutes later, the storm moved on and left behind a beautiful double rainbow, as usual. Still no power, but compared to the force of nature, it is sometimes overrated.
June is a great month to read House Key, now available in paperback from Amazon, when all the stormy action begins…
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