Temptation Road by Kimball Lee

Temptation Road
    The new and last Mary…
     
     
     
    BY
    Kimball Lee
     
     
     
     
    Copyright 2013 Kimball Lee
    SMASHWORDS EDITION
     
     
     
    The house on the bend of Temptation Road came
to be Reagan’s quite by chance, or by destiny, perhaps. If she
hadn’t overheard a location scout telling her soon to be ex-husband
about the Victorian confection he just couldn’t get out of his
head, she might not ever have known about Seven Devils, North
Carolina. But the young man was captivated by the rambling,
crumbling, curly-cued good witch’s house, and he felt that it had
to be immortalized on film. She was at a wrap party for Carlo, the
brilliant director’s latest movie, another block-buster without a
doubt. Carlo was her husband, and he wasn’t listening at all, he
simply peered over the young man’s head. His gaze lingered on his
soon-to-be-next-wife lounging poolside, wearing nothing more than a
body-paint bikini and a desperate look. But Reagan stepped up and
listened to the story of the Mary’s house and packed her Louis
Vuitton luggage that very night. She introduced herself to the
location scout and asked about the house and the town with the
frightful name.
    “Oh, not frightful at all!” he gushed,
“entrancing, captivating!”
    That was all she needed to hear, she set out
to find that ruin of a house as she left her ruin of a marriage
without shedding a single tear. She boarded a flight at LAX and
flew across the country, toward anything auspicious.
    When she landed in Knoxville it seemed she’d
only just boarded the plane. Had she slept or even blinked in so
short a time? Maybe she’d entered a time warp or traveled through a
wormhole, it seemed she’d dreamed she was flying and suddenly she
had arrived. Such happenings would become commonplace once she
inhabited the Mary’s house, things that were beguiling and
whispered of love and magic and enchantment. But all of that was
yet to come.
    She called her mother and then her best
friend, Alana, from the Crowne Plaza, it wasn’t the type of hotel
she preferred, but it was the best the city had to offer. She told
them she was flushing her cell phone down the toilet along with the
last ten years of her life and she’d let them know her new number
as soon as she had one. She said she could no longer stand the
sight of Carlo, or to be loved by Sean, and that she didn’t want to
be admired by the world. She was disappearing into the mountains,
to a different life, to something that was still hidden from her
but she was certain it would make itself known. She didn’t flush
the phone, she just let it swim for a while in the pristine white
potty, then fished it out and crushed it beneath the heel of her
Hermes boot.
    Both her mother and Alana were concerned over
her abrupt flight from Los Angeles, but they were glad she’d left
Carlo. Reagan assured them she could feel happiness and meaning
beginning to grow and take shape in her soul by the minute, so they
were glad for her, in spite of their concern.
    She bought a pearl white Yukon SUV the next
morning and paid for it with her titanium American Express card,
then she drove into the Blue Ridge Mountains. She wound up and
around and into banks of fog that threatened to engulf the SUV and
her along with it, she was, it seemed, vanishing into oblivion. The
road was so narrow in some places and the visibility so poor, that
she wondered what on earth had possessed her to run away. Why had
she wandered into this remote part of the world, what had drawn her
so urgently? Several times she nearly slipped off the edge of the
road, the car’s tires spinning and sending small rocks tumbling
down the mountainside.
    When she came to a scenic overlook and pulled
over, she stared ahead at the most beautiful cloud-shrouded
mountain vista she could ever have hoped for. She started to get
out then noticed a large black bear rustling through a trash bin,
it looked her way and made a mewling cry. She locked the doors as
if