A Special Gift from Gram V – Excerpt

As some of you may remember, I have a new book coming out in one week.

A Special Gift from Gram V will be released on November 26th on Amazon and Smashwords, and will also be available as a paperback, though that will take a little longer.

Seeing as it’s a week away, I thought it was high time I put up an excerpt, so here’s an excerpt:

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The flash of wonder catching, the gloomy woman couldn’t look away. That was a good question, she thought. It wasn’t laundry day, so she didn’t look particularly poverty-stricken, and she certainly hadn’t been looking for anyone’s intervention. Yet, the man seemed intent upon her. Realizing she probably should have asked why he picked her at random on a busy street, it occurred to her that, at the time, she simply didn’t care.

“Holiday spirit, I guess,” she returned with a shrug.

“Wow.” The pretty stranger’s eyes sparkled as her smile widened. “That’s awesome.”

“Yeah,” the gloomy woman returned, the ache acute in her chest as she forced her gaze back to the counter.

“Sorry about that.” The cashier returned to his position much to the gloomy woman’s relief. “So, I’ve got a medium pumpkin chai latte with whip, and a large skinny mocha cap. Is that it?”

Hearing the order read back, the gloomy woman had the sudden urge to amend her drink. The seasonal concoction sounded tempting, she realized with a deluge of guilt, and she nodded her acceptance of the order as it stood.

“Your name?” the cashier asked, pulling a cup from the stack.

“Nina,” she replied, and he went to work marking the cup up with her order.

“You don’t think it’s awesome?” The question came from beside her, as if the pretty stranger had just been waiting for the opportunity to pick up where they’d left off.

“It’s a hundred dollars,” Nina replied. “It’s not exactly going to change my life.”

No amount of money could do that. Not anymore.

For a moment that threatened to stretch into eternity, the stranger had no reply, but Nina could feel her stare as she tried to determine what to say to that. “Then, I guess you should consider yourself lucky,” she responded at last. “For a lot of people, it would.”

As if they had been delivered on the blade of a sword, the words cut deep, and Nina remembered why it was so dangerous to feel. Glancing to the stranger, she found the woman had already turned away, not caring that she’d left Nina bleeding. It was something Nina had perfected over the past few months, the ability to make people dislike her within two minutes of meeting her.