Prologue

Funerals are sad affairs. Especially when they’re for children. The adults standing in the Mariposa Grove Cemetery were oblivious to the brilliant sunshine toasting their shoulders or the chirpy birdsong in the trees. They were saying goodbye to two of their own.
Mr. and Mrs. Cooley stood with their nine remaining children. You’d think because they had so many they wouldn’t miss one so much, but Mrs. Cooley shook like an Aspen in the wind. Four daughters crowded around her, dropping an avalanche of tears on the parched grass underfoot.
Mr. Cooley suffered in silence. His rough farmer hands gripped the Good Book so hard, it looked ready to split. The four boys fidgeted in their Sunday best, sniffling in noisy tribute to their lost brother.
Little Scoop sat on the ground looking up at the sad faces of her family. Too young to know what was going on but old enough to know this was not a happy day, she waited and wondered. Where had big brother Chip gone?
Opposite their solemn gathering stood the Tiptons, the most respected family in town. Mayor Tipton sheltered the shoulders of two ladies. His housekeeper had gone through an entire tissue box and was now using the Mayor’s jacket as back-up. His sister, Margo, looked on in disdain. Warm as a popsicle and just as skinny, she tapped glossy red fingernails impatiently against her purse. The funeral was going to make her late for afternoon tea.
Mayor Tipton was everything you’d expect from the town’s most important official. It was as if a great wind blew through him. He was up before dawn talking his way through city problems, farming problems, rotary club meetings, city council meetings, Chamber of Commerce meetings, PTA bake-offs, Fourth of July parades, county fairs, pie-eating contests and elections. Today, the silence from Mayor Tipton was deafening. His Evvie was gone.
It wasn’t that long ago when things had been perfectly fine in the world of Mariposa Grove. Chip Cooley worked his family’s fig farm on Foggy Bottom Road while Evvie Tipton roamed the grand halls of the Mayor’s mansion. Two worlds apart and very much in order, thank you very much.
But one wickedly stormy night, their paths crossed. That’s when Chip Cooley discovered the Third Eye, and nothing was the same, ever again.

Copyright © 2000 by Nina Martin.  All rights reserved. This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. For information, address: info@cooleyscurse.com