A NOVEL · LITERARY SOUTHERN GOTHIC
Sterling Veil
A wedding weekend at a Virginia vineyard. A silence buried for twenty-eight years. A detective whose silence is the only witness left standing.
ASIN A3VYC9R4LS4526 · Available in Kindle & Paperback
A NOVEL · LITERARY SOUTHERN GOTHIC
A wedding weekend at a Virginia vineyard. A silence buried for twenty-eight years. A detective whose silence is the only witness left standing.
ASIN A3VYC9R4LS4526 · Available in Kindle & Paperback
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THE BOOK
Bill Graves is a reporter and a guest — and, by Sunday, a witness to something he was never meant to write down. He came to Marcus Loughton's wedding with a notebook and a name the Sterling family does not want spoken aloud. The vineyard rolls out below him, manicured by God and guarded by people who smile too politely. Somewhere in those hills, a story no one will let him write.
Then there's Hagar. Thor's younger brother. Head detective in Charleston. A man who speaks to the vines like they answer, and hears, in the silence between his own thoughts, the voice he has carried for twenty-eight years. By Sunday, somebody will be dead. By Sunday, Bill will have to choose between the story and the man who can finally tell it.
Sterling Veil is a literary Southern Gothic mystery about the things families bury for generations — and the cost of digging them up under champagne light.
EXCERPT · CHAPTER ONE
They say weddings bring out the best in people, but they also shine a light on the fractures. On the fault lines we walk around every day, pretending they aren't there.
I hadn't seen Marcus Loughton in almost four years, and the moment I stepped out of the town car and onto the sun-splashed gravel drive of the Sterling estate, I realized how long four years really was.
The Sterling estate was enormous. Bigger than I imagined, even after Marcus had described it in one of our late-night college drunken rambles. A southern plantation, refurbished and rebranded with Virginia wealth. Old brick and fresh paint. Live oaks along the long driveway. Vines wrapped along white columns. There was even a small lake near the back, framed by weeping willows and bordered by a vineyard that looked like it had been manicured by God Himself.
And here I was — Bill Graves. Investigative reporter. Longtime friend. Groomsman, I guessed. Guest, for sure. Spy? That, too.
Marcus had invited me personally. Said he wanted the old gang together. Said it would be just like college — Ray Foley, Jake Chatman, and me. The boys.
But this wasn't college anymore. And I wasn't just here for drinks and nostalgia.
I had a story in my pocket. The kind you don't pitch to an editor. The kind you carry like a stone in your chest, waiting to see if the ground will let you drop it or not.
A man had called me, two weeks before the wedding. Anonymous. Said the Sterling family had buried something in the vineyard decades ago. Not a body — worse. A silence. He'd given me a name. Reverend Rodgers. He'd given me a date. A summer, twenty-eight years ago. He'd hung up before I could ask anything else.
I hadn't done anything with it yet. I wasn't even sure I would. But I'd brought my notebook. I always bring my notebook.