A NOVEL · LITERARY SOUTHERN GOTHIC
Sterling Veil
A wedding weekend at a Virginia vineyard. A silence buried for twenty-eight years. A detective whose dementia 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 dementia is the only witness left standing.
ASIN A3VYC9R4LS4526 · Available in Kindle & Paperback
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THE BOOK
Bill Graves is a reporter, not a guest. 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. The vineyard's old caretaker. A man who mutters to the vines like they answer. A man whose dementia has eaten every clean memory he had — and left behind only the gospel of the cleansing. 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.