It was a moonless summer night on the Oregon coast and a quiet sea reflected back the light of a million billion stars. Three young couples sat around a small fire, teenagers too young for the case of cheap beer they were sharing to be legal. The beach was deserted except for them and one of the girls looked around nervously, eyes wide in the firelight, and leaned in closer to her circle of friends.
“You know this beach is supposed to be haunted,” she said.
A boy across from her snorted rudely. “There’s no such thing as ghosts.”
Julia Lodge slipped between him and the next couple and found space to sit in the sand, appreciating the fire’s warmth on her bare feet and legs.
“You just keep telling yourself that sweetheart,” she said drily.
None of the teens acknowledged her but the boy who’d spoken did shiver and edge away.
“Tell me,” one of the other girls said. “I love ghost stories.”
“Well, back in, like, the 1980s, there was a woman who disappeared from one of the beach houses up there. There are still posters up around town about her. She was, like…I don’t remember the whole story. She came here from…somewhere…”
“Portland,” Julia supplied. “I came here from Portland. With my little boy. My husband wasn’t with me and I don’t know why.”
“I think it was Portland,” the girl said. “Her husband was supposed to come the next day but something happened and she was gone.”
“Where’d she go?” The Doubting Thomas sounded intrigued in spite of himself. “What happened to her?”
“Yeah. What happened to me?”
“Nobody knows. They never found her. But now they say her ghost walks this beach at night searching for her family. You can see her, on a moonlit night, a lonely Black woman in a white dress or nightgown.”
“It’s a sleep shirt actually.”
The girl to Julia’s left, silent until now, shivered and spoke.
“You guys, I’m freezing. Does anyone else feel how cold it’s gotten?”
“Woooo! Maybe the ghost is sitting by you!”
She shot him an irritated glare. “Can we just go? I have to be home by midnight and I want to get some mints or something. Mom’ll kill me if she smells beer on my breath.”
A couple of the boys grumbled but the other girls sided with her so in a few minutes they had gathered their things and kicked sand over the fire and then they were gone.
Julia lay back by the still- warm embers and watched the stars cartwheel across the heavens until the sun rose over the bluff behind her and brought the new day.
Julia’s Heart is a novel of suspense, released October 10, 2020.
Julia’s Heart is a pebble, shaped by the sea. Her toddler son found it on an Oregon beach and her husband had it engraved with their initials and hung on a chain. It is the one piece of jewelry she never took off, the most identifiable object found with her skeleton, and the thing to which her restless soul is tied.
Julia Lodge was a Black woman married to a white man and raising a small son in Portland, Oregon. Nothing in her fractured memory explains why she’s dead, nor how her body wound up in a cave overlooking the sea. Then a teenager stumbles across her remains and the police arrive.
She learns the year is 2018. She’s been a missing person since August of 1986. The detective in charge of her case is a racist cop she has a personal history with and the prime suspect is her own beloved husband.
About the author
Loretta Ross is a mystery writer and crazy cat lady who lives in rural Missouri. She’s an alumna of Cottey College and has a BA in art history and archeology from the University of Missouri at Columbia. An avid Kansas City Royals baseball fan, she has a lifelong interest in true ghost stories, reincarnation, and history. A natural introvert, Loretta was social distancing before it was cool. She’s spent the pandemic binge-watching archeology documentaries and YouTube videos and serving as overstuffed furniture for various feline members of the family.
You can pry her Oxford comma from her cold, dead, sentence structure.
All comments are welcomed.
Beautiful cover! And an intriguing excerpt and premise. Best wishes on your book!