The name curse, p.1
The Name Curse, page 1
ALSO BY
BROOKE BURROUGHS
The Marriage Code
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2021 by Brooke Burroughs
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Montlake, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781542029322
ISBN-10: 1542029325
Cover illustration and design by Liz Casal
For my parents, who initially inspired a love of the great outdoors in me when they took my terrible sixteen-year-old self on an epic two-month journey across America.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHAPTER 1
Great-Aunt Bernice had been haunting Bernie Purcell ever since she departed this world fifteen years ago with a whiff of Chanel No. 5 and a reputation—if you believed the stories—that rivaled that of Mata Hari. And every time Great-Aunt Bernice was mentioned, which was almost daily because she was her namesake, Bernie felt a little ripple going through her body, reminding her of who she was, and who she wasn’t. Especially during every conversation she’d ever had with her mother, who seemed to relish using her full name in spite of the fact that Bernie had asked her not to. Repeatedly.
“Bernice!” her mother said with a sigh into the phone, as it seemed she did every time they spoke, a little hint of exasperation but with the mollifying exhale of a woman doing yoga to try to keep her sanity.
Even though she was on the phone, Bernie’s hand went to her hip in practiced defiance. It was as if every time she and her mother spoke, Bernie was transported back into adolescence. Back into a time warp of acne and hormones and thinking she was right, although down deep she knew she wasn’t.
But this time, she was. “Mom, you know I prefer Bernie.” Why did they have to keep going over this?
“It’s a family name, and you should be proud of it. My aunt Bernice was a stunning woman.”
“Aunt Bernice was a nutjob.” She didn’t add that her great-aunt had also horribly frightened her as a child. When Bernie was little, Great-Aunt Bernice would swoop into town a few times each year with her peacock-toned wide-sleeved caftans, raspy voice, and fuchsia lipstick. She’d remind Bernie how thrilled she was that they had the same name, how they were so much alike, how Bernie reminded her of herself as a child. Child Bernie tried to keep her distance from the hot-pink talons that seemed to grab onto her constantly, unable to process that just because they had the same name didn’t mean she would soon also end up with a wild mane of hair and a voice that sounded like rocks tumbling.
“She lived a full life. There’s a difference.” Bernie could see her mother shaking her head at the phone and rolling her eyes, as if they were face-to-face. Bernie wasn’t going to list the various ways that Aunt Bernice had almost killed herself doing wild stunts, but she had stored them away like little alarm bells ready to be called upon, harbingers of what could become of her. Slipping off the Great Wall of China, luckily in a soft bushy part. Getting bitten by a rattlesnake while hiking the Appalachian Trail and then being confined to the hospital for a month. Having a gun pulled on her while accidentally having an affair with a mob boss while living in Sicily in the sixties. And then, what had finally done her in was a sad mopping accident where she slipped on her kitchen floor and broke her neck. Of course she was ninety-six by then, but still.
“Whatever you say, Mom.”
“I always thought you would be more like her. Especially when you were younger. You were so full of spirit. Such an adventurous kind of girl . . .” She punctuated the insult with that sigh again.
Bernie opened her mouth to protest. Her mom always said she loved her, and was proud of her, and all the good, right things that a mom should say. But then her voice would get that airy, wistful sound when she’d mention how different she used to be, and Bernie would get a little hollow feeling in her chest, a feeling that said she was a disappointment. It wasn’t her fault she wasn’t a full-on, careening wild woman like Aunt Bernice, or even like her mom for that matter. A woman who had left their hometown of Portland when Bernie’s dad died and moved to Bend to work as a florist on a sustainable farm. A woman who didn’t care about practical things like money and retirement funds because she believed in things like karma and living off the earth. A woman who could just move on after her husband died and never look back. Whereas Bernie had contentedly moved into the house her mom had abandoned five years ago, after her dad passed away, reclaimed her old bedroom with its frilly high school decor, and relapsed into a world where she could rewind the present.
“Mom . . .” Bernie didn’t know what to say. She didn’t want her mom to make her feel bad about being someone who liked returning to the place where she grew up. She didn’t have to escape the memory of her father like her mother did.
“Look, let’s get back on topic. I agree with your manager. It’s time to take a vacation. As someone who now feels like she’s on a permanent vacation, I think it’s a grand idea. Just what you need.”
This was why Bernie had initially called. She thought she’d go down to the farm for a week. Maybe help her mom pick flowers. Lie around and read. Let her dog, James Brown, run through the fields. “Okay, well, I could just come down there for a little while . . .”
“Bernice—Bernie, you have the gift of forced vacation. Why don’t you go somewhere? You should get out of that house.”
Bernie’s eyes fluttered closed. Her mom’s tone made it sound like she was living in a dilapidated shack. Or a part-time brothel. “You mean, our house? The one you raised me in?”
“I’m just saying you could do a lot with that time. Go to Europe or Hawaii or anywhere in the world.”
Bernie sighed. The thought had run through her head, but she’d already consulted with Tabitha, her best friend, who was unable to join her. “I’m totally cool with taking a vacation—it’s just hard when you’re single.”
Her mother hummed her disappointment. “You could go alone.”
That was ridiculous. “What am I going to do? Eat dinner by myself every night? Hang out on the beach alone? I’ll be targeted by a serial killer.” She braced herself, waiting for another comparison to Great-Aunt Bernice, who seemed to have taken only exotic vacations on her own.
“Honey, I think you’re overreacting.”
They could agree to disagree, as they did on basically everything. “But really, what do you think about me coming down there in a few weeks? I can help out maybe. Do some gardening. Make some flower arrangements or something.” She tried to sound hopeful, helpful, all the things that would make her mom agree. But instead her mom just laughed.
“You don’t exactly have what I would call a green thumb, sweetie.”
“Well, it’s never too late to learn. I have a houseplant.” Bernie glanced over at the withering money tree in the corner of her living room, the leaves tinged a crisp brown at the tips. The person who’d sold it to her had said it was impossible to kill, and yet . . .
“Having a houseplant and getting your hands dirty are two very different things, but sure, if that’s what you want. You’re always welcome.” Her mother’s voice couldn’t hide the hesitation, though. “Are you sure that’s really what you want?”
She’d mentally gone through the rest of her close friends. She wasn’t sure if she could go with Rachel for a week anywhere. Deb snored, so they couldn’t share a room. With Rob, it would just be too weird. And she wasn’t desperate enough to start rekindling a pseudo-relationship with her last ex just to take a trip somewhere.
“I don’t have a passport, so . . .” It was a legitimate excuse.
“You’re just like your father now! I don’t understand what happened. Such a homebody.” She had always complained about his placid immobility, like it was a self-inflicted wound on both of them.
Bernie winced at the way her mom compared her to her father. Like it was such a bad thing. In fact, it was the only time her mother ever brought her dad up since he’d died when Bernie was twenty-two. Like she’d wiped
“You know, we have a big, beautiful country you could travel in without a passport. Go on an adventure.”
Bernie sighed, the visions of where she could go bubbling up inside her like the feeling of being sick. Their beauty and temptation a threat. Hawaiian beaches, a mountainous road trip through state parks, cruising down Route 66 with James Brown. Going on an adventure was tempting. She could feel something inside her start to tease out the possibilities just at the thought. Then that feeling soured as she remembered the last time she’d gone away. The idea of her world completely crumbling under her again was like a threat that did the worst kind of taunting.
But she knew she needed to appease her mother, or else she’d never hear the end of it. “Okay, I’ll think about it. I have enough vacation time, so I could come see you and go somewhere.”
“Are you bringing James Brown with you?”
“Yes, he is coming.” Bernie bent down to pet her fawn-and-white boxer, who was doing his namesake wiggle since she was standing in the kitchen and he apparently thought he was going to get some food. “He loves to run around out there.”
“Okay, well, just let me know what dates you’re thinking about.”
“Will do.” They said goodbye, and she sank down against the cabinets and scratched her dog behind the ears. Would it be weird if she took a road trip with her dog? Where would they go? It wasn’t like many hotels would actually take her muscly, eighty-pound boxer.
She sighed and squeezed his face between her hands. “I can’t even go on vacation with you.”
Bernie had laughed when her manager had told her she needed to take a vacation earlier that day. She had completely thought it was a joke. No one at a company asked you to take a vacation. They usually wanted you to work as much as you could.
“No, I mean it, Bernie. You haven’t had a break in two years. It’s time, don’t you think?” Rosalie, her manager, had tilted her head and given her that judging squint that told Bernie if she knew what was best for her, she would take some time off.
“Okay. Well, when?”
“Soon. There are five months left in the year, and if you don’t take at least twenty days of what you’ve stockpiled by then, you’ll lose them.”
“That’s four weeks.” She had no idea what she would do with four weeks with nothing to do.
“Yep. Do you know how many people would kill to be in your position? Go do something fun. It’s my job to make sure my team is healthy, happy, and gets enough time off. It will be refreshing for you. Then you can come back and tell us all about it.”
It felt like an unwelcomed gift. Like her manager had just given her a wine-shaped box, but inside was a gray toothbrush. Similar to how she’d felt about her mom visiting six months ago, the first time she’d been back to the house after moving out. Bernie had assumed the world would feel right again with her mom back. Maybe her mother would remember how much she’d loved the house, and they’d bond by taking a weepy stroll down memory lane.
But instead her mom had entered the house looking around suspiciously, as if she was searching for ghosts, and blew her hair out of her face, exasperated and sighing extra (which Bernie didn’t even think was possible) as she tried to get comfortable in a space that should have felt like her real home. She’d burned sage in every corner of the room to clear out all the “bad technology juju.” Bernie’s beloved frozen pizzas and Diet Coke had been replaced with new, greenish things with ecopackaging made entirely of plants. Bernie would go with Rachel sometimes to their favorite vegan restaurant, but that was outside, and this was in her house. It was like her kitchen and her life had been taken over by a fairy godmother on a juice cleanse who shoved glasses of forest-green liquid in her face every morning, when Bernie just wanted a coffee with her mocha-flavored creamer and didn’t care about its unpronounceable ingredients.
But she could deal with her mom if she went to the farm. She just didn’t want her trying to change the life Bernie was fine with living, just the way it was. Well, at least for the most part. The fact remained that Bernie was, at twenty-seven, in a job that was tolerable and paid the bills, yet she couldn’t even find a date to go on vacation with.
“Don’t hate me.” Those were the first words out of her mom’s mouth when Bernie answered the phone a few days later. No “hello”; no “Hi, it’s me”; no “How’s my sweet girl who’s ready to come to my hippie commune for a few weeks?”
“That sentence does not bode well for me, does it?” Bernie said, rolling away from her desk and then walking into the kitchen at work to grab a coffee.
“Well, I think it does. I bought you a Groupon.”
A Groupon. A seemingly innocuous gift, although purchased by her mother, so who knew what would lie in Bernie’s future? Maybe it was a spa day or dog sitting. Those were things she could actually use.
“Okay. Cool. What’s it for?”
“I bought you a vacation.”
“Really? A vacation?” Her finger froze in front of the coffee-vending machine.
“Yes. I thought to myself after we spoke the other day, Bernice—Bernie, sorry—would never do this for herself. Therefore, I’m just going to help her out. Give her a little nudge.”
Her mouth opened to say she didn’t need a nudge. That she was perfectly content with the staycation and farm trip she’d planned, but this was a really nice gesture, even if she and her mother seemed to exist on different planets most of the time.
“And it’s a group thing, so you won’t be alone,” her mother continued.
“Oh. Well, that’s very thoughtful of you.” If Bernie was going to go somewhere, then maybe this would be the perfect solution. She didn’t know where to go, what to do, or how to plan it on her own. And she wouldn’t be the lone woman eating at the same table every night.
But what kinds of group vacations could a person buy on Groupon, and would they be good? Though the bigger question was: What kind of vacation would her mother, self-decreed patron saint of herbs, flowers, and pollinating insects, buy her?
Maybe this was too good to be true.
A rush of breath sounded into the phone. “Oh, good. I thought you were going to freak out, and it’s nonrefundable, so I was a little worried.” She said the word little in that tinkly voice that told Bernie it was both expensive and that she’d been more than a little worried. And yet she’d bought it anyway. Such a typical mom move.
She silenced her rebuttal. “Nah. Of course not. It was really nice of you to think of me. Where is it a vacation to?”
“Okay. I saw this and thought it would be perfect for you. You are always at work and don’t leave the building all day, so it has some sunshine. I mean, you really need to watch your vitamin D levels, since we live in the Pacific Northwest.”
Sunshine = beach. This was sounding better by the minute. “Don’t worry, I take a vitamin every day.” Well, that was almost true. She’d at least opened the bottle of vitamins her mom had given her last year. And when she remembered, she took them. So . . . she’d taken about five.
“Good girl. And then it has some nature. You do, after all, have a creative job, and I’ve read that being outdoors can be very stimulating for creativity. When you get, you know, in a dull spot.”
“A dull spot?” Like her mother knew anything that she did in marketing. And the word creative might’ve been a little too generous for the work that Bernie did. It was more analyzing data for their customers to figure out how to get them to love her company’s clothing brand even more.
“I just thought maybe your manager wanted you to take a vacation because of that. I don’t know! Just my thinking.” She could see her mother throwing up her hands at the speakerphone.
“I don’t think that was it. I literally have too much vacation. It’s not like we’re Mad Men.” Bernie smiled, imagining what her mom thought she actually did. But sun and nature didn’t sound bad at all, and in fact she was starting to conjure up visions of drinking from halved pineapples with little umbrellas while staring at the ocean, which would be amazing, although probably out of the budget potential of either of them. “But I appreciate the consideration.”
