The Forest of Sleepers (Nowhere Book 2)

o n e : t r a i n

 Wyatt Best had been having a long year.

After his father died, he'd moved to a town filled with ghosts, been shot by his dead brother, and helped three sisters summon a magical forest.

Wyatt, of course, had not been expecting any of these things, but none of it had dumbfounded him so completely as this current situation had.

Wyatt couldn't remember the last time he'd ridden a train. On a school field trip, perhaps.

And even then, he'd certainly never ridden a train like this.

His present circumstance was a stifling box of aluminum and combustibles that were fitted around a group of people who would much rather be anywhere but here, throttling across the country.

Men and women wore their best traveling clothes--feathered hats and gloves, shirtwaists and vests, petticoats and scarves--and looked like they were beginning to regret it.

The morning had been crisp but had quickly turned into a scorching afternoon as they entered Louisiana.

Wyatt checked his watch.

It had been ten hours since he'd left Nowhere, forty-eight since he'd received a letter containing the matter of his mother's illness, and seventy-two until he would be going back to Nowhere once again.

There was a sappy sort of sweetness that latched onto Wyatt's otherwise indifferent heart whenever he thought of Nowhere.

Even though it had only been six months since he'd stepped into a world of ghosts and sisters and eclipses and ancient forests, Wyatt Best had a place to miss for the first time.

He had never missed his former place of residence: Sacramento, California.

After his father died, Wyatt and his mother, Evelyn, were both left with nothing. Wyatt was sent to Nowhere while Evelyn went to live with her sister.

He thought things would go smoothly with this arrangement.

For as long as Wyatt could remember, Evelyn was always laid up with a headache or cold or some other ailment that non-explicitly told Wyatt that she didn't want to be bothered.

According to the recent letter sent by his aunt, this particular illness was different.

Evelyn was "losing her mind" and his aunt "couldn't do a thing with her anymore" because "she has children to think of".

Wyatt didn't exactly know how a seventeen-year-old boy was supposed to take custody of his own mother, but he didn't have much of a choice.

He'd been living in his brother Hal's farmhouse for the past two months after Hal died (the second time), so he certainly had a place for her to stay. He'd also been making decent money between his work at the Penny household and selling the tomatoes Hal had been growing in the greenhouse.

It wasn't that Wyatt didn't want to take care of his mother, it was that he didn't know her all that much in the first place. She'd be a stranger living in a stranger's house and Wyatt wasn't sure if she'd want to get to know him. She hadn't wanted to before.

Evelyn had always been somewhat aloof ever since their experiences in Holland during the war. Although that was over ten years ago now, she'd never recovered.

Rose Penny, the Penny family's mother, had offered to take Evelyn in altogether, but Wyatt concluded that it was his responsibility to see that his mother was cared for.