Autumn Anthology

by Heather B. Moore

  Clint folded the top of the bag. “If you show up and tell them what happened, they’ll think you’re trying to cover for yourself because you’re afraid we’ll turn you in. You don’t want to get convicted of possession. You’ll get thrown out of school and go to jail.”

  Mallory stomped to the entryway and heard Clint and Eden following her. She grabbed her jacket and purse from the coat closet and yanked her keys out of her purse. “Give me the bag. If you think it’s mine then give me back my ‘property.’ I’m taking it to the police.”

  “You’ll only make things worse for yourself,” Clint said. “Leave the police out of it. I’ll get rid of it, but you have one week to move out. You’re not bringing this… danger into our home.”

  Mallory clenched her keys, fighting the urge to leap forward and grab the bag from Clint. How dare he accuse her and not give her the opportunity to ask the police to investigate and figure out how the drugs really got here?

  Because he was afraid of scandal. He was afraid of the police showing up, the neighbors gossiping, and word reaching the Computer Science department at Bowman that Assistant Professor Clinton Westcott was involved in a drug investigation.

  “Mal, please get help,” Eden said. “My doctor can recommend—”

  Mallory yanked the front door open and marched out. As she slammed it behind her, she saw a man towering on the porch— Darien Thomas, holding a bouquet of flowers and looking stunned at the way Mallory had thumped the door shut hard enough to bounce Eden’s autumn apple wreath off the hook.

  “Uh… hi, Mallory. Uh…”

  Mortified, Mallory picked up the wooden wreath and hung it on the door. One of the apples had a chip in the red paint. Great. She’d better find some paint to match it before Eden noticed.

  “Uh… I… you’ve looked stressed at work the last couple of weeks, and I… wanted to say I hope… you’re all right.” Darien proffered the bouquet with a clumsy gesture. “Didn’t mean to disturb you.”

  Mallory took the flowers. “Thank you. Um… I’m sorry about…” The humiliation of having Darien see her like this split another crack in her composure. Trying to hide the tears filling her eyes, she all but buried her face in red, orange, and yellow gerbera daisies, hoping Darien wouldn’t wonder why she was so eager to smell flowers that didn’t have much of a scent.

  “I don’t want to interrupt your evening; obviously you’re on your way out,” he said. “I just wanted to stop by quickly. I hope you don’t mind that I looked up your address.”

  “Thank you for the flowers.” She smiled at him, relieved that tears weren’t running down her face. “They’re beautiful.”

  “You’re welcome.” He stepped backward off the porch, not looking where he was going, and bumped into an urn of chrysanthemums.

  “Oops, sorry.” He grabbed the teetering urn. “I show up and almost wreck the place.”

  “Finishing what I started.” Mallory glanced at the damaged wreath and her tears escaped. She looked back down at the daisies and hoped tonight’s chilly autumn wind would dry her face.

  “Mallory…” His voice went from embarrassed to gentle. “I don’t want to be a pest, but is there anything I can do?”

  She shook her head. A couple of tears watered the daisies.

  “Do you… want me to leave?” Darien sounded like he was floundering.

  She didn’t want him to see her bawling into a bouquet. But she didn’t want to send him away either. She shook her head.

  Darien waited as though hoping for a cue as to what to do next. Mallory struggled for composure, her forehead touching the flowers.

  “Can I… take you somewhere?” he asked.

  Mallory nodded.

  Darien waited for a suggestion then said tentatively, “There’s a chocolate shop near campus…”

  Mallory laughed. Darien responded to tears by offering chocolate? He was brilliant. “Yes, chocolate,” she said, lifting her head. “Let’s go.”

  The porch light showed redness in his pale face as he held out a hand to help her step off the porch. Mallory clutched his fingers and didn’t let go as he led her to his car, an old Toyota pickup. The cab was spotless and smelled like Tide.

  As he drove to campus, Darien said, “Would you… feel better if you talked about it?”

  She cradled the flowers, relieved that no new tears were forming. “It’s crazy.”

  “I don’t mind. What is it?”

  He sounded so sympathetic, she surrendered to the urge to confide in him. She told him about the drugs and Clint’s and Eden’s certainty that they were hers. “They’re not mine. I do not do drugs.” Her tongue dry, she tugged at a flower petal, gently, so she didn’t rip it loose. “My mother was killed by a drug addict.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Darien touched her shoulder then put his hand back on the steering wheel. “When?”

  “When I was seventeen, at the end of my junior year in high school.” Mallory folded her arms around the stems and touched her chin to the edge of the cellophane wrapping. “I told Clint I was taking the drugs to the police, but he wouldn’t let me. He’s a professor at Bowman, and his tenure decision is coming up. I think he’s afraid involving the police would be professionally embarrassing to him. Besides, he’s so sure the drugs are mine that he doesn’t see the point. I even offered to take a drug test, but Eden just made a snarky remark about me cheating it. And I guess all a test could prove is that I haven’t done drugs lately, but that doesn’t mean I’m innocent.”

  “Can’t you turn the drugs over to the police even if your brother-in-law doesn’t want you to?” Darien asked. “He doesn’t have the right to keep you from doing that.”

  “He won’t give them to me. He and Eden have made up their minds. I have one week to find a new place to live. When am I going to have time— or the money— to do that?”

  Darien parked at the chocolate shop. “Do you think he might be trying to cover for himself? That the drugs are his?”

  Mallory patted her fingertips along the petals of a yellow daisy. “That would be hard to believe. He’s always seemed like a trustworthy guy. He was a jerk tonight, but it’s hard to blame him if he thinks I brought drugs into his house. But I can’t believe the drugs are Eden’s, either. She’s… so in control of herself, so organized, and drugs are so… chaotic.”

  “Besides finding the drugs, do your sister and her husband have any reason for thinking—” Darien went silent, looking out the windshield toward the brown and white awning over the entrance to the chocolate shop.

  Mallory silently finished the question Darien had cut off. Do your sister and her husband have any reason to think you are an addict?

  Mallory blushed. She wasn’t offended that he’d asked— or almost asked— something so blunt; it was a logical question. Pretending she didn’t know what he’d stopped himself from saying would flatten an honest conversation into a superficial one, and she didn’t want that. But if she tried to explain, she’d start crying again.

  Just keep it short.

  “I… made some dumb decisions in high school, hung out with people I shouldn’t have. I didn’t do drugs, but my mother worried about me, and apparently she told Eden.”

  “So bad choices in friends from years ago? That’s why she thinks you’re guilty now?”

  “It’s not just that. I’ve… had a hard time for the past few years, since our mother died.”

  Darien unzipped the top of his jacket, and Mallory realized he was wearing a tie. Had he come from a dress-up event, or had he put the tie on for her? Even in her distress, the possibility of him dressing up for her glimmered in a warm thought.

  He’s adorable.

  “I can’t imagine not having a hard time after losing your mother like that,” Darien said. “Was your father a support to you?”

  “He was long gone. He left when I was six, remarried then died of a stroke in his late forties. And Eden’s eleven years older than I am. She was already out of the house, done with colle
ge, and working in New York City when Mom died.”

  “Is that when you moved in with her?” Darien asked.

  “No. She didn’t have room for me then; she was in a tiny studio apartment. My mother’s brother Mike lived a few miles away. He took me in.”

  “Did that work out?”

  “He’s a good man, but his son was already grown, and his wife was dead. He…” Her voice trailed off. She didn’t want to say anything critical of Mike. He’d done his best.

  “He had no idea what to do with a grieving teenage girl?” Darien suggested.

  She sighed. “I fell apart. I didn’t care about anything. I still had a year of high school left, and I almost didn’t graduate. If it hadn’t been for a couple of teachers who dragged me through that last semester by the scruff of the neck, I wouldn’t have finished.”

  “What did you do after that?”

  “Nothing. Almost nothing. I worked part time at an ice-cream shop and spent the rest of the time sleeping or watching TV. I had no drive at all— no energy.”

  “That’s more than grief,” Darien said. “That sounds like clinical depression.”

  “Yeah.” She pulled out the white envelope tucked between the flowers and the cellophane and looked at her name written on it. Darien’s handwriting was narrow and a little sloppy. “Unfortunately, it took Uncle Mike and me a long time to figure that out. He finally hauled me to a doctor. When I started feeling better, I wanted to go to school, but it took me a while to get here. Eden was really supportive; she suggested applying to Bowman and offered to let me live with them my first year, but… Eden doesn’t know me all that well. She’s very focused, very motivated, and I think she has trouble understanding how I could have… stalled so badly, for so long. She wonders if drugs were part of the problem. But I swear, the only drugs I took were those my doctor prescribed, and I took them exactly as she told me to… You didn’t want to know any of this, did you?” Why had she dumped all this on Darien?

  He shows sympathy, and you start chucking all your baggage at him. Congratulations on scaring him away permanently.

  “I want to know more about you,” he said. “You don’t need to be ashamed of your past.”

  “Let’s get a couple of pieces of fudge, and you can take me home,” she said wearily. “It still counts as home. I have a key, and Clint hasn’t had time to change the locks.”

  “And he gave you a week, right?” Darien’s long fingers curved around her shoulder with kind, comforting strength. “Let’s look at this situation logically. If the drugs aren’t yours and you don’t think they’re Clint’s or Eden’s, who else could have put them there?”

  “Eden said no one else has been in the house during the window when they could have been stashed there.”

  “You mean she doesn’t know of anyone who could have been there. How long have Clint and Eden lived there?”

  “Two years.”

  “Were the locks rekeyed when they moved in?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “So someone else may have a key. Or someone could have broken in.”

  “But why would someone sneak in, stash drugs, and leave?”

  “No idea,” Darien said. “The first step is finding evidence that someone else was there. Motive is step two. Let’s go get that chocolate. It’ll help us think.”

  Chapter Four

  Several chocolate turtles and two hours later, when Darien dropped her at home and said goodnight with a quick, shy hug, Mallory still felt mentally sore, but not as panicky. She had concrete plans for tomorrow— small, probably ineffective plans, but at least they were a starting point. She’d check with neighbors to see if any of them had noticed someone approaching the house during the day. She’d try one more time to convince Clint that they should take the drugs to the police— if he hadn’t already flushed them, which he probably had.

  And she’d start looking for another place to live. She desperately wanted to find an outside explanation for the drugs, but the more she evaluated the situation, the more she had to acknowledge that the likely culprit was Clint or Eden, trying to hide behind Mallory.

  The possibility that one of them could be cold enough to blame her for their issues rather than come clean with their spouse made her feel so isolated, so betrayed, that suspecting them felt like clutching a knife by the blade, evaluating the sharpness by letting it sink into her hand. Something else must be happening— a student angry at Clint for a failing grade, trying to stir trouble between Clint and his wife; a client from the bank Eden managed, angry at a rejected loan application, trying to hurt Eden.

  Bracing herself, Mallory stepped into the house, hoping Eden and Clint had gone to bed early. The lights in the living room and kitchen were off, but the ones in the back of the house were on.

  You don’t have to say much to them tonight. Everyone will be calmer after a good night’s sleep.

  Mallory opened a kitchen cupboard and took out a vase. She filled it with water, unwrapped the flowers, and stuck them in the vase. The flowers were too tall, but she’d trim the stems tomorrow. Right now, even the basic task of making flowers proportionate to a vase sounded exhausting.

  She opened Darien’s card. Apparently, he hadn’t been able to think of what to say in a message; he’d just signed his name. Smiling, she tucked the card between a red daisy and an orange one.

  She headed down the hallway toward her bedroom. To her surprise, her bedroom light glowed. When she reached her doorway, she saw Eden pulling clothes out of dresser drawers. Clint stood in front of the open closet.

  “What are you doing?” Mallory rushed into the room. “Get out of here!”

  Eden glared at her. She wasn’t crying, but her eyes were so puffy, she must have stopped not long before. She pointed angrily at the center of the dresser— at another small bag of white powder and two more bags of pills.

  Horrified, Mallory gaped at the bags. “You found those in here?”

  “We thought we’d better see what else you were hiding,” Eden said. “And I can’t believe you stole from me.”

  “Stole?” Was Eden admitting the drugs were hers?

  “My emergency money in my dresser,” Eden said. “Two hundred and fifteen dollars. It’s gone.”

  “What? I didn’t take it!” The calm, logical mindset she’d adopted from Darien tumbled away. “Those drugs aren’t mine!”

  “Mallory.” Clint’s voice was quiet. Apparently he’d had enough time to get over his initial anger and was now the calm professor. “Let’s act like adults. No one came into your room and planted drugs.”

  “Yes, they did, because I did not put them there. And I didn’t take Eden’s money!”

  “Please don’t yell,” Clint said. “The neighbors don’t want to be part of this.”

  Trembling, Mallory looked at Eden. “Let’s see what’s in your room.” She whirled and stalked down the hall. She expected one of them to protest, but they followed her silently.

  Clint and Eden’s normally spotless room was already a jumble.

  “We looked here first,” Eden said. “And we already searched the living room and the kitchen. Let’s check your purse.” She headed toward the living room.

  Mallory followed her. “Keep away from—”

  Clint stepped between Mallory and Eden. Mallory wanted to shove him aside, but if she turned this into physical confrontation, they’d take it as evidence that she was not only an addict, but a dangerous one.

  Like Nelson.

  Eden opened the coat closet and took out Mallory’s purse.

  “Fine, search it if you want,” Mallory said. “There’s nothing in there.” But was she sure of that? Someone was planting things— setting her up. Clint? Eden? Who else could it be?

  Eden rooted through the purse, but only pulled out one thing: Mallory’s keys. “I’ll check her car.”

  “This is ridiculous.” She started to step around Clint. With an outstretched arm, he blocked her while Eden exited.

&n
bsp; “Sit down,” he said.

  “Please listen—”

  “Cooperate, or I’ll call the police.”

  “I wanted to go to the police earlier! You wouldn’t let me!”

  “I was wrong. I was thinking too much of gossip, not about how much you needed help. Do you want me to call them now? I will, if that’s what you want.”

  Mallory’s tongue was paralyzed. Did she want him to call the cops? And when Clint and Eden testified that Mallory’s room was riddled with drugs, and that Eden’s money was missing—

  “Sit down,” Clint repeated.

  Mechanically, Mallory walked to the couch and sat.

  “Give me your phone.” Standing in front of her, Clint held out his hand.

  “You have no right—”

  “You don’t have to give it to me. But if you don’t, I’m calling the police.”

  Confusion deadened her brain. She couldn’t face the police while she had no idea what was going on. The police wouldn’t believe her. She’d get arrested. Sent to jail.

  Why would Clint or Eden set her up like this? They wouldn’t. She hadn’t spent much time with Eden over the last decade, but Eden was her sister, and Mallory knew her well enough to know she wasn’t a coldblooded devil. She’d gotten to know Clint little more than superficially since moving in, but she’d never seen any evidence that he wasn’t a decent man. But weren’t sociopaths good at fooling people?

  I’ve lost my mind. Sleep deprivation. Stress. Weird flashbacks to Mom’s death after what happened to Nels last week.

  “Your phone,” Clint said.

  Anger flagging beneath humiliation and confusion, she pulled the phone out of her pocket and dropped it into his palm.

  Clint stepped back and tapped the screen. Mallory assumed he was checking her texts, calls, and contacts. Looking for drug pushers?

  The door opened, and Eden walked in. “Nothing,” she said, to Mallory’s surprise. Mallory had been almost sure Eden would come in brandishing another stash of drugs and saying she’d found it in Mallory’s glove box.