It's Never too Late

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “I need it all. We’re dealing with possible discrimination charges.”

  “Does this have to do with Kaelin?” Will’s adopted Asian son. “Is someone giving him problems in school?” Hard to imagine in Shelter Valley. Not because the town didn’t have bigots, but because of Will’s and Becca’s standing in the community.

  “It’s me, Addy.” His voice lowered. “I’ve received a couple of anonymous letters threatening to go public with proof that I’m allowing discriminatory practices at Montford.”

  She sat up, fully focused.

  “What kind of discriminatory practices?”

  “It doesn’t say.”

  “Is there more to go on?”

  “Unfortunately not. No names, no classes or faculty names, no ethnicities or instances to follow up on. No hint whatsoever.”

  “And no return address?”

  “The letters were slid under my office door.”

  “Surely you have a friend on the Shelter Valley police force who could find out who’s sending them.”

  “Greg Richards, who’s been sheriff here for over a decade, is the only one who knows about the threats besides Becca and myself. I took the letters straight to Greg and he advised that until we know who’s behind this, we keep it to ourselves. If for no other reason than if this is just a sick attempt to make me sweat, Greg doesn’t want the perpetrator to know he’s succeeding. Greg is investigating, but there were no prints on the envelopes. It’s common paper. Common ink. And it’s not like we have a forensic lab here. Or like this is enough of an issue to warrant involving overworked forensic teams in Phoenix who are trying to convict known perpetrators of horrendous deeds.”

  It could be enough of an issue if someone was setting up a plan to blackmail Will Parsons who, at fifty-three, was the Parsonses’ eldest son and an heir to the family fortune. But she was getting ahead of herself.

  “One thing was pretty clear, whoever left the letters has an issue here at Montford that he believes I know about.”

  “Does he ask for any course of action?”

  “No. And no indication of when he’d go public or what I can do to prevent him from doing so.”

  “Chances are you’ll hear from him again. He has to gain something.”

  “Greg agrees.”

  Silence hung on the line. And then Will said, “I need your help, Addy. For obvious reasons, we don’t want to involve anyone from the area. I trust you implicitly. Your specialty is educational law. And no one here will know you. I need you to look into life at Montford, at my life at Montford, and see if you find any improprieties or wrongdoing that could warrant a civil case against me—or the university.”

  “Have you knowingly done anything to warrant the accusations?” She wasn’t sure she’d believe him if he said he had.

  “Absolutely not.”

  She might not have seen Will in years, but she knew him. With the heart of a child that had once secretly hoped he’d be her new father.

  “Then of course I’ll help. I’ll do whatever I can.”

  “Even without any truth behind the accusations, if whoever this is goes public with them, the suspicion alone will affect Montford’s reputation and could even have bearing on our collegiate rating.”

  “More likely you’ll be given the opportunity to part with a sizable sum to settle out of court and keep the alleged grievance out of the press.”

  “I don’t have a sizable sum readily available.” Will sounded beaten. “I need you here. In Shelter Valley. When Becca and I mentioned you to Greg he couldn’t jump on plans fast enough. We’d like you to arrive in town posing as a new student, which would give you reason to hang around campus, to turn up in various offices, sit in classes, while doing what you do best.”

  “Assimilating the facts and smelling the stench.” It was a phrase he’d used when she’d first told him why she thought she’d make a good attorney.

  “And you can do it without raising suspicion or making it obvious that we’re giving the threat any merit at all. Greg is adamant on that one. His theory is that if we appear to be doing nothing, we’ll draw this guy out more quickly. We’ll drive him to make a mistake. To expose himself.”

  “I agree with him.”

  “You’ll have access to the secure campus server,” Will continued. “And anything else you need.”

  “Where would I live?” She couldn’t think about agreeing to his request. Couldn’t think about setting foot in Shelter Valley. She needed to focus on facts.

  “That’s up to you. We thought an apartment close to school would be most realistic.”

  “I’d rather be in a single-story dwelling.” She could buy a little decorative fountain.

  “I’m sure that won’t be a problem. Caroline Strickland, the wife of a friend of mine who settled in Shelter Valley seven or eight years ago, owns a few investment properties near the campus. I can put you in touch with her.”

  The words conjured up memories of Montford’s campus. The green quad that had seemed enormous to her as a six-year-old.

  She quickly refocused, and came up with...math. “I’d have to lease out my place.”

  She didn’t want to do that.

  And couldn’t afford mortgage plus rent unless she did so.

  “I’ll lease it.”

  “You?”

  “We have no idea who the source of these threats might be. Greg insists that we go forth as though it could be anyone. So we have to keep as much of your appearance in town as legitimate as we can. You need to rent a place. I can help with tuition, but you’ll need money to live and I can’t pay you until the job is done.”

  “I’m making enough on the case I’m just closing to handle living expenses.”

  “I can’t ask you to do that. Becca’s going to write a check to your practice, a charitable donation for your current case. Sari just found out her youngest child is diabetic, so the connection works.”

  Sari was Becca’s sister. Addy had a vague memory of being at Becca and Will’s house with Will’s little sister, Randi, when Sari had come over crying. Will had taken her and Randi home—back to the Parsonses’ big house in the desert where Addy had been living since the fire that had killed her parents and her brother.

  Sari had a diabetic child. Addy could feel the walls closing in on her.

  Will named a sum for the donation.

  “That’s way too much, Will.”

  “It should be enough to cover your mortgage, rent and give you something to live off for the next year.”

  “You expect this to take a year?”

  “You’re going to need money to tide you over when you get back to your real life.”

  He’d certainly thought everything through. Her head throbbed. From the back of her neck forward. And she had another thought.

  “Your folks know who I am. And Randi will.”

  “They know you, of course, as is substantiated by the number of invitations they’ve issued over the years for you to come visit, but they haven’t seen you in more than twenty years.”

  Twenty-five years. Since social services had awarded permanent custody of her to a grandmother she’d never met, rather than to the family she’d known since she was born.

  Back in those days the elder Mrs. Parsons wouldn’t entertain without Addy’s mother catering the event. She’d been known to schedule her social events around Ann Keller’s availability. And Addy, who’d been welcome to accompany her mother while she create
d her masterpieces, had learned to walk standing at a cooking counter in the Parsonses’ enormous kitchen.

  “Gran wouldn’t let me go back,” Addy told Will what he already knew. And didn’t add that later, after Gran was dead and Addy was the boss of her own life, she still hadn’t returned to the town where she’d been born.

  She couldn’t...

  “Greg is arranging an assumed identity for you.” Will rescued her mind from the pit she avoided at all costs, getting her back on track.

  Becca and Will had already been married when fire left Addy orphaned and Mr. and Mrs. Parsons had taken her in. Seen her through long months of painful treatments for the third-degree burns all the way down her back.

  Promised her that they’d love her forever. That she was a part of their family. That she could depend on them because they loved her as one of their own.

  They’d meant the words. Addy believed that. Even as a kid she’d known how hard they fought for custody of her.

  But Addy hadn’t really wanted to live in that big mansion in the desert. She’d wanted to live with Becca and Will. She had hoped, with childish naïveté, that they’d swoop in and adopt her away from the older folks who were fighting over her.

  Becca had lost a couple of babies by then. Which might be why the couple had taken to her as they had.

  And she had so hoped...

  But no, those roads didn’t bear traveling.

  “It helps that you never sent pictures in spite of Mom and Dad’s repeated requests.”

  Glancing at the framed photo on her wall, Addy didn’t respond. Admitting the truth, that she avoided being photographed whenever she could—as though she could somehow keep her mother and brother closer by not doing so, not getting older, not moving on—would make her sound a bit off.

  Gran had never figured out that her yearly bouts with flu had coincided with school picture day.

  “You want me there under an assumed name?”

  “Greg will help us arrange all of the details. I know it’s asking a lot, Addy, but I don’t know what else to do. With this second threat, I can’t just lie in wait...”

  “I haven’t been back.”

  “I know.”

  He was asking, anyway. Which told Addy he really believed he had no other choice.

  And, so, neither did she.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE DUPLEX WASN’T BAD. On her fourth trip in from her car—a small decade-old American-made model that fit her alias just fine—Addy noticed an old woman glancing out the front window from the connecting unit. The frail hand shook on the edge of the curtain. From the woman’s height, Addy guessed she was sitting down. She couldn’t make out clothes. But the woman’s alert and unapologetically curious gaze struck a chord deeply within her.

  As much as Addy had prayed as a little girl that the judge would let her stay with the Parsonses and not ship her off to Colorado with a grandmother she’d never known, Gran had been good to her.

  Addy missed her.

  Shaking herself, Addy looked up once more and the old woman at the window nodded. And dropped the curtain.

  She’d met her next-door neighbor.

  And she was glad.

  * * *

  PUSHING THROUGH THE DOOR, Mark left the air-conditioned hallway of the university and burst out into the blinding daylight. He’d never have believed that the same sun that had been shining above him all of his life could be so completely different here. Brighter. And more active. He didn’t just see the Arizona sunshine, he felt it clear to his bones.

  But it wasn’t his bones he was thinking about as he hit the first speed-dial button on the phone he’d pulled from its holster the second he’d left the guidance counselor’s office.

  Nonnie was alone in a new home in a new town where she knew no one and had no ability to go anywhere on her own.

  “I’m fine, Mark,” she said, answering after the first ring.

  Relief flooded him, and he gave himself a mental shake. He was thirty years old, not ten.

  “I’m done with my meeting and on my way home. Do you need anything?” His carefully schooled tone wouldn’t fool her.

  Nothing did.

  “Nope. And you don’t have to hurry home on my account. When Caroline told me this place was wheelchair accessible she wasn’t kidding. I love that water dispenser on the refrigerator. And do you know, she didn’t just put all of the dishes in the lower cupboards, she put one of those As-Seen-on-TV reach things in the pantry, too.”

  Slowing his pace, he glanced around the campus he’d barely noticed in his determination to get to and through his meeting quickly. He saw lots of green. Trees. A large patch of perfectly manicured grass in the midst of all the desert rock. Hundred-year-old stone buildings. And some newer ones, too.

  Nonnie was telling him about the front-loading laundry machines. They’d missed those when they’d come in the night before.

  Truth was, he’d missed pretty much everything except getting his truck parked, unloading the suitcases from the truck and helping his aching grandmother into bed.

  Then, after he’d dropped down to the couch in lieu of putting sheets on the bed in the second bedroom, he’d texted Ella to let her know they’d arrived.

  She hadn’t texted back.

  But she would. As soon as she realized that he was not going to desert her.

  “I’ve already washed the clothes we dirtied on the trip....”

  Great. Something else to worry about. The standard top-loading machines that he was used to gave him one less battle to fight in Nonnie’s tendency to overtax herself. She couldn’t get clothes in and out of them, which meant she couldn’t go about folding them and trying to put them away, either.

  Not many people around on this hot August day. Classes didn’t start for another week. And the pavement sent up blistering waves of heat.

  “So?” His grandmother sounded unusually chipper for a woman who’d recently spent several days in a truck traveling across the country.

  And who had to be in incredible pain due to the same.

  “So...” His natural reticence holding his tongue in check, Mark kept the phone to his ear and walked toward the truck. And then he smiled. “Okay, Nonnie, you were right. I found it.”

  “And what is it you decided on?”

  “Safety engineering. Fire behavior, hazardous material, physics, technical drawing, regulatory compliance, ergonomics, industrial hygiene...” Head spinning, he reeled himself in. “It’s a four-year bachelor degree with a graduate program that adds emergency management,” he finished as he reached his truck and unlocked the door. “If I’d had the training already, I probably could have saved Jimmy’s life. This is just what the plant needs.”

  Because he was going home to Bierly. To Ella.

  “Good.”

  A wave of heat engulfed him. He climbed up into the front seat and immediately hopped back down again.

  “Good?” He said into the phone, standing there staring at the blistering interior of his truck. “That’s all? Just good?” He’d upended his entire existence for “good”?

  “It’s the beginning, Markie-boy.”

  Reaching in, he turned on the ignition, set the air to its coolest setting and prayed the vehicle wouldn’t overheat before he could drive it and cool the engine.

  “The beginning of what?” He didn’t like the sound of this.

  “My plan.”

  “I assume this plan has to do w
ith me?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then don’t you think you should let me in on it?”

  “In time, Markie-boy. In time.”

  At least she was counting on having time. He decided to leave it at that.

  * * *

  “‘HOLDING TUBE UPRIGHT, lift bowl and slide into place.’”

  Addy read. Looked at the piece of half-inch tubing sticking out of the cement base, which was covered in river rock. And then at the river rock and cement bowl that were still in the box on the fold-up handheld dolly that lived in her trunk when she wasn’t using it to cart crates of files into court.

  Sweat dripped down her back beneath her tank top. She wiped more from her forehead and smeared it on the denim shorts that had been clean at the beginning of this project but now bore various smudges.

  The guy at the landscaping store in Phoenix had assured her, as he’d loaded the fountain into her car, that she’d have no problem putting the thing together by herself. It was in pieces, he’d said, and had recommended that she open the box and carry the fountain, piece by piece, to its final destination.

  Using a board for a ramp, she’d managed, by climbing into her trunk and getting behind the box, to push it out of her car, down the ramp and onto the two-wheeler.

  Then, with her tennis shoes for traction on the hot cement, she’d started the cart rolling to the backyard.

  She’d landed the base on the ground by sliding it out of the box.

  And now they wanted her to lift the bowl? Had the guy at the store even looked at her? She was female. Five foot two. Weighed not much more than that fountain did. There was no way she could lift it.

  And no way she was even going to try to live without a fountain. Water sustained her; it was the foundation of her mental and emotional equilibrium.

  A girl who’d been burned alive could recover, move on, live a healthy and stable life, as long as she had water close by. And she was better at it when she could hear the water, anytime, all the time, in bed at night, and in the kitchen in the morning.