Grow, it said.
Contentment slipped over me like a warm blanket. I am growing, I thought.
I am.
27
Later that morning, and well before lunch, I received a call from Courtney, who said she’d gotten my message and that she was “on it.” There wasn’t a lot of excitement in her voice. Or interest. But my grandmother didn’t pay her to be either excited or interested. She paid her to be a good assistant and that she had always been.
Not that I’d told her often. So I said it before I hung up.
“Wow,” she said. “And after only one week.”
I laughed lightly as I ended the call.
Before the day was over I’d received calls from my parents and Gram, who clucked a little but then said I was made of solid stock so I should be fine.
William stopped by around 1:00 with a stack of musty magazines. “I’d read these outside,” he said, “or your allergies will flare up.”
“I don’t have allergies,” I told him.
He adjusted the hat on his head by pulling at the brim in front. “You will,” he said with a slow smile.
And then he left.
That night, shortly after dinner and while I lay on the sofa watching—much to my chagrin—a television game show, I received a call from Brianna. She gushed properly over the gifts she’d received in the mail, followed by reminding me she could never afford to replace them after “the little jars were empty.”
“Not that I don’t appreciate it,” she said. “I do. I felt like a princess opening those boxes.”
“Tell you what,” I said, reaching for the remote so I could lower the TV volume, “set aside, each month, what you might have spent on your drugstore brand and see if, six months from now, you don’t have enough to repurchase these name brands.”
“Six months? These will last six months?”
“Not if you overuse them, but you don’t seem like that kind of girl.”
“So I should be able to save enough to buy them?”
“I think so, yes. But if you don’t, I’ll buy the second round and I will never bother you about it again.”
“Oh no! It’s not a bother, Ashlynne, I promise.”
“Good enough,” I said. “I’ll see you tomorrow, right? You’re still coming to help with the cottage?”
“Yeah,” she drawled. “You’ll be there?”
“Well, yeah.” I looked at my wrapped foot, propped on several throw pillows at the end of the sofa. “I can’t believe you didn’t hear what happened to me yesterday.”
“You mean Will Decker pushing you down some hill?”
I burst out laughing. “Yeah, that. But he didn’t push. I fell.”
“Not what I heard, but small-town gossip can get the best of itself at times.”
In other words, people were talking about Will and me. I wasn’t sure if that was good news or bad news.
My phone rang as soon as we ended our call—Rob.
“Hey there,” I said, truly happy to hear his voice.
“Ashlynne? Are you okay?”
“You’ve heard too?”
“Yeah, from Will . . .”
“And what did Will have to say?” I asked.
“That he’d pushed you down the ravine to the old Revolutionary road.”
“Will said that?” Well, now I knew where the gossip started.
But Rob chuckled and said, “Nah. He said he called your name and you fell. But I heard it at The Dripolator.”
“The what?”
“Great little coffee shop. You should try it sometime. They also have a selection of teas and some fairly yummy desserts.”
“Mmmm . . . Hey,” I said, ready to change the subject. “I went to Brianna’s yesterday.”
“Oh, yeah. How’d that go?”
“Really well. She’s . . . she’s such a nice girl and she’s . . . a wonderful mother to Maris.”
“She is that.”
I reached to my foot and scratched the bandage, wishing I could get beneath it where the real itch lay. But the doctor had told me not to remove the bandage for a few days. “I know we have little in common,” I added, “but I find her to be a lot more mature than what I’d expect of most girls her age.”
“Well,” he said, as though pondering, “she’d have to be considering all she’s been through.”
“She’s pretty, too.”
“Very much so. Very pretty girl.”
“I’d hardly call her a girl.”
“That’s the Old South for you, Ash. Those of the fairer sex are always girls, even when they’re on up to Miss Helen’s age.”
“And are those of the other sex ‘boys’?”
“Hardly.”
“I see.” I needed to refocus to Brianna. “So, Brianna . . . does she date? Much?”
Long pause. If I knew human nature, the pondering had really set in. “I don’t think she dates at all.”
“How could that possibly be? I mean, she’s a good . . . girl . . . she’s pretty, she’s a great mother . . .”
“I—I—uh—I dunno, Ashlynne. I guess I haven’t thought about it. Before.”
I smirked. “Maybe you should,” I said, as though I knew all.
After we hung up, I looked at my phone and said, “Now, Rob Matthews, if you don’t ‘get it,’ you are, as Gram always puts it, ‘dumber than a rock.’ ”
The next day, as soon as I heard Brianna’s car arrive at the cottage, I jumped up from my seat on the sofa to greet her. Well, not jump exactly. I flung aside the old magazines and legal pad sprawled across on my lap, grabbed my crutches, and hobbled to the door. When I opened it, she stood on the other side of the storm door, and I gasped.
Tears poured down her cheeks. Her chest heaved. I could see the resolve to “be strong” on her face, but every other part of her refused the order and she broke down.
“What?” I asked while throwing the storm door open. “What’s wrong?” I hobbled backward to keep the doorway open. “Come in . . . sit right here in the chair. Let me get you something to drink.”
“No. No . . . I . . . I should be waiting on you.” In spite of her words, she plopped right down. Brianna reached for the box of tissues by the wingback chair, pulled one, then two, and blew her nose.
“Coffee? Tea?” I asked, pointing to the Keurig and not knowing what else to do but offer something to drink.
“Do you have water?”
“Sure.” I opened the refrigerator door and pulled out two bottles, then somehow managed to get them to the living area.
After handing Brianna hers, I eased myself onto the sofa. “Tell me . . . what’s wrong? Does this have something to do with Rob?” Had I totally messed up the night before?
Brianna shook her head. “No. Not Rob.” She placed the unopened water bottle between her leg and the chair’s arm.
I leaned forward, propped my foot on an ottoman, which I’d dragged over earlier, and said, “Then what?”
Fresh tears found their way down her cheeks. “I don’t know if I can . . .” She pulled another tissue. Blew her nose again. Buried her face in her hands. “This is bad. Really, really bad . . .”
“Maris? Is it Maris?”
She shook her head.
I knew so little about Brianna, I didn’t know where else to go with my questions. She cleaned houses and she worked in a café. Oh . . . “Did you lose your job at the drugstore?”
Again, she shook her head.
What else did I know? She had a child with Cliff, who had my car . . .
“My car! Did something happen to my car?”
Brianna looked up. “I don’t know,” she wailed. “Why would I know about your car?”
“Cliff has my car and . . .”
“Really? You trusted him?”
“Yes, Brianna. I trusted him. I trust him, in fact. So, trust me. Tell me what’s wrong.”
She opened her water bottle, took a long swallow, then recapped it and set it on the floor at her feet,
next to a discount-store purse. “I clean the Flannerys’ on Monday mornings . . .”
“Jean and Darrin Flannery?”
She hiccuped lightly. “But Miss Jean called on Sunday and asked me if we could switch her cleaning day from Monday to Tuesday. Something about she’d now be home on Mondays and she wanted to give me the run of the house.”
Was that last little tidbit of information important? “Okay.”
“So I went out there early as I could. None of them was home . . . and . . . I was cleaning Sean’s room and . . .” The tears resumed.
Sean. The golden boy of Testament’s high school football team. “And?”
“I don’t snoop, Ashlynne. I don’t. That’s my number two rule. Number one is don’t steal. Number two is don’t snoop.”
“I believe you.” My water bottle grew sweaty in my hand. I placed it at my feet as Brianna had done, then rubbed my hands together. All the while, the thought that I had no trouble snooping through medicine cabinets and home offices fluttered across my mind. Briefly.
“But Sean . . . his bottom drawer—the drawer of his highboy—was half open. I tried to close it so I could run the polish rag over it, but it was stuck.” She buried her face in her hands again and groaned.
“So, what did you do?”
She looked up. “I jerked it. You know, like this?” Brianna demonstrated. “And when I did, the whole thing came out and . . .”
“You think you broke the furniture?”
She shook her head. Reached for her purse, opened it, and pulled out a small vial along with a packaged hypodermic needle. Brianna extended them toward me.
I didn’t have to ask. I knew. I’d been down this road before. With Leigh. But I took them. Stared at the bottle, pretending to read it.
I looked at Brianna. “He’s on steroids.” The same drug that had taken Lawson’s life. My stomach clenched.
She nodded. “Do you understand what this means?”
“I do. He’s the best guy on the team because he’s bulking up illegally.”
“My little sister, the one who’s still in high school, she says that sometimes Sean is real nice and sometimes he’s real mean. I think”— she hiccuped again—“the drugs are why.”
I leaned back. “You’re right about that. Mood swings are one of the side effects.”
“What am I going to do, Ashlynne?” she whispered. “I can’t not say something. What if . . . what if he died or something worse?”
Something worse. I supposed there could be worse, though I couldn’t imagine what. Not after holding Leigh in her grief. Not after seeing her parents ripped into a million pieces over their son’s death. More so, that they’d not known what he was doing. Did Jean and Darrin?
“Was this all there was? The whole stash?”
Brianna shook her head. “No.”
“I wonder where he’s getting it.” I studied the bottle. No doctor’s name. No pharmacy. “The coach?”
“I would find that hard to believe. Coach is one of the best Christian men I know. He has children. He wouldn’t. I don’t think.”
I stared at the vial and the syringe awhile longer, as if doing so would somehow make all the answers rise to the surface. “Let me talk to Will,” I said, rolling the vial in my palm. “It’s the only thing to do.”
“Do you think I’m going to get into trouble?”
“For what?”
“Snooping? I mean, if this gets out, no one will want me to clean for them. And, not only that, the whole town is going to be angry. You have to understand the South and—”
“—football,” I said with her.
But it wasn’t only football we were talking about. The déjà vu made me want to get in my car and leave. Leave rather than walking this path again. I looked at my foot, propped near the book I’d been reading. Grow. I was surely growing, and like it or not, I wasn’t going anywhere.
28
Brianna managed to dry her eyes enough to clean the cottage, providing me with a new stack of freshly washed, dried, and folded fluffy towels. After she left, I sent a text message to William, asking him if we could talk. He texted back:
Can’t today. Busy w/only me here. See you 2morrow tho, right?
I returned with: I have appt in am to c doc. Ur G-ma taking me. Not sure I WILL b n ltr. Or if I will use the afternoon 2 go c Miss Helen.
I waited nearly five minutes before he texted back: Ok. Let’s just plan 2 Tlk Thursday nite @ movie/park?
I’d nearly forgotten about the movie. The only question was whether or not I could wait that long. Sure. Pick me up?
Another five minutes went by before I received: Yep.
I quickly sent back: Time?
I watched the face of my phone until he returned with: Movie begins at 9. 8:30?
I sent an “OK.”
Then I texted Brianna: Do nothing until you hear from me. All will b ok. I Promise, I wrote, completely unsure as to the validity of my words.
Within a minute, her text came in: K. I TRUST U.
I took a deep breath, blinking at the words, fearful of what they meant if we didn’t move fast enough. If we didn’t move at all. I thought to text back a note of thanks, but as I did, my phone rang.
I recognized the number. “Courtney?”
“Yeah. Hi. Just wanted you to know that I’ve gotten somewhere on the first part, but getting all the information you need is going to take some more time.”
“Not a problem. I understand, believe me. But what about the second part? Did you find out anything?” Because, in all honesty, if Courtney couldn’t find specifics, no one could.
“It’s a little vague, to be honest with you.”
I pulled the legal pad onto my lap and poised a pen. “I’m listening to whatever you have to offer.”
“Here’s the deal: I have a friend who has a friend who has a connection at the Chicago Star. From what he gathered—my friend, from his friend and the connection—William Alexander Decker was something of a hotshot journalist-slash-celebrity in Chicago during his time at the Star. He was also the boyfriend—and everyone assumed, the eventual husband—of Felicia Moses, daughter of Conrad Moses.”
That much I more or less knew. “Who is Conrad Moses exactly?”
“He’s one incredibly successful businessman, according to the contact—who wants to remain completely nameless in all this—with a lot of political and . . . other . . . ties in Chicago. Now, I’m not sure why you’re asking, but I looked up Felicia and, holy Moses—if you’ll take the pun in which I just offered it—she looks just like you.”
I knew that, too. What I didn’t know was what unethical thing William had done that landed him back in Testament. “What I really need to know, Courtney, is what caused Mr. Decker to leave Chicago.”
“My source says that Mr. Moses had ties with one of the city’s commissioners.”
“Does he know which committee?”
“Trade, Commerce, and Tourism.”
I jotted the notes on the legal pad. “Okay.”
“The commissioner had a rather interesting life story, which Mr. Decker wanted to write about, in conjunction with the positive work he and Mr. Moses had done for the less-fortunate communities and the city at large.”
“Does the commissioner have a name?”
“Eric Boscano.”
I scribbled the name. “All right.”
“So, Mr. Boscano had Decker shadow him. Somehow, and my source doesn’t know how, Mr. Decker overheard something that put Boscano in a gray light—from the way he remembers it—something Boscano was doing.”
“Illegally?”
“Yes.”
“And he told?”
“That’s where the details get shadowy. Ethically, Decker couldn’t say anything because, according to my source, he was in a political closed-door meeting, but not in an official capacity. The story was his, not something the Star had asked for. So, ethically he couldn’t say anything, but morally . . .”
�
��Gotcha.” I finished my notes. “Anything else?”
“My source’s connection says that, not only did Decker get out of town fast, there was such a cover-up that finding particulars about it—anything at all—on the Internet or in newspapers, simply won’t happen. The only reason I was able to get this much, Ashlynne, is because I knew the right person who knew the right person who knew . . .”
“The right person. Got it.”
We ended the call. I spent the next several minutes staring at the information I’d learned about William Decker. I bit my lip as I read the notes over and over again. Then I asked myself why knowing any of it was so important.
“Because,” I said to the room, “you’ve always been curious to a fault.”
Leigh once said it was my natural curiosity that drew me to journalism, not the family business. And that it was that same nosiness that led me to peek behind closed medicine cabinet doors.
“And into rooms where I have no business,” I said.
I looked at the scrawled information again. So now I knew . . . a little more than that I looked like someone Will used to date, which might or might not explain his hot/cold responses to me.
“This is not why you’re here,” I reminded myself. “Do your job and, in six months, leave. That’s the objective.”
But I couldn’t help what I was feeling. Nor could I help how those feelings—and this man I felt compelled to know more about—affected me.
Perhaps, I thought honestly, if I found out enough, and soon enough, I could put William Decker where he belonged. Out of the forefront of my mind. That way, leaving in December would be easier.
On Wednesday morning, after a “You’re doing well” from the doctor and Miss Bobbie had brought me back to the cottage, I called Alma and asked if she could pick me up and drive me to the nursing home that afternoon.
“Is Will busy?”
“I’m assuming. Besides, I’m hoping for time to get to know you better.” Which was true.
“One o’clock work for ya?”
“One is perfect,” I said.
I called the nursing home and asked to speak to the charge nurse, who secured time with me to talk with Miss Helen. “She’ll be delighted to see you,” the nurse said.
As soon as Alma drove up, I hobbled out.
The Road to Testament Page 24
