Autumn

by Sierra Dean

  Compared to the chatter of birds and insects outside, the silence in the library was nearly deafening. She took a step forward, and a loud groan from the floorboards accompanied the movement.

  A man popped up from behind the circulation desk, and Lou let out a yelp. It had been so quiet, for a moment she’d believed she was alone. The man was younger than she’d expected, with wild black curls almost long enough to cover his ears and a pair of thick, black-rimmed glasses. He was wearing a tweed blazer, but underneath was a Flaming Lips T-shirt.

  “Hey,” he said, and peered past her as if he was expecting someone else to follow her in. When she proved to be alone, his scrutiny shifted back, and he narrowed his eyes at her, giving her a once-over. After finding her either nonthreatening or in some other way satisfactory, he nodded.

  “Do I need a library card to use the computer?” Lou asked.

  “Yes.”

  She walked up to the counter and folded her hands on the rough-hewn surface, smiling up at him with her best impression of a sweet and innocent girl. “Then may I please have a library card?”

  “Do you live here?”

  “I do now.” She let her bag drop to the floor. The shift in temperature from outside to the cool interior of the library had brought on a chill, and she wished she’d thought to bring a sweater.

  The man passed her a sheet and a pen. “Fill this out.”

  The form was basic, only a few lines asking for her name, address, and phone number. She was grateful to have memorized her new mailing address because the rural road and box number were necessary if she was going to get access to her online salvation. Once she’d completed it—with the weirdo librarian watching her the entire time—she slid it back across the desk to him.

  “ID?”

  Lou showed him her California driver’s license and added, “I don’t have a Texas one yet. I just got here a week ago.”

  He stared at the ID, then back to her form. “Whittaker?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you related to Devon Whittaker?”

  Lou’s heart seized and her hands began to tremble, so she removed them from the counter and stuffed them in her pockets. “He was my dad.”

  “Was?” He held out her card for her, and she took it, fumbling to get it back in her wallet.

  “He died.”

  The man drummed his fingers on the counter, and a look somewhere between confusion and sadness flickered across his face. “I hadn’t heard that.” Then after another beat he added, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  Something in the way he said it made Lou think the man expected to know and was hurt by discovering it so late. She frowned, not sure what to make of his crestfallen features. “It just happened last month.” Saying the words made her realize a month had passed now without her father being in her life.

  The weight of that knowledge bore down on her like a fist, threatening to flatten her into the earth. She took a ragged breath and forced a smile, albeit not nearly as bright as the original one she’d offered him.

  “My name is Nigel.” He held out his hand to her, an errant curl falling in front of his eye. “Nigel Farrell.”

  If ever someone did not look like a Nigel, it was this Nigel. First, Lou thought anyone with a name like that had to be eighty—there needed to be some sort of law stipulating that. No one as young as this librarian—who was thirty at the most—should ever be named something as old and weird as Nigel.

  “Nigel.” The name even sounded funny rolling off her tongue.

  “You’re Lou.”

  Her driver’s license and the form were both filled out with Eloise, so when he used her nickname so easily, Lou went rigid. “How do you know that?”

  “He told me a lot about you.”

  “My dad?” Suddenly this guy wasn’t just a weirdo, he was someone who had known her father. Though how her dad might have come into contact with a strange grad-school type like Nigel was beyond Lou’s comprehension. Her father had been forty-two when he died, far too old to be a school friend.

  “Yes.” Nigel was not the biggest conversationalist.

  “How did you know my dad?” Lou prodded, not so concerned with her original mission anymore.

  “Our families ran in similar circles.” Nigel dusted imaginary dirt from his blazer and turned away from her to collect a blank library card. He filled it out silently while she stared at him with an intensity she typically reserved for elimination night on American Idol. If he could feel the weight of her gaze, he showed no sign of it. Once the card was laminated, he handed it to her, still warm from the machine.

  “You’re welcome to use either computer. There’s a half-hour limit, and the printer is ten cents a page. Twenty-five for color.”

  When Nigel turned his back on her, a swell of emotion overcame her and spilled over like a toddler’s temper tantrum. She opened her mouth and found the words falling out without any hope of her keeping them in check.

  “How do you know him? You can’t just say something like that and then, boom, end the conversation like it never happened. I mean, you can’t say my dad told you about me and then just leave it. What did he say?” She slapped the countertop once, ashamed of herself for the outburst but unable to stop it.

  Nigel seemed surprised, arching both brows when he pivoted to face her and looking down at her hand on the counter. When she didn’t move, he picked up her hand and dropped it off. “I was out of line speaking so casually. Please carry on with whatever you came to do.”

  “Not until you tell me how you knew my father.” She crossed her arms over her chest and tried to come across as someone not to be messed with. In actuality she probably looked like a pouting child, but right then it didn’t matter. She just wanted someone to give her answers.

  Nigel glanced around the room as if to make sure they were really alone, then whispered, “I can’t tell you anything. But I will say you’re not going to find what you’re looking for on the computer.”

  “What?”

  “You’re here because you want some…insight, yes?”

  “Y-yes.”

  Nigel hopped up on the old wooden counter and swung his legs over, forcing her to take several steps back to keep him from kicking her. He jumped down, his loafers landing softly on the well-worn floor, and he waved for her to follow him like what he’d just done hadn’t been totally insane.

  Lou hesitated, but when he disappeared down one of the rows, she scuttled after him, not wanting to lose his trail. Nigel was waiting for her at the back of the library next to an unremarkable-looking plywood door that had a small Periodicals sign affixed to it.

  “There hasn’t been much of a budget to digitize old copies of the newspaper in town. I’ve been trying to do some of it myself, but…” He let his voice drift off and shrugged one shoulder. “Anyway. I think there will be more of interest to you in here.” Nigel tapped the door once, then turned the handle, letting it swing inwards to a completely dark room.

  When Nigel flipped on the light switch, Lou was stunned.

  She had expected one of those old microfiche viewing boxes and perhaps rolls of old paper on film. Instead she was greeted to a second library, this one containing dozens of shelves burdened under heavy collections of print newspapers.

  “Are you sure the Internet won’t be helpful?” Lou eyed the stacks with nervous apprehension. Searching through those would take eons, and that was supposing she knew where to start. Which she didn’t.

  “August. 1984.” Nigel smiled and turned on his heel, vanishing from the room.

  1984? Neither she nor Cooper had been alive then. How was that going to help her find out more about her mysterious new friend? But still, it was a lead, and it gave her a place to start. She dumped her bag on the table in the middle of the room and began to scan the shelves, hoping to figure out their system quickly. It didn’t take long for her to decipher the shelving code and find the volume for August 1984. When she withdrew the book from its place, she al
most toppled over under its weight.

  She’d never considered newspapers to be heavy before, but when an entire month’s worth was compiled in one place, the weight was shocking. After hauling the book back to her table, she put it down with a loud thump and settled in to flip through the pages.

  Blessedly, the Poisonfoot Gazette was not burdened with an overabundance of news. Each issue was only about ten pages long, and the bulk of those pages was made up of world news, sports, and classified ads. Lou was able to skim those and focus mainly on the local news coverage in the first two pages of each issue.

  In 1984 there’d been a lot of discussion about local elections, a great deal of editorial commentary on a new Chinese food restaurant being constructed, and plenty of articles on a blistering heat wave. In other news, there was no other news. Poisonfoot had been as boring thirty years earlier as it was now.

  She thumbed through the old brittle pages, getting a kick out of photos of townspeople in giant Coke-bottle glasses and huge shoulder pads, but not finding anything relevant to her interests.

  Lou was about to go in search of Nigel and demand some real answers when she flipped to the front page for August 29.

  Local Boy—12—Saves Baby from Brutal Attack.

  And there, smiling out of the pages at her, was her father.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “You are in so much trouble,” Mia sang out as Cooper dragged himself through the back door.

  He looked up at the clock in the kitchen, and it was only eight. His curfew wasn’t until eleven on weekends.

  “What are you talking about?”

  Mia was sitting on the kitchen counter eating pudding, her black skirt swishing as she kicked out her legs. Her artificially black hair hung over her eyes in an attempt to make her appear moody and mysterious, but the way she was grinning at him made it difficult to take her seriously as a child of darkness.

  Cooper left his gym bag on the floor next to the washing machine on the back porch and glanced around the kitchen, half expecting his mother to come lunging out screaming at him over some unknown offense.

  It was impossible for her to know he’d gone searching for Jer. So unless he’d managed to get in trouble some other way, his wrongdoing was still a mystery to him.

  When his mother didn’t show up, the reality of his offense hit him like a linebacker on a mission.

  “Shit,” he spat out, kicking the frame of the back door. “How mad is she?”

  Mia’s face got solemn, and she did a spot-on impression of their mother’s voice. “Cooper… She’s not mad. She’s just disappointed.”

  He’d been so distracted—first by Lou, then by seeing Jer—that he’d completely forgotten he was meant to pick up his mother after her shift ended. Her car was in the shop for the weekend, and she didn’t like bringing one of the cruisers home. The fleet was limited, and she preferred the on-duty staff all had access if need be.

  If it was after eight now, he was a half hour late. By the time he got to the station he’d be pushing forty-five minutes, which might as well have been an hour as far as his mother was concerned. Cooper turned and went back the way he came before Mia could get in another barb.

  The truth of the matter was their mother could have walked home. She could have gotten a deputy to drive her. There were a half-dozen different ways she might have made her way back to their house, but because she was the way she was, she was going to wait for him at the station.

  All the better to lecture him about responsibility if he had to go to her.

  Cooper made the short trip from their house to the sheriff’s station and pulled up out front, making sure he was in a legal parking zone. The last thing he wanted was to give his mother more ammunition than she already had.

  When it was obvious she wasn’t going to come rushing out the doors to greet him, he turned off the engine and went inside.

  The Poisonfoot Sheriff’s Department was about as stereotypical as a small-town police force could get. The interior of the station was still something straight out of a 1970s television series, with ancient wood paneling and a dusty American flag in one corner. The only thing that brought it into the right century were the state-of-the-art computers his mother had insisted on, replacing the massive older models that had been around since the first Bush was President.

  The chairs in the lobby were cracked orange plastic, and the tile on the floor was an ugly green, making Cooper wonder what sort of colorblind maniac had been responsible for decorating.

  His mother was leaned over a desk, pointing to something on a deputy’s monitor. She’d changed out of her beige uniform but still wore an air of authority. It didn’t matter that people didn’t like them because there was no doubt about them respecting her. She had a way of making people trust her, and not a single person could dispute she was good for the town.

  She kept everyone safe, and when you could protect others, it didn’t matter if they liked you.

  Cooper often wondered if it was hard for her to want to help them when she knew they were always whispering about the Reynoldses behind her back. Or to her face. But if she had issues with the people of Poisonfoot, she never let it get in the way of doing her job.

  Without looking up she said, “I was starting to think I’d still be here when my shift on Monday started.”

  Instead of making excuses he lowered his head and muttered, “I’m really sorry.”

  She straightened up, patted the deputy on his shoulder, and picked up her purse. “I’m sure you’ll tell me all about what was so important while we’re driving home. Have you eaten?”

  Cooper shook his head.

  “Okay, we’ll stop at the Dairy Queen on our way back. Is your sister still pretending to be a vegetarian to impress that silly boy?” She ducked under the counter and came to stand beside him, looking surprisingly short. When had he gotten so much taller than her?

  “I saw her eating chicken fingers at lunch yesterday.”

  “Thank God. The hair is one thing, but no right-minded Texan girl should ever stop eating meat to impress a man.” She touched Cooper’s back, and they left the building, walking to his unlocked truck.

  As they drove, she rolled down the window and pulled a cigarette out of her purse. She held it between her teeth and looked at him as if waiting for a lecture. When he didn’t say a word, she lit the smoke and exhaled a puff out the open window.

  For as long as he could remember, she’d always kept a pack of cigarettes in her purse, but she almost never smoked them. He recognized the brand as being those his father had preferred, and he had a funny feeling the pack she smoked from was one Dad had left behind. Given how rare it was for her to light them, it wouldn’t have surprised him to learn she was slowly burning through the last remaining relics of her husband one puff at a time.

  Since she didn’t make a habit of smoking, he didn’t think he had any right to tell her not to. Sure, it was terrible for her, and he hated the idea of the smell lingering in his truck, but she was the parent, not him. People needed their vices, and he wasn’t going to deny her this one. If she started buying new packs and smoking in the house, he’d reconsider his stance, but until then he’d let it be.

  “So why were you late?” she asked once she’d finished.

  He debated using Lou as his excuse. It had been a long time since he’d shown any interest in a girl, and he thought his mom might be excited by the prospect of him meeting someone. But then he thought of the real reason he’d been delayed and knew a girl wasn’t going to make his mom happy.

  “I saw Jer.”

  She went rigid, and her focus narrowed on him as she turned in her seat to face him directly.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know what I’m talking about, Mom. I saw him.”

  His mother was quiet, staring at him. Cooper kept his eyes on the road and continued driving them towards the Dairy Queen on the edge of the city.

  “Tell me,” she said after a lon
g, aching silence.

  “It was out on the road by the lake. I was…I was with a girl, and he stepped out in the middle of the road and blocked the truck.”

  “You were with a girl? What girl?”

  “Lou Whittaker.”

  His mother’s hand clamped down on his wrist, and the shock of her cool skin on his made him jerk, causing the truck to swerve. He pulled over and put the truck into park, then met her wide-eyed gaze.

  “Whittaker?” she asked, her voice trembling. The last time he’d seen his mother so scared had been… Well, it had been on Jeremy’s birthday.

  “Yes.”

  “Did she see him?”

  “He was sitting right in the middle of the road, Mom. Yes, she saw him. And she said he’s been coming around to Elle Whittaker’s regularly. She didn’t know it was him specifically, but she was awfully curious about why the coyotes in Poisonfoot were so damned friendly.”

  “Did you…?” Her hand tightened on his wrist. “You didn’t tell her anything, did you?”

  Cooper snorted. “Do I look nuts to you? Hey, Lou, that coyote is actually my brother. Even if I had told her, she wouldn’t have believed me.”

  “Don’t be so sure about that.”

  Cooper regarded his mother carefully. “Why do you say that?”

  She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. Not anymore. Because you’re never going to see that girl again.”

  “What?” This was sounding all too familiar, except he was used to people telling Lou to stay away from him.

  “She’s a Whittaker. You can’t spend any more time with her, Cooper, it’s not safe.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Language,” she scolded. “And don’t question me. Just listen. You aren’t safe with her.”

  Cooper conjured up an image of Lou in his mind, her small frame and messy, waving hair. There was nothing about her that screamed threatening.

  “But I—”

  “No buts. She’s dangerous. And what’s more, I won’t have you spending what time we have left with some girl. Especially not that girl.” When she finished speaking, there was finality to her words that told Cooper she wouldn’t hear any further arguments.