Autumn (10 page)

Lou wanted to find the affection smothering, but she appreciated that her mom took the time to say it, even in a text.

The door creaked shut behind her, blotting out the dying light of the afternoon and leaving Lou in a dimly lit corridor, blinking to adjust to the sudden brightness shift. The room came into focus slowly, rows and rows of old brown bookshelves, some sagging beneath the weight of literally hundreds of books. Motes of dust floated in the air, caught in narrow light shafts from the tiny windows at the top of the walls.

Three heavy wooden tables sat in the center of the room with the bookshelves fanning out around them like the petals of a flower. On one table were two relatively new-looking computers with flat-screen monitors, and a small printer. The other two tables were empty but for two green lamps on each, like the ones Lou had seen in old movies.

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 almost 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.