Page 2 of The Tomorrows After You
I let the reality of that swirl around me.
“Okay… But really, Mel. Shoot me straight. If I can’t get a story out of him, what happens then?”
She hesitated and I could practically hear her chewing on her lip.
“Then you’ll need to come back with a bigger story to tell.”
White clapboard siding covered Jacob Maxwell’s quintessential southern farmhouse, which featured a sprawling wrap-around porch. The massive landscape beyond was immaculately manicured.
My eyes fell to a piece of lawn art peeking out of a bush next to the porch stairs. It looked like a bird made from recycled metal and it spun in the wind, making its limbs come alive. A faint chime emanated from inside it. A twinge of familiarity reminded me of similar pieces popping up all over the northeast coast.
Jacob came sweeping down the porch to greet me.
“Oh, Nicolette, howwonderfulit is to see you! Look at you.” He appraised me for longer than necessary. “You’ve turned into quite the woman, haven’t you?”
“Good to see you, Jacob,”I muttered, pretending to root around for my bags.
“Oh, come now. You can still call meUncle Jacob!”
I grimaced. I had never called him “uncle”. Even when he had married my Aunt Shirley shortly after her lung cancer diagnosis took a turn for the worst. It was same summer I got my driver’s license so I didn’t spend a ton of time getting to know him. My mother never cared for her brother-in-law. She called him an opportunist.
Still, he was the only quasi-family I had left in Godot since my parents retired and now spent their days traversing the country in a rehabbed camper van.
“That’s all you’ve got?”he asked when I hoisted a backpack over my shoulder.
“I’m not staying long...”I drifted off.
Shit.In my reluctance to come back, I never came up with a cover story for why I was here. I couldn’t very well waltz into town and allow Riot Asher to shut me out before I got close enough. I wondered if I’d recognize him. His dark hair had framed a soft baby face that featured brilliant blue eyes. He was a looker.
But he’d also been in prison for ten years. Who knew what that did to a person.
My laptop bag slid off my shoulder and hit the ground with a clunk.
“Oh, let me.”Jacob bent down to pick it up. He eyed the laptop.“I guess I should have warned you. I don’t get wireless internet out here.”He cocked his head and shrugged.
“You don’t have internet.”I wanted to cry on the inside. How was I supposed to get any research done?
“I have one of those desktops in the office upstairs. You’re welcome to use that!”
I blew a breath out. This was going to be a long couple weeks.
I tossed my backpack on the bed, scattering novelty throw pillows like dust bunnies before wandering into the computer room next door.
Once the dinosaur tech booted up, I opened a browser and shot off an email to Melody, giving her Jacob’s address to mail me the episode treatment.
I opened up the email I sent to myself containing all the news links I had found in my brief research on Riot Asher. Most of the articles were from ten or eleven years ago and the distant memory of the story came flooding back to me.
Golden boy and star quarterback, Riot Asher was ready to put Godot on the map when he won himself a full scholarship to play football at West Virginia State College. As a starting freshman, he led the team to an undefeated season. The night before the final homecoming game, he left campus, drove three hours back to Godot and stabbed his mother three times before burning her body.
To be fair, he lit the whole house on fire. Her body just happened to be in it.
That same iconic photo that had made front-page news in almost all major publications was still the first image to populate.
Riot knelt on his front lawn with his hands behind his head, his childhood home burning to the ground behind him. I don’t know who was smart enough to snap a photo of that, but by the next morning, that image waseverywhere.
Outside that, I found nothing new published about Riot Asher in the last ten years and there were certainly no current photos. Plenty of follow-up articles with other townsfolk, but every single article ended the same way.Riot Asher did not respond to our requests for an interview.
Ithadbeen an open-and-shut case. He confessed. Didn’t even get a lawyer until the court assigned him one to cut the plea deal.
