Chapter One

Death in the Passage

The narrow alleyway walls muffled the gunshot as uptown Charlotte slept. It was one thirty in the morning on Tuesday, April 1.

The phone call didn’t last long.

“It’s me,” the caller said. “I need your help.”

“I’m listening.”

“I have a body.”

“Whose?”

“Chance Landry.”

“Where are you?”

“Lincoln Street. Inside the Rivafinoli Passage in South End. Next to the Queen Charlotte mural.”

“Anyone with you?”

The caller explained who else was still there.

“You leave. Tell them to stay with the body and wait for my call. I need to think.”

Three minutes later, the call was made to the only living person remaining in the passage who could help.

“I am going to text you an address.” Next, they explained what to do with Landry’s body when they got to the address.

“Are you kidding? He’s already dead.”

But the person giving instructions had no sense of humor. “Just do it.”

A text message followed with the address.

The person who received the message knew how to follow directions and did as they were told.

Chapter Two

Vengeance is Sweet

The 11:15 p.m. email on Craig Travail’s phone read: Your friends are about to suffer financial ruin, untold heartbreak, and trials and tribulations. You have only yourself to blame.

What?

Travail read the email again, slower this time. He read it twice more. There was no author name. Just an unknown vengeanceissweet email address.

Travail exhaled. His email checking practice was a bad habit, a routine held over from his career when clients expected their lawyers to be available 24/7.

Nothing good ever came of his itch to scratch his email in-box for late-night messages, like now, when it would be twice as difficult to sleep after watching the late night local news—with its smorgasbord of crimes, collisions, and natural disasters—and reading this email.

One news story was about elder fraud, a reminder of how susceptible retirees are to financial fraud schemes. Was that what was coming for his friends at the Independence Retirement Community, which everyone called the Indie? Were the residents about to suffer financial ruin because of risky investments? If so, he’d be angry at the perpetrators for their heartless guile and frustrated with his friends for being so gullible.

The television show made the point, though, and he agreed, that adults spend most of their lives collecting assets to make retirement possible and the rest of their days worried if their accumulated treasure will last as long as they do, leading some retirees to make risky and uninformed choices with their nest eggs. Was that what his friends had done? Made bad choices with their money? Is that what the emailer taunted him about?

Travail’s instinct was to fire off a harsh response to the email with some choice lawyer-like words and warnings, but he ignored the bait—he suspected they wouldn’t respond anyway—and he punched the remote control instead.

The television screen faded to black, and his den fell silent, save for Blue’s rhythmic snores and his jerking legs. Travail’s black and tan coonhound must be dreaming, chasing ducks along the lake behind Travail’s cottage, as he was apt to do in real life, and as usual, failing to catch the waterfowl before they darted back into the water. Travail leaned over his club chair’s arm and let his free hand graze on Blue’s back until his pet stopped running in his sleep.

Maybe the email was a prank. Maybe, like him, a friend had become bored with life at the Indie. And yet, the email bothered him.

Whose lives—which friends’ lives—were about to be shattered? And how? And for that matter, why? And what did he have to do with it?

Since moving a year earlier into the Independence Retirement Community, Travail had made two best friends, Harriet Keaton and Yeager Alexander, and several other good friends. He’d met many other retirees, some whose company he tolerated and some whose company he could do without. Either way, he didn’t want to see anyone hurt. He certainly didn’t want his close friends to suffer, and he didn’t want to be the person responsible for their pain.

The flame on the candle he’d lit this morning was down to the base of the wick. He turned away from it, detesting the severe loneliness of March 31.

There was no logic for feeling so alone—what with all the crimes, court cases, and historic mysteries Harriet, Yeager, and he navigated since he arrived at the Indie and the time they spent together—but it was hard to control his feelings, especially the feeling of being by himself. A Jewish resident told him about the tradition of lighting a candle on the anniversary of a loved one’s death. It felt loving to strike the match in Rachael’s honor, but as day became night, Travail’s mood shifted. It had been three years to the day.

The flickering light had a strobe-like effect on the things that reminded him of Rachael: her furniture, her quilts, her artwork, her pictures. Travail missed Rachael’s kindness, her playfulness, her creativity, and the rituals they shared. The flicker made the past too present, making him long for another night and morning and day together. She was here, there, and everywhere, but nowhere at all.

Assertive is what he’d needed to be in the moment that changed everything. He and Rachael were in the mountains at a high-elevation rental for a getaway when a freak storm rolled in and dumped six inches of snow on the ground. Rachael decided to drive to the local general store to stock the pantry for their cozy weekend together. He had a work call and offered to go with her after he finished.

“It’s just snow,” she’d said.

“Okay, but be careful,” he’d responded.

“Always, dear.” Then she kissed him on the mouth, patted his bottom, and walked out of his life forever.

The news came in a phone call from the local police. First came the shock, then the grief, and then the Monday-morning quarterbacking. He should have insisted Rachael let him drive her. He should have done more to protect her. If he had, maybe she would still be here. Maybe the out-of-control delivery truck that hit the black ice would have killed him instead of her, or maybe Travail could have prevented the accident.

Spring in North Carolina was supposed to be about new beginnings, not endings, with the dogwoods and azaleas in bloom, but his eyes grew wet from the memories, and he felt a sudden heaviness in his body.

He looked at the email again and became resolute. For sure, he would not make the same mistake twice with the people he cared about. He would protect them.

But who was behind the email?

Whoever wanted sweet vengeance against his friends wanted vengeance against him too, because their pain would be his pain. The question for his lawyer brain—used to solving riddles for years—was: who despised them and him that much?

Like an unexpected electric shock, the answer startled him. This email was exactly the kind of plot his nemesis, Robert Elkin, would conjure. If Elkin hurt Harriet, Yeager, and his other close friends, he hurt Travail worse.

But wasn’t Elkin no longer a threat? They’d exposed his concealment of the truth about the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, avoided death at the hands of his father, pushed him out of his Big Law leadership position, and seen to it that the state bar took his law license. Elkin no longer had big-time lawyer power. The only thing he had was anger, resentment, and a low-paying job as a paralegal with a former client, though Travail didn’t know the client’s name or their business. It was a sharp drop from the level of influence that had made the man dangerous, and yet, there was reason to be cautious. Elkin was cunning and would hold a grudge till death do they part.

Travail leaned his head back in his chair, looked up at the ceiling, and pondered the text again: financial ruin, untold heartbreak, and trials and tribulations.

Harriet was too smart to get caught up in a financial scam. Not so with Yeager. He was impulsive, likely to jump at the chance to possess something shiny because it might become shinier.

Travail pulled an olive-colored sweatshirt over his t-shirt, woke Blue, and took him into the backyard to do his business under the stars. While he waited, Travail glanced across Lost Cove Lake to Harriet’s cottage. He inhaled the fresh night air, and he marveled at the main building’s reflection on the lake’s surface. Harriet’s lights were out. She, an early riser, must be asleep.

Seeing Harriet’s peaceful cottage raised a question he’d been pondering. Should he ask her on a date? Carrie Roberts, the Indie Gossip Queen, thought so and often shared her opinion.

Most days, it seemed like the right decision not to ask Harriet—or anyone else, for that matter—on a date. Three years wasn’t that long, really, since Rachael died. And yet, here he was, caught in a web he’d spun for himself, trapped somewhere between what he no longer had and the companionship he wanted but resisted. Harriet was his friend. Should he keep it that way?

Harriet would most likely turn him down anyway. He was a project, and he knew it, starting with the lesson she’d had to teach him last year that retirement living is not life’s dead end but a fresh path forward. And now, with him being a sixty-six-year-old widower afraid to address his feelings, she’d be quick to beg off.

Blue finished up, and the two headed inside. His watch told him it was a new day. He blew out the dwindling flame on the candle and headed to his bedroom, where Blue was already curled up on the end of Travail’s queen-size bed. Wearing only striped boxers and a white cotton t-shirt, Travail pulled the covers up to his chin. With a good night’s sleep, he’d be fresh in the morning to put his effort into stopping Elkin. He still had his law license, after all, and as Yeager would tell him from time to time, “You ain’t dead yet.”

He closed his eyes and imagined tying a dry fly rig with two nymphs on a dropper line, the key to catching river trout on and below the surface at the same time. This falling-asleep system was better than counting backward from three hundred by threes. It worked its charm in less than five minutes.

Travail didn’t know when he dozed off that the murder train had left the station. He didn’t know when he began to snore that someone had already set the trap for his friends. And he didn’t know when he fell into a deep sleep that when the sun came up, he would ponder, and not for the first time, how he could have been so wrong to believe retirement living would ever be boring or lonely.

***

Excerpt from Deadly Gold Rush by Landis Wade. Copyright 2026 by Landis Wade. Reproduced with permission from Landis Wade. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

Place the blame where it should go: on chocolate. The good stuff. The variety that melts way too fast as you swirl it over your tongue and let it cuddle the inside of your mouth, knowing the sensation is fleeting, which makes it more delicious. Yeah, that’s the kind I’m talking about.

I opened the front door of my Vegas condo and instantly tried to slam it. Except, the man I faced handed me a golden, foil-wrapped box with the unmistakable Godiva logo.

He placed it in the palm of his right hand and extended his arm. Then he stepped back. With elegance and skill, he had baited the hook, and I was snagged. Just like that.

I’m fast and grab the box before he could pull away. Or maybe that was his plan all along. If it hadn’t been for the lure of delectable dark chocolate, I would have stayed happily ignorant about sex slaves, black-market babies, cheating preachers, and an assortment of lowlifes that suddenly intruded on my cluttered, frazzled life.

If only I’d slammed the door, I would never have been rejected, arrested, and nearly exterminated.

Wait, did you just say, “Back the truck up”? Sorry, writing a memoir is new to me, and I just got overly excited to tell you everything. Instead, I’m taking some deep yoga-style breaths and will give you the whole story, nothing but the truth, just like it happened.

You see, at the stroke of another scorching Las Vegas summer midnight, I found myself feeling the still sizzling breeze swirling around my sleep shorts and tank top—front door open, air conditioning spewing out into the neighborhood. I stood and sniffed the corners of the box, knowing full well the pleasures that were inside. Why was this guy on my doorstep? It was wrong. It was a moment, much later, I wanted to stop time—like you can while watching Netflix. Instead, I ripped open the box, placed a scrumptious piece of heaven-on-earth into my mouth and eyed up and down what the devil had dumped on my doorstep.

Medical studies have proven it’s a bad idea to let a woman with PMS eat a pound of Godiva at one time, or so some new report said. Trust me, however. It’s an even worse idea to try to take chocolate away from a woman, PMS or not.

Fortunately, this guy certainly knew women. So he waited. I gobbled three more. In a row. Then handed him back the two-thirds empty box. I’m not greedy, see?

Forget whatever you’re thinking. This man was not a hunka, hunka burning love, but seemed to be my pudgy grandfather. Or a doppelgänger dressed collar to cuffs in glitter galore, gold, and some gosh-awful alligator-esque cowboy boots. In blood red.

He squinted in the light of the front steps of my townhouse/condo combo, and his chin dragged low. He grumbled, muttered, and withdrew his left hand from behind his back, producing yet another box with the chocolatier’s signature wrapping. I told you he was good. I salivated, snatched it, and stepped out of the way. I’m not addicted to the stuff; I just like it a lot, a whole lot.

Okay, that gives you the abbreviated version of why, five minutes later, my disgruntled relative was huddled on the beige sofa in the sterile Las Vegas condo that came with my current job. It does not explain why I was stomping up and down in front of him, but I’ll get to that. You see, I’m usually the one who solves problems; that’s my field, being I’m a minister and all.

You heard it right. I might not look like any preacher you’ve ever met, being that I’m rounded in all the right places, and I prefer a flashier wardrobe than you may have seen on church ladies. Like it or not, that’s me, Pastor Jane Angieski. I’m ordained and licensed, overly educated and fully confused a good portion of the time. I’ve been told, by the governing board of my denomination, that I should be more professional. It’s taken a long time and therapy, but I like me as I am.

You’re not the first, you know, to wonder how a flashy gal like me got into the ministry business. Most folks do not come straight out and ask because they’re dumbfounded to find out I know the Good News backward, forward, and well done in the middle. My response when they sputter a question or raise both eyebrows to the ceiling? “You see. They have quotas. Recall affirmative action? The denomination needed more females who had curves and padding in their ranks. There were plenty of string bean ones.”

Honestly? Hold on to something sturdy:

When I returned to college to finish my master’s, I was working part-time in retail at Victoria’s Secret, then at a mortuary where I applied makeup to the dearly departed. I also gave out contraceptives and condoms at a free clinic in Watts, and did some hard time asking, “Do you want fries with that?” Along the way, I made enough to avoid incurring huge debt. Psychology was to be my field. I am outrageously curious about people. We humans are so weird, and I love it.

One steamy Los Angeles day, I attended a program on campus because the AC in my apartment was broken. I also knew that with luck there’d be cake and coffee. The program, as I found out, was to recruit grad students into the ministry. It was probably the sugar talking, but I signed on the dotted line and started that summer attending seminary. Graduated with honors, accepted an assistant minister gig straight out of the seminary doors and got kicked out because I volunteered to help the cops in tracking down hoods in the hood where I was the pastor in this ghetto church.

The church council didn’t mind that I nabbed the bad guys looking like a lady of the evening who could do it all night. What they didn’t like was that I appeared on the front of the L. A. Times in a hot pink leather miniskirt, strappy sandals that wound up to my knees and a blouse leaving little to the imagination of Great Aunt Tillie, or anyone else. The news story hit the floor running, and little old me was seen and talked about on PBS News Hour, CNN, Fox News, and then YouTube, and then it went viral. As if no one had seen a minister before. Go figure.

People magazine beseeched and besought me for an interview, full four pages of me, but better judgment kicked in. I turned it down after a call from a member of my denomination’s district council put the brakes on that one. Besides I don’t always want to stay and play second fiddle in the church hierarchy. I do have some pride and ambition. I’d like to be known someday as an important voice in ministry, not one of those television evangelists with flapping eyelashes and hair like dear old Marge Simpson. No offense, Marge. It’s not a good look for either of us.

The metaphorical knuckle-wrapping, to me, was worth it. It resulted in the dealing, drugging, and pimping partners in crime who went off to a helping place in another area of California, clogging an overstuffed prison system even more. Not my problem there. I got a letter of commendation from LA’s mayor and my backside booted to Vegas. I wasn’t exactly demoted, but I was no longer a full pastor. These days, if I should burp without saying, “pardonnez-moi,” the council hears about it. In detail. Hence, the youth minister I’m filling in for left exact instructions on the requirements of my professional demeanor so that I wouldn’t lead any teens down a slope where a flashing sign reads: Beware: She’s Crazy and Dangerous.

Back to the man of the midnight hour littering my living room. His grumbling continued. Like waiting out a storm, I sat down next to the huddled mass of manhood whose name isn’t Woe Is Me, but Henry J. Angieski, Ph.D.—my grandfather who just happens to have an alternative personality, one of a classic rocker with the 70s band Slam Dunk. You may have heard of him when he was called Hank A. Yes, that’s Gramps. Although you wouldn’t recognize him. I didn’t.

Gramps is a “let’s get coffee” kind, friends with Sir Paul, Bruce, Mick and a lot more you can name, if you like the older stuff. In all of my thirty-five years, I’d never known him to be defeated, never seen him without a sly smile and a plan to take on the world.

Quick familial footnote: He and Gram couldn’t have children, and they knew it before they married. Gramps told me like this: “Uncle Sam really needed me and thought a tropical Asian trip might help me understand humanity better.”

Translation? It was 1965. He’d dropped out of grad school to find his musical mojo. He was drafted, surprise, surprise, and sent directly to Vietnam where horrible things were happening, like an unpopular and soul-crushing war. Did you wonder how I got into this mix?

Gramps said, “I found the son of my heart there, honey. The kid was always hanging around the barracks. He had red hair like your gorgeous gram and the most intense almond-shaped eyes I’d ever seen. He picked up English like it was nothing, and one day when I handed him a guitar, he started to play chords. He was six or seven, but he didn’t know his birthday and had forgotten his father’s name, if he’d ever known it. Mom died in childbirth, and the bio family shunned him. The other guys in my unit adopted him like a mascot.

“I was finishing my deployment when I got word that I’d been accepted into the music program at the University of Southern California. Your Uncle Sam thought I deserved to return to California because, with this chunk of shrapnel in my knee, I was pretty useless as a foot soldier, and I told everyone the kid was mine.”

That country was in shambles, already invaded by the French, English, and Russians before the US stepped into the mess. So Gramps returned to Gram with a ready-made son whom they adored.

Fast forward ten years. Gram died after a painful battle with cancer, and a couple of months later I came into the world. My father somehow neglected to tell Gramps there was a teenager in his life who was about to birth their baby, and it was a surprise all around when she showed up one day with me in a pink blanket.

Parenthood didn’t rock the Richter scale of life for this young couple. Gramps, once more, manned up, and he became the saving grace for me. The story goes that the twosome, my bio parents, piled their macrobiotic rice, pine nut smoothies, ceremonial drums, unfiltered carrot juice, and love beads inside a rusting, hand-painted purple VW bus, dotted with yellow daisies, and went in search of their bliss. I believe they were about ten years past the real hippies, but that didn’t seem to deter them. The last I heard, when I was sixteen, was that they were in Sedona, selling therapy rocks to tourists. I was happy for them; I had the best grandfather, the coolest Gramps in my school. However, getting a rock in the mail for one’s birthday stunk.

Enough about me. At least for a few minutes—unless it has to do with the reason I wrote this memoir, which is to explain why I ended up a viral sensation on YouTube. Again. Although the in-between stuff scared me silly.

Gramps interrupted my gallop down Memory Lane with a grunt that sounded suspiciously like he was swearing, which I knew he didn’t. Or the normal-ish grandfather I previously claimed didn’t swear.

“Call me Onesimus,” he growled.

“What-a-muss?”

“Get a clue, you’re a preacher. You know this stuff. Always spouting it off as you do all that Bible-belting.” Then he grumbled about how his granddaughter could easily become a pompous prig.

“I’ve never belted a Bible in my life, I’ll thank you.” And I wondered in a tiny spot in my heart if I should look up the definition of prig before I felt insulted.

“Don’t give me that look, girl. I’m immune. Been looking at myself too long for one of your freeze-frame frowns to frazzle me and make me spill my guts.”

“Are you talking Old Testament or New?”

“Look it up, Pastor.”

He never calls me, Pastor. Never before had he even raised his voice to me. “Who are you and what did you do with my grandfather?” I demanded. My now mostly-retired from sex, gals, and rock and roll, and teaching at the university, grandfather lived in the beachy town of Carlsbad, California. “It’s midnight, and my real grandfather is safety tucked in bed right now, not in Vegas, baby.”

We stared at each other, then a flickering two-watt bulb flipped on. “Are you talking about Onesimus, as in the slave the Apostle Paul wrote about?”

“Bing-a-ding ding, girl. Listen, Janey, I’m having a crisis, one that, well, is personal, as private as it can get for a man.”

From the dancing rhinestones embedded on his denim shirt, past the belt buckle the size of Rhode Island, and the boots which had three-inch heels, the man was either auditioning for a low-budget movie or had lost his marbles. My real grandfather was a rock star, wore a lot of black, dragged a guitar everywhere and didn’t dress like a cowboy. He was dependable, had style, sure, and a heart for the next gal and guy. Always.

Okay, there were some ladies of a certain age, groupies if I’m honest, who would have had their way with him, but Gramps was incredibly discreet about that stuff. Then again, I never had a conversation about the birds and the bees with him.

“Oh, personal and private,” I muttered, regretting my decision to have that second Lean Cuisine Mexican Medley. I did not ever, ever, want to discuss my grandfather’s sexual inadequacies or his performance issues, and the souring sensation in my stomach agreed. Big time.

Instead, I blurted, “Men your age are well past that. For Pete’s sake, don’t tell me you’re in Vegas to marry an 18-year-old, half-naked dancer who wears pink feathers that glow in the dark with matching pasties that barely cover her nipples. And that she’s just misunderstood and currently employed at a local strip joint because she’s putting herself through med school.”

He just took off a boot. There was no denial.

“She’s not some chorus babe, Jane. She has to be at least 18 or 19, however. Guess she could be 16 with a fake ID. I never asked.”

***

Excerpt from Jane Won’t Quit by Eva Shaw. Copyright 2026 by Eva Shaw. Reproduced with permission from Eva Shaw. All rights reserved.

From beginning of Chapter One…

Paradise isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be.

Sure, Valerie Corbin knew she and her wife Kristen were supremely fortunate to now reside in the quaint, still-stuck-in-the-1970s town of Hilo on the magnificent Big Island of Hawai‘i—home to lush jungles, fiery volcanoes, black sand beaches, and coral reefs teeming with eye-popping tropical fish.

But at this moment, all she could focus on was the bull terrier-spaniel mix next door barking so loudly that it almost—though not quite—drowned out the whine of the pneumatic tools its owner was using on a jacked-up truck, the parts of which were currently scattered all across his driveway.

Letting loose a few choice words regarding both dog and man, Valerie slammed shut the window above the kitchen sink, then returned to the stove to poke at her potatoes simmering in a pot of water. At the sound of the back door opening, she looked up to see Kristen and her nephew, Sean, come inside from the lānai, Valerie and Kristen’s little white dog, Pua, trotting after them.

“We couldn’t take the racket anymore,” said Kristen, tossing her Outside magazine onto the counter. “Does he ever stop?”

“Who—Akoni or Larry?”

Kristen laughed. “Both, I guess. And yeah, I know the answer: rarely. Especially Akoni, with his constant yowling. Though I gotta say, it seems like Larry’s been working on his vehicles a hell of a lot more of late. And I don’t believe I’ve ever even seen that particular truck before. You think he’s started repairing other people’s vehicles, too?”

“Oh, God, I hope not. Though that would explain the increased frequency of the noise.” Valerie switched off the heat under her potatoes, then turned to Kristen. “I wonder if it’s legal to have a car repair business in this neighborhood. Maybe I should ask at tonight’s meeting if anyone knows.”

“Or maybe you could just talk to your neighbor about it,” put in Sean, who’d taken a seat at the kitchen table and was busy typing something into his phone.

Valerie and Kristen exchanged glances, after which Valerie replied, “Maybe later. But first we should figure out where we stand on the issue.”

Sean set down his phone with a shrug. “So what’s this thing you’re going to tonight, anyway?”

“It’s the monthly meeting for the neighborhood orchid society,” said Valerie, carrying the pot to the sink and dumping the steaming potatoes into a colander. “Shirley invited me—you know, the woman who lives at that house down the street with all those beautiful orchids in her tree ferns? I was admiring them the other day, and after we got talking, she invited me to come along tonight to see if I might be interested in joining. You wanna join me?”

Sean let loose his man bun, held in place by a wooden hair stick, and shook out his dirty-blond locks. “No can do; I’m working tonight at the hospital. It’s my first time in the ER, which should be interesting.”

Sean had come from Arkansas to do a three-month stint as a visiting nurse at the Hilo hospital and was now on his second week at the job—and at Valerie and Kristen’s house, where he’d be staying for the duration of his time on-island. “I didn’t know you were into orchids,” he said in a lazy drawl, pulling his hair back from his face and retying the bun.

“I wasn’t, not till we first got to Hilo. But they’re so amazing and, I dunno . . . other-worldly.”

Star Trek flowers, I call them,” said Kristen, and Valerie nodded.

“And they’re so easy to grow here, so I’m thinking it might be fun to try it myself. Plus, it’d be a great way to get to know some of the folks in the neighborhood a little better.”

“Like Larry?” asked Sean with a grin.

“Ha. I’m not so sure he’s really the orchid type . . .”

***

Excerpt from MURDER, LOCAL STYLE by Leslie Karst. Copyright 2026 by Leslie Karst. Reproduced with permission from Leslie Karst. All rights reserved.

ONE

Present Day, Los Angeles
Carly Bennett

Light blue on dirty blonde.

Creative writing professor Carly Bennett did a quick scan of her face from its reflection in the window that overlooked the University of Southern California quad and smoothed a crease in her pencil skirt.

If Carly had known that the dean of the English department would schedule a last-minute meeting with her, she would’ve picked a better outfit than one that screamed, “I had no time to take this to the cleaner, so I ran a fast iron over it. But thank God the skirt is black so no one can see the stain from when my coffee cup lid jimmied its way free this morning.”

Nothing like near first-degree burns on your thigh from an errant Starbucks Pike to jolt a person awake during LA’s slog of a commute.

No matter. Here she was.

And she’d be ready. Even though she needed to master her prep on the fly.

Carly turned the corner to the English department’s Office of the Dean and forged through her speaking points that she’d deliver to her boss, Bert Scanlon.

“Making the LA Times’s ‘Thirty-Under-Thirty’ list was a complete surprise, but I’m so happy that the article will shine a spotlight on the great work our team is doing under your leadership.”

Ack. Too mealy-mouthed. Plus, it made her sound like a big-headed brown-noser. And nobody likes that person.

“Thank you for the kind words. Please know how much I appreciate that you believe in me, and I swear, I won’t let you down.”

Better, and that sentiment was from the heart.

Carly pictured her face, front and center on the page when she’d pulled up the LA Times story that morning and hoped that the people she used to know from her early Malibu days saw it too.

Elitist jerks.

As for herself, Carly had read the write-up, over and over, until she could now recite it in perpetuity.

Carly passed by the USC English department’s wall of fame, which showcased its students’ esteemed awards through the years. She paused when she saw her name, capturing a moment in time from freshman year. Her: scared to near speechlessness amongst the far cooler co-eds but finding strength behind her pen.

Winner of the 2018 Undergraduate Writing Prize—First Place: Carly Bennett

Had she really come this far? Most would’ve marked her a losing bet at age twelve, her personal line of demarcation, but sometimes, even dark horses can come from behind and win the whole damn thing.

Four. Three. Two. One.

“You got this,” Carly whispered.

She reached for the security of her inhaler in her briefcase and entered Scanlon’s office.

Gretchyn Olson, a middle-aged woman with salt-and-pepper hair was working the phone with precision. She held up a single finger when she saw Carly.

While she waited, Carly continued to clutch her briefcase in one hand and placed the other behind her back, where she dug a fingernail into a stray cuticle.

After a beat, Scanlon’s assistant put the call on hold.

“They’re waiting for you,” Gretchyn said. “Hang in there, kid. Sometimes, you need to play the game.”

They? And what game was she talking about?

Carly’s neck felt hot, but she made certain she was smiling when she entered the office, where she locked eyes with Scanlon, who rose to greet her. Scanlon had a Mr. Clean, shiny bald head, and his stomach struggled to stay behind the confines of the clasped gold buttons of his tweed coat.

Seated across from the dean of the English department was an unfamiliar male, who was well dressed, neatly manicured, and appeared to be in his early fifties.

Carly shot the stranger an equally polite smile. Who was this guy?

“Miss Bennett, thank you for taking time to swing by under such short notice,” Scanlon said.

“Of course, sir.”

Maybe the man was another reporter from the paper who covered the education beat and was writing a follow-up article on the English department.

“I don’t believe you’ve met Franklin Yeager. You taught Frank’s son, Landon, last semester.”

In that moment, Carly felt like someone had jabbed an ice pick into her high-flying helium balloon.

The room became very still as Carly struggled to find the appropriate response.

“In all due respect, if this is about my former student, I think any further discussion should be held in private and between the administration, but I was under the impression the incident and disciplinary action had been decided,” Carly said.

A robotic delivery, but at least she got the words out.

“There’ve been some developments that have been brought to my attention. I asked Frank to come in so we could clear the air, so to speak,” Scanlon said. “Please, sit, Miss Bennett.”

Carly kept her place, arms folded, standing above the men, but when Scanlon cleared his throat, she acquiesced and found a seat next to her former student’s father.

“Landon didn’t plagiarize the paper,” Yeager said.

Yes, he did! Carly wanted to scream. Instead, she slipped her hands underneath her legs, in case her palms started to sweat.

“If my son did cheat, I’d be the first to request that USC boot him out the door on his fanny,” Yeager continued. “But I know my kid, and I also know a liar, and Landon is beside himself over this false accusation. I’ll be honest with you, when Landon first told me about the whole mess, I was ready to call my lawyer, but since Bert is an old friend, I thought, why not try and hash things out man-to-man first.”

She had to respond. The words were there, ready to make her point, if only she could find the ability and the guts to say them.

“But he did ch-ch-cheat,” Carly said, despising the catch in her voice.

When was the last time she’d stuttered? Probably a year ago, during her annual review with Scanlon. She wondered if the universe would grant her a reprieve, and somehow the two men hadn’t picked up on her residual speech impediment, which still ambushed her in the worst possible moments, rising like an unkillable weed despite all her years of work to get rid of it.

She shot a glance at Yeager, whose mouth had turned up into a bow that resembled a smirk or, worse, pity.

If she were going down, at least she had to throw a punch.

“I want all my students to excel, and if they need extra time on an assignment, they know I’ll give it to them, and my door is always open if they need additional help. But the paper Landon wrote was a complete replica of one I received from a different student last year. We’re talking down to the semicolon.”

Carly looked to Scanlon, hoping for some back-up, but the dean kept his focus on Yeager.

“Then it wasn’t a case of cheating but purely accidental on Landon’s part,” Yeager said. “Or is the word coincidental? You’re the English whizzes in here, and I’m a businessman who wouldn’t know a semicolon from a hyphen, but I do know mistakes can be made, even by well-meaning young professors. How long have you been a teacher? You look more like a co-ed than a professor, and I mean that in the most complimentary of ways.”

Yeager chuckled, sounding to Carly like the laugh was cover so he wouldn’t sound like a creep.

Too late.

Carly fought to speak up and defend herself. But she remained still and silent, stuck between two powerful, rich males who were doing a very fine job of reeling in the young, errant female who didn’t know her place.

“This is my second year at USC.”

“Miss Bennett is still relatively new to our school as a professor, but she’s a rising star in our English department and did quite well as a student here before joining our professional fold.”

The heat that Carly had felt in her neck earlier had now exploded into a full-blown, five-alarm inferno, despite Scanlon throwing her a pseudo-bone.

Carly had crossed her legs and put a hand to her throat to try and cover her growing rash when she noticed Yeager was staring at something on the bottom of her black high heel. Whatever it was seemed to give him great satisfaction.

“Mr. Scanlon . . .” Carly pleaded, but the dean interrupted.

“I appreciate that you hold your students to the highest of standards, as you should, but since Frank is a trusted friend to the school, this time, we’ll expunge the previous disciplinary action and wipe the slate clean. Landon can resubmit the assignment and finish up the course through independent study, so he won’t lose credit. I have your word that Landon will be more careful in his work going forward, Frank?”

“You bet. My kid is a good boy, and I knew we could wrangle this problem to the ground. You have my word on my kid and on my continued support. Generations of Yeagers have supported this school, and we’ll continue the tradition. “Fight on for ol’ SC, our men fight on to victory!” Yeager warbled, hitting the notes of the USC fight song slightly off-key but with great confidence in his delivery.

When Yeager stood to shake the dean’s hand, Carly looked to the bottom of her high heel and saw a Macy’s close-out sale sticker still affixed to its outsole.

Her previous high-flying balloon was now bits of spent plastic that an entitled rich boy and his adult minions had tossed into the dumpster.

“No hard feelings, OK? New teachers can make mistakes with the best of them,” Yeager said.

He extended his hand to Carly.

You sold your integrity for a buck, and to a total cheese bag when you know I’m right! Carly wanted to scream to Scanlon.

Instead, Carly remained quiet and stared at Yeager’s outstretched hand.

Scanlon cleared his throat again.

“Miss Bennett, the matter has been settled,” Scanlon answered.

The dean’s eyes narrowed, and Carly followed his cue.

She reached for Yeager’s hand, gave it a quick shake, and regretted it the second her skin touched Yeager’s.

“That will be all, Miss Bennett.”

This was so unfair. She had to stand her ground.

“Is there something else you wanted to say?” Scanlon pressed.

Carly paused, searching for the words. They were right there, but when she jumped from the platform to catch the brass ring, she missed and spiraled into freefall.

“Miss Bennett?” Scanlon asked.

“Th–th–th–thank you, sir.”

She couldn’t remember leaving the office, but there she was, back in the lobby. Carly hurried past Gretchyn, and by the time she reached the corridor, she was certain that she heard the two men laughing from behind the office door.

“HA! HA! HA! HA! HA!”

*

After escaping the humiliation-fest in Scanlon’s office, Carly lowered her head so she wouldn’t have to make eye contact, or worse, engage in fake, idle chitchat after her fall, and continued her fast walk to the USC faculty bathroom. She had ten minutes until her advanced creative writing class started, which was threading the needle a bit, but the familiar vice was constricting her chest, and if she didn’t take a pull from her inhaler soon, she’d be in the throes of a full-fledged, not to mention very public, asthma attack.

She struggled for air and rushed into an open stall. Once inside, she slammed the door, snatched her inhaler from her briefcase, and gave it a quick shake. She heard the familiar whistling sound coming from her throat and shoved her rescue inhaler into her mouth.

Feeling like a five-hundred-pound man was now sitting on her chest, Carly fought to stay calm. She closed her eyes, forced herself to hold her breath for the requisite ten seconds between puffs and prayed for the corticosteroid to kick in.

When the tightness in her lungs loosened, she could see, plain as day, her old practice phrase, the one she’d started reciting at boarding school to help conquer her stutter.

When her breathing steadied to a normal inhale-in, exhale-out, she whispered the words aloud to find her center.

“The girl wore her hair in two braids, tied with two blue bows.”

Not bad. Her voice was clear and strong this time, unlike her herky-jerky performance earlier.

How had she let herself choke, and on such an epic scale?

Feeling like she was no longer dry-drowning from her asthma attack, Carly took one more hit of her inhaler. She squeezed the metal canister and pictured Scanlon’s and Yeager’s mugs, having a big old chuckle at her expense.

“Never again,” Carly whispered, not quite believing it, but at least it was a start.

She rose from crouching position in the stall, straightened her shoulders, and then shot her middle finger in the air.

“That’s bravery right there, giving the bird to a restroom door instead of standing up for yourself. Next time will be different.”

Carly exited the stall and was relieved to see the faculty bathroom was still empty.

She splashed cold water from the sink onto her face, then patted her sticky armpits with a wad of paper towels from the dispenser on the wall. A poor girl’s spa day.

Having no idea how much time had passed since the start of her asthma attack, Carly worried that she was late for her next class. She grabbed her phone from her briefcase to check the time and gasped.

On the home screen was a photo memory, which captured a hoped-for promise never to come.

Carly ran her finger over the image of her mother and studied her twelve-year-old self. The photo had been taken by her then soon-to-be stepbrother Julien, on the day she’d met him and the rest of the Whites.

A pang of melancholy cut through her. Everybody would’ve believed her if she were a rich boy.

***

Excerpt from Everyone Is Perfect Here by Jane Haseldine. Copyright 2026 by Jane Haseldine. Reproduced with permission from Jane Haseldine. All rights reserved.