The Pendant: Callie

Excerpt:
CHAPTER ONE



“Take Northland Road for two miles. Left on Ashbourne Avenue, then two blocks east. Left on Cherwell Lane.”

Callie kept one eye on the road and the other on the sheet of paper she had propped up against the steering wheel. Only a few more miles to go. A few more miles to a new job. A new town. A new life.

Butterflies had tumbled like Chinese acrobats for the last hundred miles of her three-day trip from Kansas to eastern Pennsylvania. A top-of-the-roller-coaster swoop had started before dawn, when she’d rolled out of bed in eastern Ohio. Nothing—not even a restless night, tossing and turning on the lumpy motel mattress—could quash Callie’s excitement as she got closer and closer to her destination.

Until she’d met with a local realtor. A small lump of disappointment started somewhere in her middle and had grown over the course of an afternoon’s fruitless search for a place to live. But Callie wasn’t going to let that get her down. Lots of folks rented out places without listing them with an agency. Word of mouth, sign in the window, friend of a friend—that sort of thing. Callie convinced herself the agent just wanted her to rely on him instead of looking for a place on her own.

Optimism firmly back in place, Callie felt the lump shrink, giving the acrobatic butterflies and the roller coaster more room to tumble and swoop.

The sun played peek-a-boo with the leaves of the huge, old trees that lined Northland Road. About a quarter of a mile along, the modest turn-of-the-century homes gave way to businesses, there were fewer trees, and the traffic got heavier.

A shaft of sunlight shot between two buildings, ricocheted off the car in front of Callie and right through her designer knock-off sunglasses. Guaranteed glare-proof? Not even close. Now there was a big purple spot smack in the middle of the directions, and everywhere else she looked.

As she approached the next traffic light, she squinted at the street sign.

AS-

Was that an H? There was the big purple spot, and then:

-NE AVE.

That had to be it. Right before the intersection, Callie signaled and swerved into the left-turn lane. The sheet of directions flew out of her hand as she hit the brakes hard and pulled up short at the red light. The blare of a horn and the squeal of brakes added decibels to the ear-splitting yowl from the back seat. Eyes squeezed shut, Callie braced for the impact.

Nothing.

With her heart in her throat, Callie let out a shaky breath and bent to retrieve the directions from the floorboard.

The gray-striped tabby yowled again from the carrier wedged in the back seat.

“You all right back there, Lily? I’m sorry,” Callie crooned to the disgruntled cat.

Callie wrapped trembling hands around the steering wheel and steeled herself for a peek in the rear-view mirror. About an inch away from kissing her bumper was an old pickup truck. It may have been black or dark blue at one time, but now the predominant color was rust. The driver was an angry man in his late twenties or early thirties.

Under the baseball cap and sunglasses that hid his eyes, Callie couldn’t tell exactly how angry he was, but it wasn’t too hard to guess judging by the set of his jaw and the way his hands gripped the steering wheel so only the white knuckles showed. On a scale of annoyed to furious, she’d say irate. Great. In town for less than a day and she’d already ticked off some guy.

“Sorry,” she mouthed, eying him in the mirror. Scrunched back down in her seat, Callie waited for the light to change. She slurped the last of her drink from a fast-food foray off the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Her nerves jangled like wind chimes in a prairie storm. The lukewarm, watery cola did nothing to help them.

The light turned green. Callie slid the empty cup back into the cup holder, dropped the directions onto the passenger seat, and negotiated the turn. The pickup followed.

“Two blocks, left again.”

The pickup rumbled behind her as she waited for two cars to pass before she could make the turn. Callie didn’t have to check her mirror to know the truck had turned, too. But she did anyway. Irate seemed to have simmered down to annoyed. The jaw was still strong, but the lips were fuller now that they weren’t clamped into a cold, thin line. The white-knuckled hands that had gripped the wheel were more relaxed. Her mother’s dire warnings about aggressive, road-rage-prone East Coast drivers faded away.

Callie glanced in the mirror again. What color eyes were hidden under those mirrored sunglasses? Callie tried to picture the driver without the shades and hat. Standing in front of her, leaning in to...

Right. Like that would ever happen. She shook her head. Without the shades and hat he was probably cross-eyed and bald. Clearly, someone hadn’t gotten enough sleep last night. When the truck roared off down a side street, Callie let out a small sigh of relief. Or was it disappointment?

“Okay, here we are. Now what?”

She snatched up the paper.

“Follow the stone wall to the campus main gate on the right. Got it.”

Pitiful meows came from the back seat.

“We’re almost there, Lily. Just hang on.”

The sign at the main gate read Cherwell Springs College, Est. 1805. This was it. She’d made it. Exhilaration pushed lumps, butterflies, and roller coasters aside as Callie pulled through the wrought-iron gates.

She stopped at the ivy-covered stone gatehouse and rolled down her window. A fly rode into the car on a blast of heat and humidity and buzzed against the windshield. Callie tried to shoo it out the window, but it flew into the back seat.

Lily yowled with frustration.

“Shh. I’ll get you out of there in a few minutes, I promise.”

The gatehouse looked like it had popped right out of a fairy tale. Callie expected a handsome prince or a wicked witch to peer out of the top of the Dutch door. Instead, she got a tall, thin, balding campus security guard. Clipboard in hand, he circled her car. He noted her license plate, then came around to the driver’s window. He mopped his forehead with a large handkerchief, returned it to his pocket, and smiled an apology.

“Hot for September, isn’t it? Come winter we’ll all be wishing for a day like this.” He peered over the tops of his wire-framed glasses at her. “New here then, are you?”

Callie nodded. “Yes, I am.”

“We don’t get many folks all the way from Kansas. Welcome to Cherwell Springs College.”

“Thank you.”

“Your name?”

“I’m Calantha Haas.”

The guard consulted the clipboard, turning over the pages. “Must have missed you here. Let me look again.”

He took his time going through the pages a second time. The afternoon sun beat through the back windshield. Dark green sycamore leaves stirred overhead as a breeze scampered through, carrying the scent of newly mown grass. Only the whirr of a single cicada and the rustle of the papers on the security guard’s clipboard broke the silence. A bead of sweat trickled down Callie’s back.

“Your name isn’t on the list of new students. Were you a late registration? Transfer?”

“I’m not a student,” Callie explained for the third time that day. First she’d told the waitress at breakfast, then the realtor, and now the guard. She wanted to yowl with frustration. “I’m the new Zoology professor.”

The guard shook his head and chuckled. “Professor? Are you sure? Well, I must be gettin’ old if the professors look young enough to be students. Ah, here you are—Dr. Haas. Is someone expecting you? All the administrative offices are closed on Saturdays.”

“Actually, I’m staying in one of the dorms for a few days. Just until I can find a place to live. Can you tell me how to get to Anson Hall?”

“Sure thing. Take this road on the right and go past the Student Union. Anson Hall’s on your left. There are a couple of faculty parking spaces in the resident lot behind the building. They’re mostly for the faculty in the Cherwell Building. That’s English and History. Won’t be anybody there today, unless they came in the back gate.”

As Callie wound through the park-like campus, she let out a small snort of exasperation.

“I’m twenty-eight, not eighteen,” she complained to Lily. “Why does everyone think I’m a college freshman?” She groaned. “It’s the hair. I shouldn’t have cut it so short. I knew it made me look younger, but a teenager?”

At home, everyone had complimented her on the short brown layers. But there she was just little Callie, the youngest of the five Haas siblings. Even though she’d earned a PhD, she was still considered the baby of the family. And to make matters worse, in the Haas family, everyone knew the baby wasn’t expected to take care of herself. That’s what four big, strong brothers were for.

Four brothers who protected her from the playground bullies. Four brothers who turned from an asset to a liability once Callie was in high school. It had been common knowledge that any guy who’d wanted to date Callie Haas had to run the gauntlet of Haas men. There hadn’t been too many teenaged boys in Red Prairie, Kansas, population four-hundred-thirty-three, willing to do that. Two, to be exact.

Callie’s college days hadn’t been much better. Three of her brothers had attended the state university at the same time she had. They’d often walked to class with her or shared a table in the dining commons. Scrutinized her friends. Interrogated her dates.

“Lucky for us everyone was busy this weekend, Lily,” Callie said, as she drove past the Student Union. “I know Mom and Dad were worried about me traveling alone, but how would it look if the new Zoology professor showed up with her big brothers in tow? As it is, they’ll probably all come to bring the furniture. Once I find a place for us to live, that is.”

The realtor hadn’t been much help there. Between the price of gas and the age of her car, Callie needed something close to the school. The only places he had available were at least forty miles away. Unless she could come up with a down payment for a huge home with a multi-million-dollar price tag.

The Anson Hall parking lot looked like a flea market gone amok. Cars filled every available space; belongings spilled out of trunks and back seats. A banner, slung between the columns of the stately Georgian building, announced a barbeque on the commons at six that evening. Stereos boomed the bass backbeat for a chorus of tenor “Dude!”s and baritone “What’s up?”s from back-thumping guys, and soprano squeals from girls in flip-flops who shuffled across the hot pavement to exchange hugs. Students and parents lugged suitcases, boxes, microwaves, and carpets through the doors. Two enterprising students backed a pickup truck over the curb and up to the building. They shouted for help as they attempted to squeeze an over-stuffed sofa through a large ground-floor window.

Callie searched for any spot big enough for her car as she wove her way through the parking lot. On her second go-round, she spied the two parking spaces in the far corner marked “Faculty Only—Others Will Be Towed.” Occupied, of course. She was ready to give up when an old Chevy Impala backed out of one of the faculty spaces. The Impala lurched forward and Callie zipped into the spot. Pleased with her good luck, she unearthed Lily’s cat carrier from the back seat and went in search of her room.

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