The Accused by Jana DeLeon

pink skirt swishing around her slender legs as she walked.
    Her mother looked into their bedroom and smiled at them, her pleasure in her children clearly shown in her expression.

    And then the vision was gone.
    A single tear slid out of Alaina’s eye and down her face. How could she have forgotten how beautiful her mother was? Granted, she didn’t have even so much as a locket photo of her, but why couldn’t she remember her so vividly before now?
    She swiped the tear from her cheek and sighed. Everyone who’d known her mother said Alaina looked like her, but they were just being nice. Her mother had the kind of looks men fought wars over. Certainly men responded to Alaina’s looks, but none had even had so much as a scuffle, much less a war.
    You’ve forgotten me.
    Her mother seemed to speak to her, and she felt a rush of guilt pass over her and began to cry.
    “No,” she said, looking down the dirty hallway, “I haven’t forgotten. I pushed you back—far back in my mind so that the hurt would go away—but I never forgot you. I never stopped loving you.”
    Wiping the tears from her face with her hand, she rose from the bed, certain of what she had to do. Her mother had loved this home and cherished her family. No way was someone going to scare Alaina away from the only thing she had left of the childhood she’d loved.
    She zipped the flash drive back in its purse pocket and headed downstairs. A lot of work lay before her if she wanted to restore this house to how it used to be. And even though the logical part of her didn’t believe in spirits and haunts, she could feel her mother’s smile upon her.
    * * *
    C ARTER TIMED HIS ROUNDS so that he was back on Main Street when Jack got off from work at the café. The widow he’d taken up with had two little girls and the last thing Carter wanted to do was confront Jack in front of any of them. Certainly, the widow knew he was drinking, but there was no point in dragging innocent children into adult business. Not if it could be helped.
    He parked at the end of Main Street, then walked around behind the buildings to catch Jack in the alley. His timing was perfect because just as he walked up to the back of the café, the door swung open and Jack walked out.
    The cook drew up short when he saw Carter standing there, then frowned. “Something wrong back here?” he asked.
    “I was hoping you could tell me that,” Carter said.
    “Everything’s right as rain with me,” Jack said, but the scowl on his face and the fact that he wouldn’t meet Carter’s eyes said otherwise.
    “Then why are you drinking again?”
    Jack raised his head and glared at Carter. “Ain’t no business of yours what a man does in his free time.”
    “It is if that man’s driving drunk. If I’d have tested you this morning when you arrived at the café, I bet I would have had to haul you in.”
    “I wasn’t drunk and you can’t prove it.”
    Carter sighed. “What the hell are you doing, Jack? I thought you wanted to turn your life around for that woman and her girls. Drunk is no example to set for kids. You, of all people, ought to know that.”
    “My dad ain’t got nothing to do with this either.”
    “Doesn’t he? Remember how your dad looked to you? Do you really want to look that way to those girls?”
    A flush crept up Jack’s neck. “Who are you to talk with your perfect parents and perfect life? I’ve had to scrape for everything my whole life. All my problems shoulda been solved when that bastard Purcell died, but he lied, and you’re helping that woman get what should have been mine.”
    Carter sighed. “Purcell promised that you’d inherit, didn’t he?”
    “Damn right he did. Told me that my family would be set for life. Paid me peanuts all those years, running up and down these roads like a courier, then he died and I got nothing. That broad gets everything and she never once took care of the old man.”
    “That woman was cast away from here by Purcell when