Almost Innocent - Paperback

Prologue:

Marshall Ferguson stood in front of his bedroom mirror and straightened his tie, not judging what he saw. Why would he? Marshall knew that judging himself in any way was never useful or helpful. In fact, from what he had learned during his long tenure as the mayor of Spring Falls, it always led to unpleasantness.

He had seen what judging had done to others, and he had long ago decided not to have that happen to him. This applied to all things. To not judging what he saw in the mirror, to not judging what he had done as mayor to keep the town the beautiful, quiet, and peaceful town that it had become.

Tonight, when he looked in the mirror, he didn’t see a sixty-eight-year-old man with a little paunch and a gray beard that hid his jowls. He saw himself as the little boy he had once been. Little had been the word. Too small, too shy, too afraid.

Life had taught him that none of those traits would save him or make him popular. He had worked hard and turned himself into a successful, well-loved, and powerful man. So it was true when he said to the boy in the mirror, “We did it!”

The boy smiled back, gave him a thumbs up, and brushed his hand through his hair before turning away.

As Marshall headed downstairs, careful to keep his hand on the stair rail—his balance was not as good as it used to be—he kept on smiling. He was proud of what he had become. And tonight, he would allow himself to revel in his accomplishments.

Because tonight Spring Falls would honor the man who had brought peace, prosperity, and beauty to the town while keeping the riff-raff out. Tonight he would allow himself to feel the love heaped upon him for what he had done, and who he was. Or who they believed he was.

He would let himself enjoy every minute of the celebration. He would bask in the town’s admiration while they still loved him. Because soon that love would be gone. Tomorrow, after a long sleep and a nice breakfast, he was leaving Spring Falls for good. Plenty of money and a new home in a warm, safe place was waiting for him.

At the airport, he would take the book he wrote out of draft mode on Amazon and publish it. It was done, ready to go. The publicity for it was in place. Within a few days, news would trickle out about what he had written. Soon it would become a flood that swept through the town, washing away what people remembered and raising many buried secrets.

After that, very few people—maybe nobody—would call him friend. He didn’t care. His book, the one he had been writing for the last forty years, was his best last gift to Spring Falls. A gift where all the secrets he had kept and manipulated to his benefit, and to keep the town a picture of peace and prosperity, would be revealed.

Everyone would read it. He could see it now: the gossip, the worry, the looks of fear and dismay that would spread through the town. Past the town. Into the world.

Everyone would see the dirty underbelly of his life as a mayor. Of course, he called it fiction. But there would be people who would know what he wrote was not fiction. They would see through the story and see the truth. And there would be consequences. Of course, those people would not see his book as a gift. To them, it was a blunt instrument of destruction.

But the gift wasn’t for them, it was for the boy in the mirror. And that boy who had been abandoned and bullied was always the only person he had truly cared about. It was a promise he had made to himself, and kept, and now he was ready to tell how he did it.

What Marshall didn’t know, and wouldn’t have believed even if someone had told him, was that he would never get the chance to publish that book, move to his new home, or witness the reaction to what he wrote. In fact, this would be the last night of his long and illustrious life.

And although Marshall would know who had ended his life for him, for once, all that insider knowledge didn’t help him at all.