Page 27 of Maliea's Hero
Maliea tipped her head to a door down the hall. “Not far.”
He nodded. “I’ll stay here and keep watch in both directions.”
Maliea walked down the hallway to Taylor’s office. She hadn’t actually been in his office in months, even though it had been down the hallway from her father’s. He’d always been in a class or out to lunch with colleagues when she’d stopped in.
Out of habit, she raised her hand to knock and stopped short of tapping her knuckles against the door. Why knock? Her husband was dead. He wouldn’t be in his office talking with a student or working on a syllabus.
She turned the knob and pushed the door open.
A woman with long blond hair glanced up, her eyes rounding. When she saw Maliea, she pressed a hand to her chest and forced a laugh. “Oh, Ms. Kalieopu, you startled me.” She waved toward the boxes lined up near the door. “Be careful, and don’t trip on the boxes. I was just loading the last one for you. Andrea said you might stop by today.” Her brow furrowed. “I didn’t get the chance at the funerals to tell you how sorry I was about your father and Taylor’s—” she caught herself, “Professor Kalieopu’s accident. I was shocked at the news, and the department was devasted. I can’t imagine how you’re feeling.”
“Not great,” Maliea admitted briefly. She didn’t want to go into her feelings with the TA. “Is there any order I should follow going through the boxes?”
“You can start with the ones by the door,” the younger woman said. “I think I got all his personal belongings, but I wanted to make one last pass. The books are those he purchased out of pocket. I’ve set aside the textbooks used in the classrooms.”
Maliea opened the box closest to her and dug through the contents—a small box filled with business cards, a couple of framed photos of Nani that Maliea had given him for his office and stacks of history books. She thumbed through the books, searching for any handwritten notes and found none.
Other than the photographs of Nani, she had no use for the books. She plucked the photos out of the box and laid them on a table beside the stack. “If the department wants these books, they can have them. I don’t need them or have space to store them.”
“I’ll let them know,” Heather said.
She moved the box aside and opened the next one. It too had a stack of books on self-help, management and techniques for teaching. She thumbed through each and found nothing of interest. Again, she had no use for the books. She might have saved them for Nani, but she didn’t have the space or want to haul books around when she moved from the apartment she couldn’t go back to since the break-in to a new apartment.
“Same goes for this box of books,” Maliea said. “The university is welcome to them.”
“I’ll put a note on both of them.” Heather pulled a pen out of the desk, along with a pad of sticky notes and crossed to where Maliea stood.
“The only other boxes are the ones on and behind his desk. You might want to go through them,” Heather said. “They contain more personal items that Taylor—Professor Kaleiopu—had lying around the office and some of the knickknacks he collected during his research trips. I was just finishing up with his desk drawers when you arrived.”
Heather moved away from the back of his desk, allowing Maliea space to slip in.
Maliea eased past the pretty TA and opened the top of the box resting on the desk. She found Taylor’s appointment calendar. She flipped it open and thumbed through, casually glancing at the words scribbled on the side about different students, lecture notes, and grocery items she might have asked him to get on his way home from work. She flipped through the pages until she came to the date of the plane crash.
Maliea had never understood why he’d used a paper planner instead of relying on the online work calendar. He’d argued that he did both, but the paper calendar gave him a place to doodle, as evidenced by the outline of a ship on the day he and Maliea’s father were due to visit Niihau.
The day of the plane crash.
The day she’d lost her husband and her father.
The day she’d lost any type of financial stability for her and her daughter. As she closed the day planner, a slip of paper fell out and drifted to the floor.
Before Maliea could bend to pick up the piece of paper with something scrawled in handwriting across it, Heather snatched it from the floor, crumpled it and tossed it into the trash.
Curious, Maliea asked, “What was it?”
“Just a reminder to speak with one of his students,” Heather said. “If you’d like me to carry some of these boxes out, I could do that for you.”
Maliea picked through the box in front of her a little more, then put the lid back over the top. “You can take this one if you don’t mind.”
“Sure.” Heather lifted the box and carried it out the door of Taylor’s office.
After Heather left, Maliea pulled the crumpled paper out of the trash basket and unfolded it. The writing on the note wasn’t her husband’s scribble at all. It was a message that didn’t make any sense.
Tonight
The one word was written in flowing script and dotted with a heart. The handwriting was more feminine than Taylor’s masculine scrawl. Her gaze rose to the door where Heather had passed through moments before.
Had her husband had an affair with his TA?