Moonlighting: A Thanksgiving Story Page 2

  I did. The second blow crisscrossed the first and I had to hold the desk to keep from sinking to my knees. The third blow caused a blinding flash of white to appear before my eyes. It was getting hard to catch my breath. I’d actually sent students to Mr. Edge’s office for this?

  I sobbed through the last seven blows, praying for strength as I tried to stop my hips from rocking back and forth. It became harder and harder to hold my position and he helped me but putting his large hand on the small of my back, pinning me in place even as the pressure forced me to arch my bottom upward in what I was sure was a most unseemly display. I never thought it would end. With each blow of the cane, my bottom blazed with agony.

  Then, finally, it was over.

  “Stand up,” he said…. As I raised myself to standing I realized how wet I’d become between my legs. The throbbing want was as intense as the throbbing pain in my bottom. Mr. Edge’s authority was like a beacon. It was all I could do to keep from rushing to him, from begging him to hold me and bruise my lips with a kiss. Did he feel the same way? I did not know. Not then….

  Charlotte stopped. She’d been writing for two hours and her stomach was growling. She went to the kitchen and fixed a chicken salad sandwich, a sliced apple and green tea. She flipped on the television as she ate, skipping past romantic comedies and reality television shows to select a documentary on Victorian England. She smiled sadly was she watched, recalling what Mr. Longbridge had said about traditional values. She felt the same way; if only she could find a man who shared her odd beliefs, a man who wanted to be head of household, a man who would love her enough to cherish, guide and correct her.

  She yawned. It wasn’t bedtime, but she realized she was tired. Charlotte went back into the kitchen and packed the remainder of her uneaten dinner into a Tupperware container for next day’s lunch. Back in the living room, she printed out what she’d written so far to take upstairs to read. But the phone rang, distracting her, and she laid the papers down on her desk. The call was from her mom, and an hour later she realized she was too tired to hold her eyes open. Tomorrow was another grueling day filled with lessons and rehearsals for the Thanksgiving play. She needed to get some sleep.

  Chapter Two

  “Oh NO!” Charlotte sat bolt upright in bed. She’d been dreaming that she was standing on a beach, watching a ship out at sea. She’d been wondering why the bell on the ship kept tolling but then opened her eyes and realized the tolling sound was her alarm, and that it had been going for some time.

  She cursed herself roundly as she got out of bed and ran to the shower. She’d gotten a good night’s sleep and had still overslept? How could this have happened? Fortunately for Charlotte, she selected a week’s worth of outfits and hung them in order in her closet. She quickly reached for the next one - a blue pleated skirt and pink blouse. She slipped her feet into her blue pumps as she put her earrings on. Her long auburn hair was easy enough. She fastened it into a quick, loose ponytail and hurried downstairs to put her lunch in a bag and grab a muffin. In the living room she shoved the papers on her desk into the mended bag and rushed out the door. Cross-town traffic wasn’t as bad as usual and she made it to school just as the final bell was ringing. Late, but not technically tardy.

  Still, it didn’t get her day off to the best start. Charlotte liked having everything planned to the letter, including her schedule. She stopped by the teacher’s lounge to check her box and stuffed the papers inside in her bag. As she did, she realized with frustration that she’d pulled the mail from the box of Wendy Tillman, the teacher next to her. With a grumble she reached in her bag, but the papers back in Tillman’s box and grabbed her own.

  The kids were already in their seats. She had good students. Laura - the assistant who came in two days a week - smiled at her and waved. Charlotte nodded and went to her desk.

  “OK, guys,” Laura was saying. “Let’s begin with the pledge!”

  Charlotte watched her students saying the pledge and could not help but smile. There were fifteen of them, all good kids with involved and caring parents. She felt lucky to have her job, even if she did have to write on the side and clip coupons to keep it.

  The rest of the morning went well. There were phonics drills and story time and art. With Thanksgiving right around the corner, the theme was consistent with the upcoming holiday. Charlotte bit her tongue as Laura spoke of how the pilgrims and Indians were good friends. She knew the reality of the first Thanksgiving was much different. The play perpetuated the same false theme, but then again Sue Ellen Forrester, who was as conservative a person as Charlotte had ever met, had selected it.

  By mid-morning recess, Charlotte had put the rough start to her day behind her. It was cool and sunny. Laura took the students out to collect leaves for the next day’s art project - turkeys with leaf tails. The other teaching assistants were already filing out with their classes. Charlotte decided to enjoy a cup of coffee with the other teachers in the break room.

  But when she reached the room, the mood was quiet. Everyone was standing around, whispering as they passed a paper from one hand to the other. Expressions ranged from shock to anger. Charlotte’s eyes continued to scan the faces as her heart clenched in fear.

  “What is it?” she asked. The first thing that came to her mind was that the bad economy had hit Falmont, and the paper they were looking at was a memo notifying them of layoffs.

  But it turned out to be something worse.

  Sue Ellen Forrester was holding the paper and her hands were shaking as she looked at Charlotte, her face flushed and her lips pursed with righteous indignation.

  “Pornography!” she said. She shook the paper, turning as she did to the other teachers. “Pornography! Here! In our break room!”

  Charlotte stood rooted to the spot, still uncertain of what’s going on.

  “This,” Sue Ellen said, was found in Wendy’s box this morning. She walked over and handed it to Charlotte. “Filth!”

  Charlotte took the paper, and as she looked down at the story she’d been writing before she felt the blood pounding through her head. How could this have happened? And then she knew. In her rush to get ready for work, she’d shoved all her papers on her desk into her bag, including the illicit story. When she accidentally put the papers into Wendy’s box and retrieved them, she’s left one behind. A very crucial one.

  “Does anyone know how it got there?” she asked, hoping her voice didn’t betray the panic she felt rising in her chest.

  Sue Ellen snatched the paper from her hand. “No, but I’m going to find out. It has to be someone in this school. A janitor perhaps. Only someone…unrefined and…..un-Christian…would write such…”

  Her voice trailed off and Charlotte felt herself growing angry. “Are you assuming that Mr. Vaughn is not Christian?” she asked, referring to the janitor. "Sue Ellen, just because someone works in housekeeping does not mean that they are not as good as you or I, or any less refined.”

  “What? You think it was a teacher or other staff member?” Sue Ellen screeched. “I can guarantee you that no teacher would write this…”

  “Well, how do you know whoever put it there even wrote it?” Charlotte asked, thinking fast. “They may have just copied it off the Internet.”

  Wendy Tillman stepped up. “That’s what I thought, too. But it’s not a printout from a Web page, Charlotte. It’s a Word document. Whoever put it in my box wrote it.”

  “And there’s a name on it,” Sue Ellen said. “Brita Sinclair.” She held the paper up and shook it. “You’d better believe I’m going to get to the bottom of this. Such smut should not be tolerated. It should be outlawed, if you ask me.”

  “What should be outlawed?" Mr. Longbridge had entered the room. The women instantly fell quiet. Charlotte felt a surge of renewed panic. There was no way she could stop what she knew was coming.

  “This. Pornography.” Sue Ellen Forrester walked over and held the paper out to the headmaster. “Someone put this in Wendy Tillman’s b
ox this morning. We have no idea who it is, but it’s someone in this school.”

  Nigel Longbridge took the paper, scanned it and then raised his eyes to the women around him. “This is a serious matter,” he said. “But it is not one I want discussed further here. I do not want children overhearing this matter in conversation, understand?”

  The women nodded. Charlotte wondered whether or not Nigel Longbridge could hear her hear pounding from where he stood feet away.

  “I will get to the, uh, bottom of this..” The principal paused. Several women looked down, trying not to react to his poor choice of words. “Whoever is behind…responsible for this will certainly face consequences.” He cleared his throat. “I believe break time is over. I hear children coming back in the building. All of you, back to class. Off you go!”

  Charlotte’s wonderful day had turned to shambles. It was all she could do to finish her classes. Even Laura noticed something was wrong, and asked Charlotte if she were OK.

  “I’ve just got a touch of a headache,” she said, turning her head and blinking back tears. “Migraine.”

  “Do you want to leave early? I’m sure they’d let me cover for you.”

  Charlotte shook her head. That was the last thing she needed. If she left early, suspicion would instantly turn to her, and that was the last thing she needed.

  At lunch, her fellow teachers disobeyed orders and whispered together about the bit of erotica that had turned up in the break room. Sue Ellen’s whispering was punctuated by angry hisses and by the looks of things she was eagerly rallying other teachers to her cause of ferreting out the author and making him or her pay. Charlotte was angry and frustrated that she’d been unable to contradict the older teacher’s characterizations of erotica writers. She was neither evil, nor a slut. She’d grown up in a strong Episcopalian family. Her great uncle was the bishop of a small diocese in Maryland. To insinuate that she was anything other than a good person because she enjoyed and wrote about sex infuriated her. Yet, she had to be realistic. If she got caught, it could result in her job loss.

  She could not stop kicking herself for being so careless. The one thing she had going for her was her publisher’s commitment to protecting the anonymity of the writers. Most Moonlight authors wrote under pen names, for obvious reasons. Anyone trying to find out the true identity of Brita Sinclair would be met with a dead end.

  But Charlotte may not have felt quite so confident if she’d known at that very moment Nigel Longbridge was in his office Googling the name of Brita Sinclair. His first click to her most popular novel, “The Translator,” about a woman hired to translate for a mysterious Russian man suspected in a crime. The man turned out to not only be innocent, but the hero of the story. In the book, he and the main character, Tessa Bellington, fall in love when he awakens her submissive side through rough sex and spanking.

  Other clicks took him to titles like, LaCrosse Rivalry, A Knight to Remember: Book One in the Renn Faire Series, and The Perils of Fanfiction. The covers were typical of the genre, featuring handsome, muscle-bound men and beautiful curvaceous women.

  Brita Sinclair was described in the Moonlight Author bio as living a quiet, pastoral life in a picturesque town. Interests included gardening, studying foreign languages, gourmet cooking and traveling. There was no age or picture associated with the bio. The author did have a Web site and a blog. Nigel clicked on it but found nothing more than a list of her current titles and a notice to check her blog for more updates and news. Nigel followed the link and noted that the blog had been virtually neglected until December a year ago. At that point, “Brita” announced that she was back to writing and looking forward to delighting her readers with more books. Judging by the comments section, she appeared to have quite a following. Nearly a hundred readers expressed excitement for her getting back into business.

  The headmaster sat back in his chair, chin in hand. Whoever this Brita Sinclair person was, she was very careful about covering her tracks. She gave no clue as to exact location, marital status or employment outside of her writing career. But he also knew that information could be gleaned about the author by reading her books. People write about what they know, and he had an idea that if he downloaded the author’s work, a picture would emerge of just who she was.

  He picked up the paper and smiled. Sue Ellen Forrester was livid about this bit of writing, not that it surprised him. The prudish pickle of a woman got on his last nerve, and he credited his stiff-upper-lip upbringing for his unflappable demeanor around such an annoying person. He wondered what the judgmental old harpy would think if she knew that he personally identified with the headmaster in the story. It was like the author had gone inside his head, plucked out his thoughts and put them to paper.

  In fact, Nigel was no stranger to the cane, having endured it growing up in England and having employed it as punishment with at least one female partner. He’d always been very straightforward with the women he got involved with; in his house, his word was law. He was an old-fashioned man and believed in the benefits of corporal punishment to the betterment of miscreants, regardless of age or gender. His last two partners had been lifestyle submissives, but while they’d acquiesced he’d found them boring. He knew there had to be a complete package out there - a woman with submissive tendencies, beauty and brains. He just had to find her.

  But as a school administrator he could not risk going to clubs or looking for willing submissives on Craigslist. As headmaster of Falmont Academy, his image had to be above reproach. What went for the teachers went double for him. He was seen as the town scholar, the moral rudder for the school that had educated generations of townfolk who considered themselves genteel people. The Falmont atmosphere reminded him of the uptight little English village that had been his home until he’d moved to the United States, but such linear thinking did have a downside. He did not think whoever penned the paper that had ended up in Wendy Tillman’s box was a bad person. He enjoyed a bit of pornography from time to time, as did most men. In fact, nothing delighted him more than the image of a beautiful female bottom turned cherry red by a good, sound thrashing. So being put in the position of Sue Ellen Forrester’s Witchfinder did not set well with him, but on the other hand if he did nothing, word would leak to trustees, he was sure, and then there would be questions as to why nothing was done.

  He hoped that Forrester and the other teachers would follow his orders and refrain from gossiping, but he knew the nature of the town and didn’t expect what happened in the break room to be a secret for very long. He was sure that this Brita Sinclair was one of the teachers. He was equally sure that the paper had not ended up in the box on purpose. He did not believe that any teacher who wrote under a pen name should be fired, but he worried that there were those who would disagree with that. He had to find out who it was, and then he would figure out what to do next.

  Nigel pulled out his iPad. He wasn’t about to order a bunch of erotica through the school’s computer. The search he could explain, but not the purchase. But he knew purchasing and reading the books would give him the information he needed to discover the identity of the author.

  And then? Well, that was the big question, wasn’t it? If word got out in the conservative community, there would be an outcry. The Falmont teachers were put up on an unrealistic pedestal, and the morals clause in the contract would most certainly be used to fire her.

  Nigel leaned back in his chair and sighed as he stared at the screen of his iPad. The books by Brita Sinclair had been downloaded and now sat on his virtual shelf. He would read them that night. He didn’t expect to be shocked by anything they offered; he’d probably done them all before. And now he was charged with ferreting out and punishing the author of fantasies he himself had lived and could relate to.

  “Irony, thy name is Falmont Academy,” he said, leaning forward to put the iPad on his desk and then penned a memo to the staff, telling them they’d be called in one by one for questioning the next day.

  Chapter T
hree

  It wasn’t hard for Charlotte to get up in the morning. She got up an hour before her alarm, unable to sleep for the worry that again had bubbled to the surface. She’d emailed her publisher explaining what had happened and received a reply reassuring Charlotte that under no circumstances would her personal information be compromised. But no matter how often she told herself that she told herself her identity was safe, Charlotte could not stop the wave of anxiety that plagued her.

  It was the memo that worried her the most. Mr. Longbridge wanted to meet with each staff member privately. What was he going to ask? She’s never lied to an employer before, but she was hardly in a position to be honest since it could mean the end of her job.

  It was especially frustrating since Charlotte felt she should be enjoying her job, given the time of the year. Despite her worries, the previous day’s play rehearsal had gone well. The children were so excited about the performance and about the upcoming holiday. With Charlotte’s family so far away, she’d planned to stay in Falmont and have them visit. She was proud to have her own place, and looked forward to decorating and cooking for her relatives. But now she faced the possibility of being jobless by New Year's.

  Charlotte tried not to think about it once she headed to work. Her one small relief was that no one was talking about anything out of the ordinary at the coffee shop where she stopped for her morning espresso. If word had leaked out in this small town, everyone would be talking about it already.

  At work, she smiled down at her students, feeling truly thankful for the sight of each shining face. Charlotte prided herself on being one of those teachers that made learning fun and made sure she allotted time for each of her students, taking time to speak to them individually throughout the day. She was fortunate that her class size was smaller than it would be if she were teaching in the public system.