Excerpt of All My Belongings by Cynthia Ruchti

The coffee tasted like burnt marshmallows. The charred bits. Jayne set the vending machine cup on the corner of her advisor's desk.

Patricia smiled over half-glasses. "Don't blame you." She nodded toward her oversized thermal tankard. "I bring my own from home."

Home.

"I'm surprised you wanted to see me today, Jayne. Aren't they—?"

"Yes." She directed her line of sight through Patricia Connor's office window, over the tops of the century-old oaks and maples lining the campus, toward the courthouse in the center of town.

"And you didn't want to be there?" The woman removed her glasses as if they interfered with her understanding.

Oh, I'm there. I've been there every agonizing moment. Several little shards of me are embedded in the hardwood floor in the court- room. What's left of me wants an answer from you. "I need to find out if I can reenter the program where I left off."

Patricia leaned back in her nondescript office chair. "And you have to know today?"

"Yes."

Her advisor's head shook so slightly, Jayne assumed the movement originated in the nervous bounce of the woman's knee, not her neck. "We've had . . . concerns."

"My grades were good."

"It's not that. Most nontraditional students are committed enough to pull decent grades."

Twenty-seven and nontraditional. In every way. Jayne leaned forward and added, "And work two jobs while doing it." She wouldn't look out the window again. Her future lay here, in this decision. "If you're worried about the financial aspect. . . ."

"Aren't you? Word is, you're tapped out with what your family's gone through."

She'd shelved the word family a year and a half ago, the day she found out her father's middle name was Reprehensible. Bertram Reprehensible Dennagee. Her mother didn't think she could endure the pain one more day. Her father made sure she didn't.

According to the charges against him, it wasn't the first time. Thanks to Jayne's discovery, though, and her call to the police, it was the first time he'd been caught.

Her eyes burned behind her eyelids. She could feel her sinuses swelling.

"Jayne?"

She repositioned herself in the chair, dropping her shoulders from where they'd crept near her ears, straightening her spine, breathing two seconds in, two seconds out. "I'll find a way. I need to finish the nursing program. Get on with my life. What's left of it."

Behind her a voice leaned into the room. "Did you hear? Guilty on all charges. They got him!"

Patricia's face blanched and pinched. Her eyes made arrows toward where Jayne sat.

The voice faded as it backed into the hall. The expletive a whisper, it still rattled the window, the bookcases, Jayne's ribs.

Lips pressed together, Jayne waited for her advisor to say something. And for her throat muscles to unclench.

"I'm sorry."

Jayne let the hollow words bounce around the room for a moment.

"About the verdict? Not unexpected."

"Have you thought about trying another school of nursing? Someplace a little farther away from—"

From her father's reputation? How far was that?