Love Remains (33 page)

“Speaking of boyfriends—”

“Were we?”

“You brought it up. Anyway, speaking of boyfriends,” Flannery continued, “what is going on with you and Bobby Patterson?”

Zarah returned the plate of fries to the table and paced the length of the room to the large windows overlooking the Masonic monument
to George Washington. “I don’t know what’s going on with us. I told you what happened at dinner Wednesday night. That’s the last I’ve heard from him.”

“I really don’t see him as someone who’d get scared off by this phantom idea you might one day get cancer. He’s in a high-risk job, too, you know.”

“It’s not that high-risk. He investigates white-collar crimes, not violent offenses. It’s not like he’s out there chasing down guys with guns. According to him, he does most of his work behind a desk.” For which she thanked God. “He doesn’t even carry a gun. He has one, but he keeps it locked in a gun safe in his office.”

“Right. Look—” Flannery interrupted herself with a yawn. “It’s getting late up there, and you need to get to sleep. What time’s your interview tomorrow morning?”

“Nine fifteen. Which means I’ve got to be out of here by eight, just to make sure I have enough time to get there and collect myself. Hopefully it won’t be raining. I’d hate to have to pay fifteen or twenty bucks for an umbrella in the hotel gift shop.”

“Better that than looking like a drowned poodle when you get there.”

“I know.”

“Tell us, Dr. Mitchell, why you’re interested in working at the National Archives.” For the past week, the phone had rung at random times with Flannery on the other end, asking Zarah random questions she might face in the interview. She had not dared tell Flannery she’d already decided not to take the job if it was offered.

Zarah launched into her answer to that question.

“You’re getting better. That almost didn’t sound rehearsed. You know, Caylor is really the one who should be coaching you on this—she’s so much better at acting than you or I.”

“Why do you think it sounds only
almost
unrehearsed? Believe me, I’ve driven Caylor as crazy as I’ve driven you about this.”

“You’ll do fine.” Flannery yawned again. “I’d better let you go. Call
me—wait, I’m in a pub board meeting all day tomorrow. Leave me a message when you get finished tomorrow, and I’ll give you a call back as soon as I’m free.”

“Sounds like a plan. Thanks, and good night.”

“ ’Night. Good luck. I’ll be praying for you.”

Ending the call, Zarah checked the battery status on her phone and decided to go ahead and plug it in to charge overnight. She also got out her MP3 player and plugged it into the clock beside the bed, scrolling it to her instrumental music playlist.

After setting her supper dishes and tray out in the hallway, Zarah slipped into bed, taking along with her the new Tennessee history textbook she’d received to review. She didn’t make it past the first page of the introduction before falling asleep.

The chiming of her cell phone woke her what felt like minutes later. Her eyes burned, and a sense of tight heaviness filled her chest—as it had every morning for the past five months, though today was the worst it had been in a couple of weeks. She wrote it off to the stress of traveling, crawled out of bed, and started getting ready for her day.

Rather than deal with her hair—as rain still pattered against the windows—she pulled it back into a loose bun, leaving the few curls that escaped to bounce around her temples, ears, and nape. Once finished with everything else, she pulled out the ironing board and pressed her pants, jacket, and blouse. She finished it off with the understated emerald-and-diamond jewelry Kiki and Pops had given her for her thirtieth birthday—earrings, necklace, and bracelet—and with her heavy carryall over her shoulder and blue-and-tan-patterned trench coat over her arm, she headed downstairs for breakfast.

Over a belgian waffle topped with raspberries, boysenberries, and blackberries, Zarah tried to find anything of interest in the newspaper, but set it aside after a few minutes. The nice thing about dining in a hotel: She wasn’t the only person seated alone.

Earlier than she needed to, she headed for the gift shop to purchase an umbrella, then stopped in the lobby to shrug into her coat before
heading out to the Metro station. Like most of the women she’d observed in this area, she wore comfortable black leather mules to walk to the Metro and from the Metro to the Archives. Once there, she ducked into the women’s restroom and changed into her gray suede pumps.

She checked in with the guard at the main desk, then waited for her escort to take her into the “Authorized Personnel Only” area of the building. After submitting to a thorough search of her bag and inspection of her laptop, Zarah followed the secretary through a maze of corridors to an elevator.

By the time they arrived at the conference room, Zarah was so turned around, she wasn’t certain she was still in the same building she’d entered—and wished she’d stuck with the comfy shoes.

The people on the committee interviewing her seemed bored with the process and uninterested in anything she had to say. Obviously, she wasn’t the first candidate they’d seen.

About an hour in, one of the men asked, “Dr. Mitchell, in your own words, why do you want to come to work here?”

The speech she’d memorized and rehearsed so many times with Flannery and Caylor formed in the back of her throat. But she stopped and swallowed. Why should she continue to put herself and these people through such prolonged agony?

She closed the folder in front of her containing the job description and other information about the archives. “You know what—I’m really not that interested in coming to work here. I thoroughly appreciate your interest in me—you have no idea how much this opportunity means to someone like me. But to be perfectly honest, I don’t want to live in Washington DC. I don’t want to leave a job I love and the place I adore. Not even for a prestigious job like this.”

Standing, she extended her head to the chairwoman of the committee. “Thank you so much for your interest, and I am so sorry I wasted your time.”

The woman stared at Zarah’s hand, astonishment elongating her
face. “But…but…you were one of our top candidates. Dennis Forrester himself highly recommended you—grudgingly, because he doesn’t want to lose you. But he said he didn’t want to hold you back, either.”

Zarah pressed her lips together to keep her smile in check. “Again, I am terribly sorry I wasted your time. But this isn’t the right job for me. I’m confident you’ll find someone who’ll not only be a good fit for the job, but who will actually enjoy living and working here. It’s just not me.”

The committee chairwoman stood and shook Zarah’s hand. “Thank you for being so honest with us up front. If you ever change your mind”—she handed Zarah a business card—”please call me personally.”

“Thank you.” Zarah pocketed the card and thanked everyone else in the room. The same secretary who’d walked her in walked her out.

Outside, cracks formed in the clouds and streaks of blue broke through and pushed them apart. She slipped back into the mules, stuffed the pumps into her bag, and pulled out her phone.

After a couple of rings, a man answered.

“Hi, John. It’s Zarah Mitchell. You said to call you whenever I’m ready to meet up. I’m about fifteen minutes away. I can entertain myself for a good long while if you don’t have time this morning.”

“Hi, Zarah. Good to hear your voice. I’m about to go into a meeting. Is it still raining out there?”

Zarah looked up at the sky, now more blue than gray. “Nope—it’s clearing up and looking like it’s going to be a gorgeous fall day.”

“Excellent. How about I meet you down at the Star Spangled Banner around noon and treat you to a picnic lunch out on the Mall?”

“That sounds great. And it’ll give me a couple of hours to explore—I haven’t seen the museum since the renovations a couple of years ago.”

“Enjoy yourself—I can’t wait to hear what you think of it. I hope you brought your laptop with you.”

“I did.”

“Check in at the security desk and have them call down here. You’ll still have to go through the screening, but they shouldn’t give you a hard time about having the computer with you once we clear it up for them.”

“Thanks, John. See you in a little bit.”

Rather than hurrying—like everyone else on the street in a business suit—Zarah took her time walking up Constitution Avenue. Before entering the museum, Zarah pulled out her phone and took a picture of the exterior of the building—catching it at just the right angle so that the Washington Monument could be seen over the far corner of the building, making it look like a steeple attached to the museum. She typed out the text message,
LOOK WHERE
I
AM—WISH YOU WERE HERE!
, attached the photo, and sent it to Caylor, Flannery, Dennis, and Kiki. (Pops didn’t like receiving text messages on his phone but would look at them on Kiki’s.) She then remembered her promise to Flannery and left her a voice-mail message.

After clearing security, a much less rigorous process here than at the Archives, she set the phone on vibrate-only mode and lost herself in the exhibits—those she’d seen many, many times and those that were new. In fact, she allowed herself to become so enthralled with the redesigned layout and collections that she lost track of time and didn’t make it to the spectacular new display for the Star Spangled Banner until several minutes after twelve.

“You didn’t have to dress up for me, you know.”

She turned at the familiar voice. “Hi, John.” She accepted his handshake. “Good to see you.”

“Hard to believe it’s been almost four years since you’ve been up here. What do you think of the changes?”

Zarah turned in a slow circle, taking it all in. “It’s like a totally different place. I loved it the way it was, but this is breathtaking.”

Even though just one of many curators at the museum and probably someone who’d had nothing to do with the actual layout or design changes, John beamed like a proud papa. “Thanks. Come on. I
promised you a picnic lunch on the Mall. Though”—he looked her up and down—”dressed like that, I should probably take you next door to the Atrium Café in the MNH.”

“Vendor food on the Mall will be fine.”

John, a stout man in his fifties, grinned like a kid. “Good. I’ve had my fill of the café food. We’ve been busy preparing for next year’s exhibits and special events, so I’ve spent the last couple of weeks down in the dungeon without getting out at all during the day. But let’s go back down first so you can drop off your stuff.”

The difference between the public spaces and the private collections labs and offices couldn’t have been more vast. Down here, stillness permeated every corner—as did a lingering smell of antiquities, Zarah’s favorite smell in the world.

She set her bag down under John’s desk in the small office he shared with another curator beyond an artifact storage room. They went back up to the Flag Hall and out onto the Mall on that level.

“So why are you so dressed up? Did you have a job interview or something this morning?”

Zarah squinted against the bright sun and didn’t turn to face her colleague.

“You did! Tell me—wait. Was it that job over at the Archives? Zarah, you’d be great at that…and so close we’d be able to consult you whenever we wanted.”

“I’m not going to get the job.” She told him about the interview and how she’d ended it.

John handed her a hot dog loaded with sauerkraut and mustard, along with a bag of chips and a bottle of water. “Too bad. You know if anything ever comes open in our division, we’d love to have you come work with us.”

Two major agencies in her industry telling her in less than four hours that they wanted her. She turned and looked around at the museums and monuments visible through the nearly naked trees lining the National Mall. Every historian, archaeologist, and anthropologist
dreamed of coming to work here, didn’t they?

She thought of the grandeur of the remodeled American History Museum compared to the somewhat poorly lit and definitely poorly funded MTHPC museum. Sometimes embracing change was a good thing. But sometimes…

“Thanks, John. But Nashville is my home—the place where I’m supposed to be. And I don’t really ever see that changing.”

Chapter 24

B
obby pulled the suitcases out of the trunk of the rental car while Chase dealt with returning it. Five nights on a too-short, too-hard hotel bed made Bobby dream of the soft—though still too short—bed that awaited him tonight at Mamm and Greedad’s house.

And next week…his own super-plush, pillow-topped California king-size bed in his own place. Ah—what bliss that would be. A major splurge item, the bed had almost filled the bedroom area of his studio apartment in LA. But in the new place, the bed would fit with plenty of room to spare for him to get some more furniture and even put a chair or small sofa or something in the room.

“All taken care of.” Chase came back, tucking the rental receipt in his shirt pocket. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Agreed.” Bobby pulled up the handle of his suitcase and dragged it along behind him, only too glad to get out of this place. Though the training had been invaluable, it should have been a couple days shorter.