The Fourteen Day Soul Detox, Volume Two (14 page)

“I’m going to wait for
Sarah to get out so she doesn’t get upset again,” I told
her.

“No problem. I’ll just cook
you up some food while you’re waiting.”

“Thanks, Susan. I can really eat
anything. Sarah usually wants something light, like yogurt and fruit,
but she can eat other stuff too if you don’t have that.”

“We have yogurt, I’ll just
set some up for both of you, that work?” she asked.

“That’s perfect, thank you
so much,” I said.

Sarah came out of the bathroom a few
minutes later, fully dressed and smiling.

“Are you feeling better, angel?”

“Yes!” she said, jumping
around the room and making loud noises.

“Okay, great. Let’s go eat
some yogurt, and then aunt Beza is going to drive you to school,”
I said.

“No bus?” Sarah asked.

“No bus today.”

She made a loud, excited sound.

“First, drive with Aunt Beza, and
then?” she asked.

“And then school,” I said.

“No school,” she said.

“It’s Tuesday, you have
school on Tuesday,” I said.

“No school!” she shouted,
then she ran out of the room, down the hall and when she got into the
dining room where everyone was sitting, she pulled over a chair so
that it fell backward.

“Sarah! Stop!” I said, as I
ran up behind her, grabbing her arm.

Everyone at the table looked over.

Sarah screeched loudly and tried to
kick over another chair.

“Sarah, stop doing that!” I
yelled. “Stop it!”

I righted the chair while holding her
with one arm.

“Sit down!” I yelled at
her.

Sarah smacked me right in the nose.

A white hot surge of pain shot up my
nose. I closed my eyes, concentrating on my breathing.

“Hey, I got this. Sarah, come
over here and eat please,” Susan said sternly. “Sarah,
now.”

I let go of Sarah and let Susan lead
her to a seat with a bowl of yogurt with chopped fruit in it.

“I’m sorry about the
chairs,” I said.

“Jamie, it’s fine, come
eat,” Susan said, pointing to the chair next to Sarah.

“I think I need to take a walk
around the block or something,” I said.

“No problem, take your food, it
will make you feel better,” Susan said.

“Yeah, okay,” I said,
grabbing my food from the table. Exiting into the morning air, I ate
as I walked down the sidewalk under the archway of branches. The fog
sat just above the trees, giving the world a low, gray ceiling.

I dug my spoon into the yogurt,
scooping up a couple slices of strawberry. The sweet, milky, fruity
taste burst in my mouth as I chewed, contrasting starkly with the
dark, gray morning.

A middle-aged man walked out of one of
the houses to stow his briefcase into the backseat of a luxury sedan.

“Morning,” he said, waving.

“Hello,” I said, trying to
disguise the fact my mouth was full, and raising my spoon in a wave.

Crossing the street, I walked back the
way I came. A block and a half away from Susan’s house, I
passed a realtor’s ‘For Sale’ sign. I peered over
my shoulder up the driveway to the small, cottage style house. What
looked like brown shingles covered the entire exterior all the way up
to its slope roof. A tall shuttered window looked out on the street.

I committed the house number and realty
company to memory, then crossed the street. When I approached the
house, Susan, Beza and the kids were just stepping out the front
door.

“We’re going to keep this
open for you. Mind locking up with your key when you leave?”
Susan asked as she held the front door open.

“Yeah, I definitely will but I’m
thinking that maybe I should cancel my meeting and keep Sarah with
me,” I said.

“Of course, if you like. And, the
house is yours. But, you know, Sarah did fine over breakfast,”
Beza said.

“Yeah, she calmed right down and
ate every bite,” Susan added.

“Oh.” I sighed. “Maybe
she was just feeling my stress. If that’s the case, it actually
might be better if she doesn’t spend the day with me.”

“There’s a pretty easy
solution to your stress,” Susan said while unlocking her car.

“Yeah?”

“Eliminate your stressors. Go
sell your shop,” she said.

“Maybe. I’ll go grab
Sarah’s booster,” I said.

“No need. Beza bought one for
Sarah,” Susan said.

“I realized I didn’t have
one for her when I went to pick her up from School yesterday,”
she said.

“Wow, thank you. I’ll pay
you back for it,” I said.

“You don’t need to pay me
back… or maybe pay me back by getting one for Aiden in your
car? We’ve been silly just switching back and forth for all
these years,” she said.

“Alright, I will definitely do
that,” I said.

Beza and Susan loaded up the kids in
the car and I walked over to Sarah’s side.

“Have a good day at school,
angel,” I said, kissing her at the top of her head.

“I love you so much, Mom,”
she said, patting my cheek softly.

“I love you too,” I said,
sniffing back a sudden wave of emotion. “So, so much.”

Walking back into the house, I washed
my plate and grabbed my purse. My phone read five minutes to eight
o’clock when I extracted it from my purse.

“Crap,” I said, stowing my
phone and heading for the front door. After locking the house and
climbing in my car, I used my Maps app to speak out directions at me.

“Head West on North State
Street,” the vaguely female mechanical voice said.

“Alright, which way is west?”
I asked her as I started driving.

“At the next intersection, do a
u-turn to head West on State street,” the voice said.

“Okay, that way is west,” I
said, glancing into my rearview mirror.

After doing a three-point turn, I
followed the directions the disembodied voice gave me. The voice led
me to the freeway and told me to go North.

The sun had already burnt through large
patches of the fog layer by the time the freeway pulled up along the
ocean.

“Take the next exit onto Sea
Breeze Way,” the voice told me.

“Okay,” I said as I merged
into the right lane. I exited the freeway, turning left and going
through the underpass. The road drove along a large freshly mowed
park. Ducks settled on large ponds, avoiding the many fountains in
their midst. Framing and webbing through the park were paved
footpaths, interspersed with unoccupied benches.

Several large matching buildings
approached on my left, their walls made of glass, each curving in an
out in an ‘s’ shape. As I drove past the building and the
reflected light followed me, the buildings looked almost as if they
were rolling waves.

“In three hundred feet, your
destination will be on you left,” the voice told me.

I turned into the parking lot, driving
around until I saw a man standing next to a Mercedes Benz with a
brief case.

I parked several spaces down and rushed
to get out of my car.

“I’m sorry, am I late?”
I asked him.

He looked down at his wrist watch. “No,
you’re just on time.” He walked over, stretching out his
hand to me. “Nice to meet you. I’m Mark Hamm.”

“Jamie Scott,” I said.

“Let’s walk and talk,
Jamie,” he said, gesturing an arm out toward the large wavy
glass building ahead of us. He wore nice suit that fit well on his
trim body and complimented his handsome square-jawed face.

“I thought your car was going to
be black,” I said with a smile as we passed his Benz. “You
know, because it’s a black series.”

“They had black, but I prefer the
gun metal shade,” he said with no trace of a smile on his face.
“I’ve looked over your files and though I believe you
will be able to sell and satisfy your judgment lien with little
trouble, I don’t think you should verbally agree to sell or
sign anything until you’ve spoken to the Timepiece Company.”

“Do you think there’s a
possibility they’ll refuse to settle early?” I asked.

“I just don’t want you to
get in a legal bind. They have the right to not let you sell the
property before you settle,” he said. “My paralegal
called Timepiece to see if their accounting team had any availability
this morning, they said they could accommodate us. I, of course
didn’t give them any personal information about you. If it’s
before nine-thirty I can accompany you there. Would you like to go
talk to them?”

“If that’s okay with you.
It would be amazing,” I said.

“Ideally we could get an update
offer that addressed the lien and bring it to them,” I said.

“Thank you so much for doing this
Mr. Hamm, this is such a kind thing you are doing for me and I
sincerely appreciate it,” I said.

He nodded brusquely, then opened the
glass entrance to the office building for me.

We entered into an entrance hall lit
with natural light from a windows roof five stories above. Walkways
crisscrossed the open gallery, each at an angle and echoing the wave
design of the building.

A small café opened out to one
side. On the other side of the building, elevators lined up in a
perfectly spaced row.

“Good morning,” a petite
woman security guard said from behind a wave shaped reception desk.
“Are you visitors?”

“We have a meeting with Nicole
Murphy,” I said.

She typed something into her computer.
“Jamie Scott at eight-fifteen?”

“Yes, and this is Mark Hamm, a
property lawyer,” I said.

“Alright, please step in front of
this camera,” she said, pointing to a camera mounted on her
desk. We took turns getting our photo taken, then waited for her to
print our name tags.

I looked down to the black and white
photo of me grinning next to my printed name. Leaning in just a
little, I looked at Mark’s name tag before he stepped away. He
wasn’t smiling in his picture.

“You can go on up to the third
floor,” the security woman said, turning back to her computer.

We walked to the side of the building
and pressed the button for the elevator. “So did Cameron work
on your car?” I asked.

“He customized the stereo
system,” he said.

“Neat. I didn’t even
realize that Cameron did that,” I said as we entered the
elevator.

“He’s good,” he said.

“How long have you been a
property lawyer?” I asked.

“Twelve years,” he said.

“Wow, you must have started
young,” I said.

“When I was twenty-five,”
he said.

“So, are you really into cars?”
I asked after a moment of silence.

“Moderately,” he said.

The doors dinged open onto another open
reception area. Large freestanding banners hung down in front of the
wall on each side, each depicting coffee related images. A woman sat
at the reception desk, grinning at us as we made our approach.
Frosted glass doors stood behind her on both sides, each with the
Harrington’s logo.

A blonde woman opened one of the glass
door and held it open for us. “I have this, Miranda,” she
said to the receptionist. “Are you Jamie Scott?”

“I am,” I said.

She grinned at me, and crow’s
feet lined both sides of her beautiful face. “I’m Nicole,
come on in.”

“This is Mark Hamm, the property
lawyer I mentioned on the phone,” I told Nicole.

Nicole gave Mark a wide grin. “It’s
very nice to meet you, Mr. Hamm.”

We walked down a line of office
buildings, many with assistants in desks before them or in small
offices leading to bigger offices.

I peeked through open doorways as we
passed, mostly seeing people on phones or computers.

“So this is the offices for
Harrington’s?” I asked.

Nicole glanced around. “Some of
them, this whole building is the Harrington’s headquarters.”

“Oh, wow,” I said.

“Well, we do have eighty
locations across the state and four coffee roasting warehouses,”
she said, grinning back.

“You look incredibly familiar,
have you been into The Coffee Stop before?” I asked.

“I’ve checked it out.”
She opened the doors to a wide, open meeting room. “Right
through here,” she said, gesturing us to a long black table.
“Let’s just all gather to one side here.”

“Thank you,” I said, taking
a seat at the end.

Nicole took a seat behind a big stack
of paper. “Would you like something to drink? We have tea,
coffee and water,” she said looking between us.

“I’m fine,” I said.

“A water, please,” Mark
said.

“Oh definitely,” Nicole
said with a grin on her face, she stood walking across the room to a
small mini-fridge. “Bottled water okay?”

“That’s great,” Mark
said.

“You sure I can’t get you
one, Jamie?” she asked.

“Since you’re up, sure,”
I said.

Nicole returned with our waters and a
smile. “So, do you want us to go over this offer from beginning
to end or would you rather just ask me questions?” Nicole said.

“Best you go over it,” Mark
said.

“Well, the offer is two point one
million dollars. Included in the purchase price would be all the
personal property at eight four two Main street, all property at the
site and/or associated with the business, including but not limited
to furniture, tools and fixtures, all permits and special licenses.
In addition to this we require goodwill, all customer lists, accounts
payable, and stock and trade. For real property, the building and lot
at eight four two Main street, the recorded casements of public
utilities would be included in the price. As for special conditions,
we would require an employment contract with you, Jamie Scott, and to
retain the current employment contract with your employee Christopher
Johnson. We—”

“Sorry to interrupt,” I
said.

She looked up, a small grin on her
face. “No, go ahead.”

“When you say an employment
period, are you asking us to work for a transitional period?”