The Fourteen Day Soul Detox, Volume Two (16 page)

He didn’t sit in his desk chair;
instead he stood with his profile to me, facing the wall.

“So this was some sort of
corporate espionage thing? And just for the record, that sounds way
cooler than what you did.”

“What did my father say to you?”
he asked.

“He wants me to work for him
under a three-year contract; he offered to buy my shop, offered more
than it’s worth by a hundred thousand…”

“You should do it,” he
said.

“Why? So I can get my very own
‘Welcome to the Company’ cake?”

He turned with a grimace on his face.
“I really don’t think he’s trying to make you his
slave. What I said to you—that was about my relationship with
him. Not about the way he treats his employees.”

I huffed out a laugh. “Just some
advice; the barbeque was completely overkill. I was planning on
selling the shop to Harrington’s before I realized who was
behind the offer. You could have saved yourself a small fortune in
beef. Free advice for next time,” I said, getting up out of the
chair.

“The barbeque wasn’t about
my father’s offer,” he said.

“Yeah, whatever. I thought coming
up here and rubbing your face in the fact that I know who you really
are and what you were really doing would feel satisfying, but it
doesn’t. This just feels sad… and disgusting. I’m
going to go. I guess I’ll see you around Coral Elementary.
Yay,” I said, dryly.

“I’d like a chance to
explain,” he said.

“I don’t really need an
explanation. I barely even know you. I just don’t appreciate
the falseness of what you were doing. It’s funny, because my
sister warned me about you and your family and I totally dismissed
it.”

“We weren’t being false,”
he said.

“You didn’t know who I was
when you asked me out? You didn’t know that your company took
everything from me?” I asked.

“I knew,” he said.

“That’s what I thought. Oh,
and since you started working here three months after you got
divorced two years ago, you were working here while your company sued
me. See, I might not have gone to college, but I can do the math. You
were probably even part of the legal team, weren’t you?”

He sucked his lower lip into his mouth
and let is slowly roll out from behind his teeth. “Only in an
advisory capacity,” he said.

“You knew who I was when they
sued me?” I asked.

“No. I found out a month later at
that school board meeting. I’d seen you dropping off Sarah in
the mornings before that, but I never knew your name.” He
paused to run a hand through his blond hair. “I found out and
I… used it against my father. I was very angry with him at the
time. I’ll be honest, I told him to hurt him, not to help you.
I threw it in his face that after all his speeches about making the
world a better place he had just beggared a new widow who had a child
with autism.”

“You used my child’s
diagnosis as your weapon against your father?” I asked,
blinking at him and shaking my head.

“I’m not proud of it, but
yes, I did. I found out that he was barely familiar with the case,
he’d just been briefed about the accident, then on the
financial aspects and the repayment plan acceptance.”

I didn’t respond, just stayed
standing and staring at Patrick.

“All year he kept asking me about
you—asking about Sarah, so I told him what I knew. I asked your
friend Beza about you… not to tell my father the information,
but because I was interested in knowing more. I also… I asked
you out on a date for me, not to trick you into any kind of deal with
my father. And, my brother and his wife don’t know any of
this.”

After standing for a full minute,
staring at him, I said, “Okay. Thank you for telling me what I
hope is the truth. I don’t want to date you…” I
shook my head, “Or be your friend. But I’m not going to
confront you again or freak out on you, so don’t worry about
that. I’ll be as friendly as I can be under the circumstances,
but please don’t seek me out, especially at my work.”

“Jamie, I—”

“And no Pizza Arcade this
evening, though I’m sure you could have guessed that one. I
don’t even really like that place anyways.” I turned away
from him, heading for his office door.

“If it makes any difference, this
is the closest I have ever seen to my father admitting that he was
wrong,” he said.

I grabbed the handle to his office
door. “I’m really not interested in signing away three
years of my life to ease his conscience.”

No one stopped me or even looked twice
at me as I left Patrick’s office and retraced my path out of
the building. Across the parking lot, I climbed into my car and sat,
staring out the window. The edges of my vision blurred as my eyelids
grew heavy. My stomach growled at the same time a headache pounded in
my skull. I blinked away the light, and found it difficult to reopen
my eyes.

I closed my eyes and leaned forward.

The sound of people talking somewhere
nearby had me shaking my head and opening my eyes. I felt sweat
gathering in my armpits and behind my neck.

I blinked at the clock. It read
twelve-ten.

“What the—?” I rubbed
my face with my hands. “Oh, crap.”

Glancing around my car, I saw hordes of
people dressed in business attire walking in groups to their
vehicles. After a quick scan of the parking lot, I didn’t see
Patrick.

Starting my car, I rolled down the
windows, sticking my face out to take a few gulps of fresh air.
Backing out of my space, I joined the traffic feeding onto Sea Breeze
Way, and continued to stop and go all the way to the freeway
entrance.

When I reached my apartment building, I
circled the parking lot. A sigh of relief left me when I saw that all
that was sitting in Clarke’s space was a puddle of oil.
Circling around, I parked in my space.

Trudging from parking lot, I unlocked
my house, relocked it on the other side, set my phone alarm for an
hour later and passed out on my couch.

What felt like minutes later, I woke to
an incessant beeping. “Get up, Jamie, go shower,” I
whispered. But instead, I reset my alarm for thirty minutes later and
passed out again.

On the second time waking up to my
alarm, I forced myself up. Going into my room, I changed out of
Beza’s pantsuit and into jeans and a ‘Flaming Lips’
T-shirt. My hair felt sweaty as I gathered it up the best I could
into a ponytail.

Leaning forward, I washed my face. The
cold water, followed by the coarse feeling of the towel, finally rid
my eyes of the heavy feeling.

When I reentered the living room, my
phone lit up with a text message.

Cameron:
Did
everything go okay today?

Me:
Today
was horrible.

Immediately the phone rang with
Cameron’s smiling face lighting up the screen.

“Hey,” I answered.

“Hey, baby, what happened?”

“Turns out the potential buyer
also owns Timepiece and is the lien holder on the Coffee Stop.”

“They were trying to screw you
over?” he asked.

I sighed. “Not exactly, they were
more trying to acquire me and Chris with the shop, but I have no
interest in working for them.”

“I get that after what they did.
Did they want you to keep running the shop?” he asked.

“They’ve been keeping
careful track of our profits and I guess we’re outperforming
them by a decent margin. They wanted me to be their general manager
for the county, but I’d have to sign a three-year contract.”

There was a pause on the other end of
the phone, then Cameron said, “No matter what you choose, I’ll
be behind you, okay?”

“Thank you Cameron… but
there’s no possible way I’ll work for them. They didn’t
just kick us when we were down, they shot us with a bazooka, then
smashed our itty bitty remains under their boots. I’ve spent
the worst year of my life crawling my way out of the hole they blew
us into. And it might look like they’re offering me a ladder,
but I have a feeling it’s a lot closer to a greased up slide
into a much bigger hole.”

“You’re probably right. I
just hate to see you stuck for fourteen more years with this debt,”
he said.

“Maybe someone else will make an
offer. Except—shit, they probably won’t let me sell to
anyone before I settle the debt if they’re trying to force me
into their deal.”

“What about filing for
bankruptcy?” he asked.

“My dad looked into it right
after this all happened. The debt is non-dischargeable because it was
a DUI and that security guard broke his leg. I should have just given
The Coffee Stop up in the first place—now I’m even more
trapped than ever.”

“No, we’ll find a way
through,” he said.

“Okay, if you say so. You doing
okay?” I asked.

“Yep. I got a couple sweet kisses
from a beautiful woman yesterday, and they’re keeping me going
through another long day at the shop.”

“You working late? Maybe we could
drop by.”

“Actually, I’m taking off
at two-thirty today for a late lunch thing,” he said.

“With that amazing client?”

“Nope, a different one.”

“Alright, I need to go get Sarah
from school,” I said.

“I’ll talk to you soon,”
he said, before hanging up.

When I peeked out my front door, I
found Clarke’s yard still empty. After stepping out of my
house, I turned to lock my front door when my phone rang.

“Shit,” I whispered,
fumbling it from my bag and turning it to silent. The screen flashed
with the words ‘Sunset Estates Office’.

“Hello,” I answered in a
quiet voice.

“Hello Jamie, this is Richard,
the property manager of Sunset Estates,” a man’s voice
came from the other end of the line.

Behind me, a door swung open, making a
screeching sound.

I glanced over my shoulder to see
Buster run out into Clarke’s yard.

“Hello? Ms. Scott?” Richard
said.

“I’m here, sorry just one
second,” I said in a low voice, walking quickly down the
sidewalk.

When I reached my car, I realized my
keys were still held out in my hands, my house key pinched between
two fingers. I unlocked my car, and once I was inside said, “Thank
you so much for getting back to me.”

“No problem. Is there any way I
could have you come down to the office to discuss your housing
situation?” he asked.

“Right now?”

“That would definitely work for
me,” he said.

“Sorry, but I’m on my way
to pick up my daughter,” I said.

“Well, we can definitely make an
appointment for later in the week,” he said.

“I can come in thirty minutes, I
just need to pick up my daughter and then I could be right back
there,” I said.

“I have a meeting with some
prospective renters in half an hour,” he said.

“I thought all the units were
full,” I said.

“We might have some openings next
month,” he said.

“Oh good. But honestly Richard,
could we meet later today, maybe after your appointment? I can’t
keep living like this,” I said.

“I am sorry, Ms. Scott. I do have
some time open tomorrow during the day,” he said.

“I have to work and then my
daughter has gymnastics, but could we make some time over the phone
maybe?”

“Yes, that’ll work for me,”
he said.

I started up my car. “Would
three-thirty work?”

“That’ll work,” he
said.

“Thank you so much. I really need
this,” I said before backing up my car.

When I arrived at Coral Elementary
School, the children had already exited the school’s doors and
dispersed like colorful fish in a coral reef. Ms. Brown stood with
one hand looped in Sarah’s back pack, her gaze roving back and
forth over the parking lot.

I pulled the car in front of the pair.
Climbing out of the car, I rushed around the front. “I am so
sorry. I’m running late,” I said.

Sarah’s head shot up to look at
me. “Mom!” she screamed, plowing into me. She made a loud
sound, smacking her head into my stomach again.

“Baby,” I said, running a
hand over her hair. I looked up into Ms. Brown’s face.

She pushed up her glasses, her face set
in a grimace.

“How was today?” I asked.

“Well—it was pretty rough.
Yeah, I’d call it a rough day.” She gestured out to
Sarah. “Nothing really bad happened, she just didn’t want
to listen and we had a really hard time calming her down. She’s
been really emotional.”

I squeezed Sarah tighter to me. “Oh,
sweetie.” I looked back to Ms. Brown. “But no—hitting
or anything?”

“Yeah—yeah she was hitting
me a lot, but not hard.” She held her hands out in a reassuring
gesture. “And not the other kids.”

“Oh, I—I am so sorry,”
I said.

“It’s okay. Did anything
happen… like at home, that could have set her off?” she
asked.

“Yeah, um, we stayed at her
aunts’ house last night because our complex was spraying
chemicals. Everything was fine, but then she had a pretty intense
morning.”

I leaned over to open Sarah’s car
door. “Time to get in, angel.”

When she refused to release her hold on
me, Ms. Brown asked in a quiet voice, “Did they spray chemicals
today?”

“No, I think we can go back to
our usual schedule,” I said in an equally quiet voice.

“Alright, I need to head into a
meeting. Goodbye Sarah, see you tomorrow.”

Sarah made no response, just continued
to hold onto me.

“Thank you so much,” I said
to Ms. Brown as she backed away from us with a concerned look still
heavy on her face.

“Sarah, if you don’t let go
of me, we can’t drive home,” I said.

Sarah leaned back. “Mom, are we
going to Pizza Arcade today?”

“Um, not today baby, but we can
do something else fun if you want. Pick a place, like the beach or
the playground or a restaurant, and we’ll go there.”