It was almost seven when Drew arrived in Troy, so he went directly to the restaurant rather than check into the motel. When he walked in, he saw Ed Mathews sitting at the bar. Mathews was a big man who liked to eat and drink. He was on his second martini when Drew joined him.
“You’re late,” Mathews said.
Drew glanced at his watch; it was barely five minutes after seven.
“Heavy traffic,” he said, giving it the sound of an apology. He swung himself onto the stool alongside Mathews and ordered a Dewar’s on the rocks.
“Hit me again too,” Mathews told the bartender. “And bring us an order of hot wings.” He turned to Drew. “That okay with you?”
“Yeah, sure. Sounds good.”
For over an hour there was no mention of business. Mathews polished off the wings, ordered some fried cheese sticks and went item by item through the menu deciding what he was going to have for dinner.
“The missus worries about my blood pressure, so she watches everything I eat,” Mathews said with a smirk. “That’s why I’ve gotta enjoy myself when she’s not here.”
Although Drew thought the wife was justified in worrying, he gave an amicable nod. Trying to move on to the subject of business he said, “I spoke to the press foreman, and it looks like the inserts will be up and running by seven-thirty tomorrow morning.”
Mathews tapped the rim of his empty glass and signaled the bartender for a refill.
“That sounds good,” he said. “I’m not much of an early riser, but I can be there by nine.”
When Mathews ordered some loaded potato skins and a fifth martini, Drew excused himself and slipped away to call Brooke. He cupped his hand around the phone to muffle the noise of the restaurant.
“I just wanted to make sure that you’re okay and having a good time,” he said.
She giggled. “We’re having a very good time. Missus Stone let us make our own s’mores.”
After an exchange about playing dress-up with real jewelry, Brooke asked, “What time are you coming to get me?”
“I figure you girls will want to have lunch together, so I’m thinking sometime in the early afternoon. Two, maybe three.”
There was a lengthy moment of silence; then Brooke said, “I don’t want to stay for lunch. Can’t you come earlier?”
One day at a time, Drew reminded himself.
“If you’re having fun you might change your mind,” he said. “Why don’t I call you in the morning, and we can see how you feel then?”
“Okay,” she replied, but there was a hint of reticence in her voice.
After saying he loved her, he hung up and returned to the bar.
It was almost ten by the time they left the bar and moved to the table for dinner. By then, in addition to the five martinis, Mathews had downed two beers and devoured three platters of appetizers. His laugh had gotten considerably more boisterous and his words slightly slurred.
At least a half-dozen times Drew started to say something about the business—that he appreciated the opportunity, that Mathews could be assured of Southfield’s commitment to quality, that he could expect a solid commitment to service and that Southfield was looking forward to a long and mutually rewarding relationship between the two firms. Each time Mathews nodded with a “Yeah, yeah” and moved on to a totally different subject. He talked about going fishing in the Florida Keys and buying a bigger plane.
“The Piper Warrior I flew down in is a four-seater,” he said. “I’m thinking a Cessna 206. More room, and that baby can land almost anywhere.”
Every now and again he asked a question of Drew, but it was generally something that required a simple yes or no answer. Then he’d swing back to telling whatever story he’d moved on to.
“What about deep sea fishing?” Mathews asked. “Your ever do that?”
Drew shook his head.
“Afraid not,” he said, but before he could go any further Mathews had moved on to telling of his own experience.
“Yep, there’s nothing like deep sea fishing. Now that’s a man’s sport.” He licked his lips and said, “Once you get a mouthful of fresh-caught tuna, you can’t go back to that frozen crap they sell in the supermarket.”
It was one o’clock when they finally left the restaurant.
“Want me to drop you off at the hotel?” Drew asked.
Mathews gave a wiggly shake of his head. “Nah, I got a rental car.”
Seeing him list first to one side and then the other, Drew asked, “Are you okay to drive?”
“Yeah, sure,” Mathews said and slid behind the wheel of the car. He stuck his arm out the window gave a wave and hollered, “See you in the morning!”
It had been a long day, and Drew was exhausted. He checked into the motel and went straight to his room. He set the cell phone alarm for seven o’clock figuring he’d be at Southfield by eight to make sure everything looked good before Mathews arrived at nine. Hopefully they’d be out of there before ten, and he’d be back in Clarksburg by two.
Brooke will be okay until then, he told himself. Once the girls get to playing again, the morning will have flown before she even thinks about it.
He snapped off the light and closed his eyes.
He was sound asleep when the sharp sound of the phone woke him.
Seven o’clock already?
He fumbled his hand across the nightstand and grabbed the phone. That’s when he realized it wasn’t the alarm, it was an incoming phone call. The caller was Lara Stone.
A rush of fear swept through his head as he swiped the screen to answer.
“Is Brooke okay?” he asked, sounding apprehensive.
“Yes and no,” Lara answered. With concern tucked in between each word, she went on to say that apparently Brooke had a bad dream and she had awakened screaming.
“She wants you to come and get her.”
Drew could hear the sound of sobbing in the background. “Put her on the phone.”
With ragged sobs squeezed into every breath, Brooke said, “I want to come home, Daddy…”
Trying to hide the dread he felt he asked, “What’s the matter, baby? Did you have a bad dream?”
“Uh-huh. I dreamed you were dead like Mama.” She sniffled.
“That was just a dream, Brooke. It wasn’t real. I’m alive. I’m right here talking to you on the phone.”
“I wanna come home,” she said, sobbing again.
“It’s the middle of the night, honey. I was in bed fast asleep. Don’t you think now that you know it was just a scary old dream maybe you could go back to bed and enjoy your sleepover with Ava?”
“No, I wanna come home!”
Drew gave a labored sigh. “Okay, I’ll come and get you, but it’s going to take me a while because I have to get dressed and drive over there. Do you think you could stop crying until I get there?”
“I’ll try,” she said tearfully.
Seconds later Lara came back on the phone. “I’m sorry to have to drag you back like this. I tried to calm Brooke down, but she wasn’t having any part of it. She’s obviously very attached to you.”
“I know,” Drew answered wearily. By then he’d already pulled his trousers on and thrown his toiletries back in the bag. “It’s a four-hour drive, but at this time of night I think I can make it in three.”
“Drive carefully,” Lara said and hung up.
Once Drew was on the road, he began thinking about what he was going to say to Mathews.
Dog Days
The print run was a fiasco. The job was on press at seven, and at seven-thirty they started running the inserts. At eleven Mathews finally showed up with eyes so bloodshot it was a wonder he could see where he was going, never mind distinguishing whether the green was an exact match to the proof he’d received.
“Where the hell is Bishop?” he roared.
“He had a family emergency,” the shop foreman explained. “We video chatted with him at seven-thirty this morning, and he gave us an approval to go ahead.
”
“What is he, blind? The green is off! You can’t see that?”
The foreman held the proof and press sample next to one another then said the green looked like a match to him.
“Get Bishop on the phone!” Mathews stormed.
The next twenty minutes were spent with Drew apologizing for having to leave so suddenly and Mathews screaming about a poor color match and perforations that didn’t break away cleanly.
“That’s it!” Mathews finally said. “I’m done with you. I’m not paying for this job, and you’re never getting another one!” He slammed the phone down before Drew could say anything more.
Hearing the conversation, the foreman spoke up.
“We’ve got three hundred and fifty thousand of these off press,” he said. “What am I supposed to do with them?”
“Stick ’em up your ass,” Mathews said and stormed out.
At that point they pulled the job off press, and the foreman called Herbert Glass, the plant manager.
~ ~ ~
Two days later, Drew received a call from Brian Carson.
“I guess you’ve heard about what happened with Mathews,” he said.
Drew acknowledged he had and explained that a family emergency had called him home.
“It was the first time I’ve been away since Brooke’s mom died, and she got a little panicky,” he explained. “It won’t happen again.”
“See that it doesn’t. Your sales are way off, and while I’m sympathetic to your situation I’ve got a responsibility to the company…”
His words trailed off. Coming out with a flat hard statement was not necessary. The implication was clear enough.
When he hung up from the call, Drew knew he was in jeopardy of losing his job if he didn’t make some changes.
That evening he sat Brooke down and had a long talk with her.
“I know losing your mama has been hard on you,” he said, “but it’s been hard on me too.”
He explained the conversation he’d had with Brian Carson, and the whole while he spoke Brooke sat there teary-eyed and stone-faced.
“I didn’t mean to make your boss mad,” she said. “But I dreamed the bad man who killed Mama was coming to kill me too, and I was afraid.”
Despite Drew’s efforts to keep the newspaper sensationalism away from Brooke, she’d seen it splashed across the front page—a picture of her mama and next to it one of a fiery-haired Tom Coggan. She’d had nightmares for nearly a month, but then they’d stopped. He’d thought she’d moved past it but evidently not.
“That man is dead,” he said. “Remember we saw it in the newspapers?”
Brook gave a reluctant nod. “Yes, but—”
“There are no buts. He’s dead. He can’t ever hurt anybody again, so there’s no need to be afraid.”
“What about if I’m missing Mama? You said we could miss her together.”
“We can, just not while I’m in the middle of working.”
Drew held his arms open. She moved into them and laid her head against his chest, and for a long while neither of them said anything more.
It was Drew who finally spoke.
“I know this is really, really hard, but how about this. I’ll get you your own notebook, a secret diary like big kids have. Then when you’re lonely or scared you can write it down in your diary, and if you want to we can talk about it that evening.”
“Okay,” she answered, but the word was weak and non-committal.
The next day he and Brooke took a trip to Justice, the shop where she’d seen a collection of diaries. She selected one that had a lock and key then picked a matching ballpoint pen that wrote with purple ink. She seemed enthused with the idea, and Drew was hopeful it would give him some uninterrupted time for making business calls.
In the week that followed Brooke took to sitting on the front steps of the house, writing in her diary and making calls to tell people about the diary she now had. Both the cell phone and the diary were a novelty to be explored. She called her grandma in California and then wrote about the call in her diary.
“Grandma was very glad to hear from me,” she wrote, “but said it would be better if I call her in the evening when she is not at work.”
After that she called her friend, Ava, and her other friend, Kelly, then wrote about those calls. Once she even called Marta. It seemed that everyone else was doing something she could write about, but she herself had nothing. Just thoughts of not interrupting her father and missing her mama.
During that week there were no interruptions, and Drew began to think they’d solved the problem. But the newness of it wore off quickly, and the following Tuesday when he was in the middle of a video conference with Joe Wilkes, the advertising manager of Bradley’s Department Store, Brooke came running into the room with a fluffy white dog in her arms.
“Daddy, I found a puppy!” she yelled with excitement. “Can I keep him?”
Drew looked over and glared at her.
“We’ll discuss this later,” he said and turned his attention back to the screen.
“Please, Daddy, just say yes.”
Joe Wilkes laughed. “Looks like you’ve got a problem on your hands.”
Since there was little else he could do, Drew laughed also. He turned to Brooke and said, “I don’t think that’s a lost puppy. He’s got a tag on him. Take him out front and wait in case his owner is out looking for him.”
Although Drew could feel the agitation swelling inside of him, he finished the pitch he’d been making for Bradley’s then told Joe Wilkes he’d be in touch again the following week. When he disconnected the call he knew it hadn’t been his best effort. It had been going well but the interruption threw him off base, made him feel awkward and unprofessional. He sat there in front of a blank screen waiting for his irritation to dissipate before he spoke to Brooke, but it didn’t.
When he walked outside she was sitting on the porch with the dog in her lap. He sat down beside her.
“I thought you said you weren’t going to keep interrupting me in the middle of my work day.”
“I didn’t keep interrupting,” she said petulantly. “I did it one time, and it was an emergency.”
“Finding a dog is not an emergency.” Drew lifted the tag hanging from the dog’s collar. “The owner’s phone number is right here. You can’t keep a dog that belongs to somebody else.”
Brooke’s lip began to quiver. “I already named him Buddy.”
“That’s not his name. His name is Rocky. It says so right here.”
“When I called him Buddy he licked my face.”
“That’s because he likes you, but it still doesn’t mean you can keep him.”
Tears welled in Brooke’s eyes. “Maybe his owner didn’t want him anymore.”
“I doubt that,” Drew said. He took the cell phone lying beside her and placed it in her hand. “You have to call the owner and tell them you have their dog.”
With her chin dropped onto her chest Brooke punched in the number on the tag. When a young man answered she asked, “I found Rocky. Do you not want him anymore?”
“Thank heaven you found him!” The lad went on to say that somebody had left the back gate open and Rocky had wandered off. He asked for Brooke’s address and said he’d be there in five minutes. When the call ended, Brooke turned to her daddy.
“You should’ve just let me keep him,” she said. There was a note of bitterness in her voice.
“Keeping something that belongs to somebody else is stealing. Just like you miss your mama, don’t you think Rocky’s family would miss him?”
The spark of anger made Brooke’s eyes turn green; the pale blue that softened the color was all but gone.
“Nobody cares if I miss Mama, so why should I care if they miss Rocky?”
Drew wrapped his arm around her shoulder and nudged her close.
“I care,” he said. “I care about you the same as I cared about your mama.”
Although he already
had more than he could handle, he said that if having a dog was what would make her happy they would get one.
“It won’t be the same as having Buddy,” she said, but the bitterness seemed to be gone from her voice.
Drew
Brooke is lonely; I get it. I’m lonely too. This is a pretty shitty life for both of us. I’m trying to make it better, but it seems like I take one step forward and then get knocked back two. Nothing goes right anymore.
It used to be that my showing up at a press run was little more than a goodwill gesture. Things ran smoothly without me. I was just there to glad-hand the client and maybe take them to dinner. Now when I really need for things to go well without me, the bottom falls out.
Brian doesn’t have to tell me I’ve got problems. I know I do. Last month’s commission check was a third of what I used to make. I made more than that when I managed the little print shop over on Fairfax.
At first I thought I could do this—be both a mother and father to Brooke—but the truth is I’m failing miserably. I can see how unhappy and frightened she is, but the simple truth is I don’t know how to fix it.
Yes, she wants a dog. But obviously I’m doing a rotten job of taking care of her, so how am I supposed to take care of a dog too?
Maybe if I tell her the dog is her responsibility. I could say she has to walk it, feed it and work at getting it trained. Maybe that would keep her busy enough so that I can get some work done.
Oh, who am I kidding? When she goes back to school in the fall, the dog will end up my responsibility again. That’s how it goes lately, a step forward, two backward.
But if it makes Brooke happy, I guess we’ll get a dog.
The Library
After Eddie and Alisha consumed a sizeable amount of Jim Beam, morning came hard. It was nearly noon when they finally crawled out of bed. Despite the pounding in his head, Eddie immediately suggested they get started for the library.
“I ain’t going nowhere ’til I get something to eat,” Alisha said.
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