The Complete Where Dreams

by M. L. Buchman

  Jo bit the inside of her cheek, then tried again. “It’ll be the most important—”

  “Wah. Wah. Wah.” More quacking duck.

  Jo knew from experience of many years that Cassidy could go all night and never repeat a sound. Even when they were drunk, Cassidy somehow kept track.

  She knew why Cassidy was here. Jo wanted to confide in her, but it wouldn’t work that way. Cassidy was newly married and through those eyes, thought that in order to be happy, everyone else should be as well. Perrin was a total romantic, which meant she was of the same mind, only more so. If she mentioned Angelo’s declaration of love, which was still freaking her out, she’d never hear the end of it.

  “I was offered a new job.” Jo had already decided to not take it, but she didn’t need to tell Cassidy that. At least not right away.

  “Whacka. Whacka. Whac—Uh, what?” Cassidy blinked.

  “Renée Linden is retiring and wants me to take over her job.”

  Cassidy jerked upright to stare at her. She gestured toward the Market. “That Renée Linden? The one behind like, I dunno, everything?”

  Jo nodded. “That Renée Linden. She’s retiring and thinks I should replace her as the Executive Director of the Pike Place Market. She’s been courting me for a couple of weeks.”

  “Weeks?!” Cassidy’s voice whooshed out and she dropped back on the couch. “I once managed to hold out for forty-three minutes when she wanted me to serve on a board for the Friends of Emerald City Opera. The other board members actually made me a plaque in honor of my holding out for so long. It ended up being fantastic and fun, but it sure didn’t look like it from the outside. Weeks? Really?”

  Jo nodded. She’d forgotten about that connection. When Renée retired, that position would probably be opening as well. Except Renée wasn’t just a member of Friends of the Opera, she headed that board which placed her on the board of the Opera itself. Jo’s head throbbed.

  “You’re turning her down?”

  Jo did her best to remain impassive.

  Cassidy squinted her eyes. “You are. Okay, Thompson. That one you’re going to have to explain.”

  “Cass, it’s one a.m. and—”

  “And you’re going to explain this one to me in short, simple, unlawyerly words because it is, as you say, one a.m.”

  “I’m sure Russell—”

  “Is presently with Angelo. He’s having some kind of meltdown. His mother got so worried that she called Russell a couple of hours ago.”

  Jo closed her eyes and counted to ten. It didn’t help, so she counted to twenty with no better results.

  “Really, Cass. It’s all so spoiled.” At thirty she rose to her feet.

  “I can’t do this.” Jo picked up her briefcase. She straightened her jacket. Straightened it and tried not to think about how much fun Angelo had made of taking it off her. He’d made her feel so desirable, so important, so…

  “I can’t do this. I have a phone conference with the undersecretary of the United Nations Division of Oceans and Law of the Sea tomorrow at seven a.m. I…” They were real reasons she couldn’t talk about everything that was snarled up with her personal life, aside from the fact that it would take all night and she needed the sleep, but even those felt as if she were making excuses.

  “I…” She made it one step toward the door and got stuck again. “I can’t do this.”

  Cassidy came up to hug her, and some preservation instinct had Jo stepping back. She ignored the pain on Cassidy’s face.

  “I’m sorry. I just can’t. You— Renée— Angelo— The will— My mother—” She was stuttering worse than her father’s old truck engine which had refused to turn over when she and Angelo had tried it. She finally slapped a hand over her mouth to stop herself.

  “I can’t, Cass. I just can’t,” she mumbled through the hand over her mouth.

  “You’ll call me when you can?”

  Jo nodded, blinking hard against the tears.

  “I’ll be the first?”

  Jo nodded again.

  “I mean it Thompson. Repeat after me, ‘I’ll call Cass first.’ Right? Say it.”

  “You first,” she mumbled.

  “Okay,” Cassidy nodded to herself, pulled her sweater straight like Captain Picard readying himself for battle. “Okay. Now, you’re coming home with me.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing Thompson. I’m not having you drive. I’m not leaving you alone tonight. I live two blocks away, you’re coming with me and that’s final.”

  Jo could only nod and keep her hand in place. There’d never been a friend in the world like Cassidy Knowles.

  And she really needed a friend right now.

  Even if she couldn’t speak to her.

  Chapter 32

  “Hi, honey.” Jo heard Russell call out from the living room as Cassidy opened the front door to their condo. “Can you believe that goofball told her that he loved her?”

  Cassidy spun to face her as all the blood drained from Jo’s brain. Only the power suit kept her from simply fainting to the floor.

  “Even worse, Jo clearly lost her mind and told him she didn’t care for him.”

  She braced a hand on the still-open front door as her stomach heaved. She was about to barf the energy bar she’d eaten ten hours earlier all over Cassidy’s perfect white carpet.

  “He was somewhere between murdered and so mad I’m glad he doesn’t own a gun. Once I got him really drunk, he started mumbling that she was killing her soul, but he wouldn’t explain that one. I dumped him in the guest bedr—” Led by his long-hair black cat, Russell came around the corner of the hallway on his crutches and stopped dead.

  He and Jo stared at each other for an eternity that may have lasted less than five seconds but they were seconds stretched beyond all reckoning.

  “No! Jo. Hi. I’m… Oh, no!”

  Jo turned and ran.

  Cassidy called after her, but Jo bolted into the emergency stairwell and almost tumbled down the concrete steps.

  When she heard Cassidy’s call getting closer, she turned and sprinted up the nearest steps. It was a mistake. She’d meant to go down. She thought she’d be trapped, but it was all that saved her.

  Cassidy roared into the stairwell the same moment Jo turned the corner onto the next landing up.

  Cassidy went down.

  Jo collapsed on the stairs a half flight above where Russell held the door open. Separate but together, they listened to the pounding echoes of Cassidy’s downward footsteps and frantic calls.

  “Aaugh!” She heard Russell in such pain she almost went to reassure him. “I’m such an idiot!”

  He wasn’t the only one.

  Jo didn’t dare go home, for Cassidy would surely follow her there. And she didn’t want to find a hotel room, and be one of those red-eyed weeping women trying to hide some deep unhappiness for everyone to see and whisper about.

  She did the only thing she could think of after she heard Cassidy return and tell Russell she was indeed going to check Jo’s apartment.

  Jo walked down the twenty flights and out into the night. Four blocks into Bell Town, she arrived at Perrin’s Glorious Garb. The shop’s lights were out, as was the studio light in the back. She went around to the side door and pressed the buzzer that served the six upstairs apartments.

  She leaned on the buzzer.

  A sleepy and distorted, “Who?” crackled out of the speaker.

  “Jo.” Her throat was so tight that it ached to create the single word. All she could taste was the salt of her tears that must have started again without her noticing. All she could see was the tiny squawk box.

  The door buzzed sharply enough that Jo almost fell backwards off the low stoop, but managed to stop herself by grabbing the door handle.

  Perrin met her at the head of the stairs.

  One look at Jo’s face was apparently all she needed. She led Jo down the narrow hall painted an improbable lime green and through a chartreuse door.
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  Perrin didn’t cross-examine her. Didn’t prod or poke. She only asked one question, “Should I call Cassidy?”

  Jo could only shake her head before she pitched face first onto Perrin’s couch and cried herself to sleep.

  Chapter 33

  Jo made it to the morning phone call. Kept Muriel in the room for it because she knew she wouldn’t remember a word of what was said. Afterward, over her protests, Muriel sent her home.

  Per her assistant’s instructions, which she’d written down and handed to Jo, the first thing she did was take a long, hot bath. Despite doing so, she remained numb to the core. Then she made coffee and ate the large apple muffin with the crunchy crumb topping that she always avoided, which Muriel had made her promise to pick up on her way home.

  Now she sat out on the balcony with her unopened John Grisham book in her lap. She glanced down at Muriel’s list.

  Buy decadent muffin

  Go home

  Take hot bath, a long one, with bubbles (recommended: get undressed first)

  Muriel’s voice came through loud and clear.

  Make coffee

  Get that book you keep talking about not having time to read

  Go to balcony (clothing optional)

  Jo had pulled on shorts and her Vassar t-shirt which felt impossibly decadent for ten in the morning. Hearing Perrin in the back of her head, she had not put on a bra, which left her feeling unclothed despite being covered.

  Eat muffin and drink coffee (you got dressed, didn’t you? Knew you would.)

  Open book (you’re almost there)

  Read book

  Do not come back to the office today (Would tell you not to think about the office, but that would only make you think about the office, so I shouldn’t have written this sentence to begin with, but it’s too late and I’m not rewriting the list.)

  She’d signed it with her cell phone number, a clear invitation if she needed to talk. But Jo didn’t. She needed to think. But every time she tried, it all got snarled up in her head.

  Her phone rang. That would be Cassidy. By now Perrin would have woken up and called Cassidy to let her know that Jo was alive.

  She let it ring.

  She couldn’t seem to achieve Step 8. Open book. It was simply too much effort. Instead she sat and watched Seattle from on high. Very little street noise reached her twentieth floor condo. Big diesel trucks climbing the steep hills of downtown Seattle, the occasional siren, nothing else reached her from the ground. Instead, there was the distant roar of the jets climbing north out of SeaTac airport. Some headed to Ketchikan, and some just headed anywhere away.

  Jo knew the latter was a false sanctuary, but it attracted her nonetheless. Wing off to Europe or New Zealand. Change her name and become a beach babe in Costa Rica like they’d always joked about in college, to escape finals week. The three of them breaking hundreds of hearts in some tropical paradise. Probably be a lot less fun than it sounded.

  The main sound on her balcony was the gentle breeze brushing past her, kicked into merry swirls by the shape of the building. Below and before her, the city and the Sound glittered under the bright morning sunlight. It had been some time since she’d simply sat and enjoyed.

  She tried to think of the last time she’d totally stopped. And couldn’t. No run, no swim, no bike ride. No case law, no social outing, no Angelo.

  It tore away her breath to even think his name.

  She sounded so pitiful. In that moment, some part of her rose up and decided she was sick of whiny Jo Thompson.

  She was not some whiny female.

  She just wasn’t.

  Jo opened her book.

  The bookmark was caught by the breeze and threatened to flutter out to sea. By the time she trapped it in the corner of the balcony, she’d lost her place in the book. A sudden urge to throw the whole thing off the balcony ran through her until she had to clamp her hands hard and set the book down carefully on the small steel table beside her half-finished muffin.

  Action. She was an action person, and here she was taking none. That’s why she was feeling so overwhelmed. She’d take this day off and deal with everything: past, present, and future. And she’d been avoiding the easiest one.

  Do that one, then she’d get herself back on track without any problem.

  She went inside and picked up her cell phone. A voicemail and a text from Cassidy. She didn’t bother to listen to the voicemail. To Cassidy’s texted, “You okay?” she replied, “I’m fine now. Will call tonight. Tell Russell he’s still fine with me.”

  She dropped the phone before Cassidy could respond and pulled out the phone book from where it gathered dust in the bottom desk drawer. Somehow doing a simple Internet search was too personal, too close to actual contact. Somehow it felt as if it risked letting the person know you were looking them up, even if it didn’t really.

  Good old White Pages. “March, Eloise.” Just one. Redmond, Washington. She was here. Ten miles across the lake. Jo noted down the address and phone number. Now she just needed to decide whether to have some probate attorney contact her or do it herself. She could file initial probate with the Alaskan court and simply include the contact information, it wasn’t as if it was a complex estate with any decisions to be made. The court would send notice and, barring protest by either party, cut everything in half and issue a pair of checks.

  Jo pulled the Alaska documents out of her In Basket, they’d left the wooden crate at the Cape Fox Lodge along with most of the trash. Such a pitifully thin stack to define an entire life. She pulled out a couple of empty file folders and organized the information quickly. Closed accounts, open items, estate documents. No death certificate. She drafted a quick note requesting a copy of the death certificate and put it in an envelope to the Ketchikan Coroner’s office.

  For lack of anything better to do with the postcard, she dropped it in with the will and ignored the slight pinch of filing away the only contact she’d ever received from her mother.

  The only thing that didn’t fit in any file was the photo. She propped it in the middle of her desk. She wasn’t afraid of the past. Bring it on, she told the photo. Nor the future. Bring it on.

  Next she started drafting a nice, “Thank you but no thank you,” note for Renée. She rapidly filled a whole sheet on a yellow legal pad with phrases and crossouts, reasons and desires. She slashed a big “X” across the whole page, flipped that page over to the back, and glared at the blank sheet now in front of her.

  It was a relief as visceral as a cold shower when her phone rang with the tone she’d programmed for the main lobby.

  That wouldn’t be Cassidy, Perrin, or Angelo. She’d given the elevator code to each of them. She picked up her phone trying to remember if she’d made any recent online orders.

  Jo had barely pulled on decent clothes by the time the elevator whisked Maria Parrano into her apartment.

  “What a beautiful picture.”

  Of course, it was the first thing Angelo’s mother had gravitated to in the entire condo.

  “You look wonderful, Mrs. Parrano.”

  “Maria.”

  “You look wonderful, Maria.” And she did. The flowered summer dress and flat, strapped leather sandals made her look both comfortable and elegant. The yellow leather purse was bright and cheerful. She did nothing to hide her age, but it was hard to credit her with a thirty-year old son.

  “Is that you?” Maria had picked up the cheap frame as if it were something precious.

  “No, it’s my mother.”

  “I meant in her arms.”

  “Oh, yes. That’s me. Only child.”

  “She looks so sweet.”

  “Me?”

  “Your mother.”

  Jo finally caught up with the conversation. “I wouldn’t know. She left when I was two.”

  Mrs. Parrano, Maria, lay her fingertips over her lips for a long moment in apology. “I’m sorry. Do you know much about her?”

  As she told Maria what
little she knew, Jo poured them both a fresh cup of coffee and led them out onto the balcony where her novel remained unopened, her place still lost.

  “Redmond is close, isn’t it? Really? Have you called her?”

  “I don’t know if I’m going to.”

  Maria nodded. “It’s hard. When Angelo was in high school I received a note from a friend. My Angelo, his father, had contacted her to find out how I was and how the baby was doing. He didn’t even know baby’s sex or that I was gone to America. I decide that someone who care so little about me and about my beautiful boy that he waits fifteen years to ask the question, he does not matter. So I tell my friend to tell him nothing. If she ever hear from him again, she does not tell me. There are times I doubt myself, but it was good. It was right.”

  Jo wished she had that kind of strength, but she’d never had a parent to teach her. She’d learned to put up the façade, to pretend she had strength, so that no one could see through her. Well, none but Cassidy and Perrin.

  Yet somehow...

  Angelo didn’t see through the façade, but neither did he see the façade. He saw her as strong to begin with. As if it actually were a part of who she was.

  “I just found out that my mother, Eloise, stayed in constant touch with a mutual friend through all the years. I don’t know if Dan asked my father’s permission or not, but he liked her and answered her back.” Her mother had at least cared more than Angelo’s father. That wasn’t much in her favor, but it was something.

  “She sent me a card, which my father left on my old bedroom wall for me to find.” She’d decided that was how it must have been. Her father didn’t have any meanness in him. Useless, lazy, disconnected? Yes. Mean, no. She went and fetched the postcard from the file.

  Mrs. Parrano read it several times then brushed at the corners of her eyes.

  “I wish my Angelo had done so much. She made the choice yours. You could have asked this Dan or tear this up and throw it away. She leave it all up to you. That is a very hard and brave thing to do.” She handed back the card carefully. “I hope I have a chance to meet this woman some day.”