Thomas took a swig of water and continued, “Of course, while there was a happy ending, that didn’t mean that I sailed through this incident unscathed. You don’t know what anguish is until you hurt someone close to you. Emily and Walter, these two-wonderful people who had given me everything, were suffering because of my reckless actions. It tore at me like a knife gutting my insides. I couldn’t look at them without feeling pangs of guilt.
“Once again, they came to my rescue. Both saw how repentant I was, and they were determined not to allow any negative energy into their household. To their credit, they let me tell them my side of the story and were sympathetic with my need for peer recognition.
“We talked for several hours and decided that I should get involved with after hour activities at the school, in particular, trying out for the school’s softball program.
“Much too every one’s surprise, I was a natural. My teammates readily accepted me. Many of them are still friends to this day and I’m happy to say that I never brought any shame to my parents since that time.”
Louise reached out for Thomas and gave him a big hug. “That’s a heartwarming story. No wonder you love Walter and Emily as if you were their flesh and blood.”
“You’re right about that. Sometimes I daydream that they really are my birth parents and that somehow my life has just been some kind of a social experiment to see how I’d turn out under foster care upbringing. I know that that’s silly, but that’s how I feel.”
“It’s not so silly, given what you just told me. It looks as if you have a void in your heart that won’t be filled until you know the whole story of who your real parents are. We talked earlier about doing a search. If you are still interested, we could start when we get back home. There’s a lot going on with the foster care/adoption process. I read something in the paper the other day that the State of Ohio has extended the Foster Care eligibility to the age of twenty-one. I know it’s none of my business, but I want you to be at peace with your heritage.”
“You may be right, as long as Walter and Emily don’t know about it. Sometimes children searching for their real parents is upsetting to adoptive or foster parents. I think they would be happy for me, but I don’t want to take any chances. Let’s talk about it on the way home. Right now, we have a dance to go to.”
“You’re right. I get first dibs on the bathroom.”
After Louise left the bedroom, Thomas opened his suitcase and removed a package. He quickly opened it and removed a ring box. He opened the box and looked at the one and a quarter carat, princess cut, diamond engagement ring. He placed it in the left inner pocket of his jacket. I sure hope the answer will be yes.
CHAPTER 14
“Tolliver.” Miriam was momentarily taken aback by his brusqueness; usually his soft speaking secretary answered the phone when she called. “Mike, its Miriam”
“Oh hi, Miriam. Are you staying out of trouble as you agreed you would?’”
“Yes, I am, but I’ve got the greatest news. I found Thomas. He is the one you located. He was at a softball game. I met someone from town who knew who he was, and it definitely is him. He’s got a girlfriend and he’s very popular here in Owensburg.”
“Whoa, slow down. I’m not surprised that you found him. Everything pointed to him being your son, but I still have to check out a few more details. Your making a positive identification is an important step. Now remember, you and I need to sit down and go over everything before any one-onone contact is made. You have to trust my experience with these matters. There are as many wrong ways as right ways to proceed when it comes to reuniting lost persons. You’ve come too far to make any last-minute mistakes.”
“What could possibly go wrong, Mike?”
“Miriam you have to remember that you are looking at things only from your own perspective. You don’t have any idea how Thomas will react to knowing that you’re his birth mother. If you approach him the wrong way, you could lose him forever. We’ve been over this many times. Keep your distance until we’ve had a chance to consider everything.”
“I hear what you’re saying Mike, but you can’t possibly know how hard it is. After all this time, to finally meet my Thomas. I get goose bumps just thinking about it.”
“I think that I have a pretty good idea what you’re going through. Now, tell me, what happened today.”
“First, I went to the parade hoping that I would spot him in the crowd, but there were so many people and so much going on with the parade and all, that I must have missed him. You know that he played softball at OH, so I thought that there was a good chance that he would show for a softball game that was scheduled for the afternoon. I watched him coach one of the teams and I saw him hugging one of the cheerleaders. I took lots of pictures and then I followed them for awhile until they drove away together. Don’t worry, I kept a respectable distance away so that he wouldn’t see me. “I’ll send you the pictures I took.”
“That’s really great, Miriam. I’m glad my investigation found the right man. What are your plans now?”
“Well, there’s a big dance and show tonight. It’s a big part of the Anniversary festivities so I’d be very surprised if they didn’t attend. They’re young and in love, take my word for it, they’ll be there. That’ll give me another opportunity to see them together. There’s some kind of a light show planned, so taking a lot of pictures won’t look out of the ordinary. I can’t tell you how excited I am right now. I’ll never be able to thank you enough for the work you’ve done in locating him for me.”
“I’m just glad that we are this far along. You go to your dance, but promise me again, that you will not make any personal contact with him. Since he’s with someone, who he may be important in his life, any personal contact could create a serious problem; he might react differently on her behalf. When you eventually do make contact with Thomas it’s best that it be done privately and under controlled conditions.”
“I promise you, Mike. I trust your judgment. We’ve come so far, I surely don’t want to do anything to mess it up.”
“Great. Then we’re on the same wavelength. We’re so very close now, Miriam. Thanks for doing things my way. Keep one thing in mind, Thomas is not a lost child, he’s a grown man and that makes a big difference in how we eventually make contact with him. Now go and have a good time tonight and we’ll talk in the morning. By then I should have my i’s dotted and my t’s crossed. I’ll have enough background information know for us to be able sit down and make plans for you and Thomas to meet.
Oh, and thanks for sending the pictures.”
“Your welcome, Mike, have a good night.”
“You too, Miriam.”
She took a few minutes to send Mike the promised pictures. As she did, a strange feeling came over her. She had met with Mike several times and had talked to him at least a dozen times, but for some reason, today his voice caused a peculiar sensation that she could not make any sense of. Suddenly a number of random thoughts made their way through her thoughts. Am I making more of this relationship than I should be? Hell, he does this for dozens of other women. Sure, I owe him a lot for finding Thomas, but that was his job. Is this some kind of transference thing? Shit, I’ve got to clear my head. Right now, I’ve got to keep my mind on one thing and one thing only and that is to see Thomas again.
She called room service to order a club sandwich and coffee and set about getting her dress and shoes ready. The weather report for the night was for clear skies and temperatures in the 70’s. The long sleeve night dress she brought for the dance was the perfect garment. It was warm enough when it was cool and cool enough when it was warm. The dress’s heather gray color suited her complexion, as did the lipstick and nail polish she brought with her.
Miriam was very practical when it came to acquiring her wardrobe, refusing to be a slave to designer labels. Nothing disturbed her more than to see a group of people, each brandishing a designer’s outfit that demonstrated their ne
ed to belong, rather than clothes that showed the wearer to be an independent thinker.
There would be some chairs and tables at the dance, but she expected that they would be reserved for the town’s VIPs, so she based her choice of shoes solely on the expectation of being on her feet for several hours. She considered herself to be in good shape, jogging five miles at least three times a week so standing on her feet for several hours shouldn’t be a problem. Miriam had packed several pairs of shoes, not knowing what to expect during her trip. She decided on a dark gray dressy platform pump, that experience told her, would serve her well for the night.
She inserted new batteries into the camera and put it into the shoulder bag she would be taking.
When her dinner arrived, she ate slowly and watched the five o’clock news on a local channel. When she was finished eating, she put in a call to her husband.
“Hi, sweetie, I’m so glad I caught you in. I wasn’t sure about the time difference.”
“I’m so happy to hear your voice. For the last four hours, I’ve been negotiating through an interpreter. You can’t imagine how difficult it is to carry on a conversation that long, under conditions like that. I’m totally drained.”
“My poor baby. Are you through for the day?”
“It looks like it. I’ve going to use the rest of the day to get ready for a meeting in Brussels. tomorrow. I’ll say one thing for the European Union, it’s really easy now to travel between counties. I used to have to spend hours dealing with visas and money exchanges. Now, enough about me. Tell me how you’re enjoying your trip down memory lane.”
“It’s really great. Owensburg is still the quaint town it has always been. They had a really great parade this morning and then I spent some time at the park with the games and stuff. Tonight I’ll be attending the big dance and fireworks show. They brought in something called “The Beast”. It’s some kind of a pyrotechnical behemoth. I can hardly wait to see it.”
“That sounds like fun. It’s a shame I can’t be there to share it with you. Well, you have a good time and don’t let any gigolos try to pick you up. You’re a beautiful woman and some guys frequent dances just to prey on women. I hate to admit it, but in my younger days, I did a little bit of preying myself, but never mind that, just be careful.”
“Don’t worry about me, sweetie. I know how to take care of myself.”
“I know you do, but be on-guard anyway.”
“Well, I’ll let you go. You must have things to do.”
“I’m sure you do, too. It was so good hearing your voice. Have a good time tonight and I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Good night, my precious one.”
“Good night, sweetie.”
As she returned the receiver to its cradle, Miriam felt guilty. She hated to have to hide the real reason for her trip back to her home town; hated to keep such intimate details about her life from the man she married and shared vows with. He had every right to know, especially now that she intended to make contact with Thomas. I’ll tell him when the time is right, but I’m just not ready. I’m sure that he’ll understand. And then there’s those thoughts about Mike. God what a mess.
She had at least two more hours before she needed to leave. She turned the TV back on.
CHAPTER 15
Nathan Peter Walton, CEO of Walton Enterprises was ten years older than his wife, Miriam. They met at a party for a mutual friend and they hit it off right away. They had a whirlwind courtship and married six months later.
Nathan built Walton Enterprises, a distribution consulting company, from scratch. Within five years the firm was on a list of the fastest growing consulting companies in the country. The last two years, however, several of his largest clients switched to full spectrum consulting companies. Walton Enterprises specialized in only one area of business and that was distribution. His trip to Europe was aimed at changing that by expanding his company’s disciplines. Establishing a network of foreign consultancies would allow him to offer world-wide distribution expertise to his client base. He would provide a wide spectrum of services through partnerships and thus avoid the headaches and risks of building these networks himself. The survival of his company was riding on the success of this trip. Germany was all but
assured, thanks to today’s meeting. Belgium was next on the list.
Nathan was divorced and childless when he met Miriam. Early on in the marriage, they had a conversation about having children and they both decided that his business travel their life style didn’t leave any room for raising a family.
He never told anyone about the child he fathered in his late teens. The girl he impregnated was a sister of his best friend and the daughter of his father’s business partner. The birth was hushed up and the child, a boy, through legal maneuvers and sealed documentation, became part of the girl’s family as a child of her aunt.
Nathan and the girl went their own way as if the pregnancy and birth never happened. He swore an oath to himself that he would never tell anyone about the child. Two years later the girl died from a drug overdose and the secret of his son’s heritage died with her.
So, it seems that both Nathan and Miriam are harboring a secret about an abandoned child.
What bearing will that have on this story?
CHAPTER 16
Aldo Vincent DeLuca the flamboyant leader of Vinny and the Cruisers walked the periphery of the sound stage to bsorb the energy of “The Beast”. He frequently used lasers and fireworks with his shows and was familiar with the percussive interference that they could have on the flow of music. Positioning the band on the stage, then, became of paramount importance. He would not allow the Beast’s engineers to put their show’s reputation ahead of the professional performance of his band members.
“Hello, I’m Pete Honeycutt. I’m the Operations Engineer for Mystic Times, the developers of “The Beast”. Honeycutt was six-five and heavily muscled; the type you would expect to be in charge of a project this large.
Vinny at five-eight looked up at the man. “I’m Vinny DeLuca. My band the Cruisers will be playing here tonight.”
“Yeah, I heard. That was a terrible thing that happened to the other band. We worked with them for a while yesterday. They seemed like good folks.”
“They’re personal friends. I really feel for
Bobby and his crew.”
“I was watching you walk around. You seem to be concerned about something.”
“Nothing in particular, I was just trying to get my bearings. I’ve had some experience with pyrotechnics. I was trying to figure out where the best spot would be to set up our instruments.”
“Well, maybe I can help. We spent several hours this morning testing acoustics from various locations on the stage. You’d be surprised how every stage is different. It doesn’t take much to throw the sound off. We marked a large oval area on the floor that should be large enough to accommodate your band. Anywhere within that area will have the lowest decibel reading from the pyrotechnics at the height of our display. I wish we could tie in better with your performance, but that just isn’t the way we work. Our commitment is to provide a show for the townspeople and that’s our priority. We went over everything with Bobby in a rehearsal, yesterday; he was set up right around the oval. We just don’t have the time to do it again with your band. I’ll make sure you get a schedule of when we will do our shoots. That’s the best I can do for you.”
“That’s good enough, Pete. Under the circumstances I guess we’ll both have to improvise.
I appreciate your candor. We’ll be here at around seven-fifteen to set up.”
“There’s one more thing I need to caution you about. We had to use four guy wires behind the superstructure because ‘The Beast’ didn’t fit well over the existing stage. Make sure that you and your band steer clear of them.”
“No problem, we’ll be entering through the VIP gate that’s being set up over there,” he said, pointing to a gate manned by a security guard.
“Super. See you at seven-fifteen, then.”
Vinny stayed behind on the stage, looking out at the workers checking the flooring and stands. A memory came into his mind of a time several years ago when he and his band were at the top of the band circuit. He commanded top dollar then and the respect of fans and fellow bandleaders alike. That was before the band got involved in drugs; grass, horse and any party drugs they could get their hands on. With the drugs came the young girls anxious to party and some damaging headlines; one including a photo of him smashing his Fender on the stage at the end of a particularly wild set. Soon gigs began being cancelled, multiple lawsuits were filed and eventually they landed up in rehab for four months; it was either that or six months in jail.
Sober and wiser, the band, with two new members, worked hard to get back in the good graces of the soft-rock crowd. Tonight was the crown jewel. If all went well, he knew that the past would be forgiven. There is a God after all.
CHAPTER 17
The inspectors were just finishing their check of the dance floor, VIP area and concession stands. The town ownd portable dance floor decks which they stored on the left side of the soundstage. The Dance Committee rented additional panels to finish off a 100’X100’dance floor. Everything snapped together including matching edging. It took the crew of four just under three hours to complete the job. As soon as the floor crew completed the “stage left” flooring, workers set up chairs and tables for the VIP section.
Beverage concessionaires had set up their stalls as each section of the dance floor was laid. Beer and wine were approved for sale and consumption at the event. Signs listed beer and wine at six dollars each and soda at two dollars and reminded patrons that a yellow wrist band was required to purchase alcoholic drinks.
Still more crewmembers had cordoned off the main dance enclosure, establishing entrances at several “gates” at the far-right end of the area. Tables were placed there with boxes of white and yellow ID bracelets; white for General Admission, non-drinkers, and yellow for drinker’s General Admissions. On the “stage right” side, adjacent to the stage, they erected a VIP/ Technician/ Performer/ Security gate where entry was by “VIP pass” only. Two propane powered, four passenger courtesy carts were parked by the VIP gate to provide transport across the Gap to the VIP tables at “stage left”. The Gap, created by the construction crews, was made up of a strip of the town’s original concrete dance floor between the stage and the beginning of the portable wooden dance floor.
Tenderly Beats the Lonely Heart Page 5