The telephone rang as soon as she and Paws entered the condo. She walked into the kitchen and looked at the caller ID, hoping for the first time since they met all those years ago that it was not Gerald calling. She was in luck, but not by much. It was the office. She had completely forgotten to call in and let them know that she was taking another day off. She picked up, expecting to hear Jenna’s voice.
“Lenora?”
Uh-oh, Lenora thought. It wasn’t the receptionist. It was the boss.
“Hi, Dawna,” she said. “I was about to call Jenna.”
“To tell her that you’re on your way to work, I hope,” Dawna said. “You’re already late. It’s almost ten o’clock.”
“Actually, no. I’m not feeling that well.”
“Yesterday, Jenna said you were going to be out all day taking care of personal business. Now you’re saying you’re sick. Which is it, Lenora?”
Boy, what a bitch, Lenora thought, rolling her eyes to the ceiling. “Both, actually,” she responded. “Some personal stuff came up that made me ill.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Dawna asked.
Lenora grimaced. Talking to Dawna was always such a chore, and wanting to hold back information didn’t help the situation. But she was determined to keep her secret a secret, at least for now. “I can’t explain today, but I will soon and you will definitely understand.”
Dawna smacked her lips loudly. “The only thing I will understand is you getting your ass back into this office today,” Dawna said. “There’s work to be done. The photos of Ray and his crew are back from the editing department, and I want to go over them with you. I have questions about some of the selections, and I need a second opinion.”
“I’m afraid I’m not up to it today, Dawna. Can Patrick do it?”
“No, he can’t. He doesn’t have your eye for this kind of detail. You know, I’m really getting annoyed with you, Lenora. Are you sure you want to keep your job? Because I’m beginning to wonder.”
Look, lady, I’m sick! That was what Lenora wanted to shout. But she didn’t. “Of course I do.”
“Then I suggest you get in here within the hour unless you’re so sick you need to be in a hospital bed.” With that, Dawna slammed the receiver down.
Lenora jerked the receiver away from her ear. How did someone become so evil, so vile? she wondered. It was as if the woman had been placed on the planet to make Lenora’s life miserable.
She walked to the bed and picked up the bottle of medicine on the nightstand. After struggling frantically to twist the safety cap off, she put the bottle to her lips and chugged several tablespoons’ worth. Then she took a shower.
What she ought to do was go down to the lottery office, get her money, and quit once and for all. The hell with that woman. She didn’t need this aggravation. And she didn’t have to put up with it anymore.
But she wasn’t ready to do that yet. She was determined not to act in haste and make a bunch of changes in her life that she might regret later. She had to take this slow and steady to preserve her sanity. She just wished everyone else would go along with her program.
After a brief but tense meeting with Dawna, Lenora sat at her desk and gulped more medicine while she played her office phone messages. She was surprised to discover that one of them was from Ray. He called the day before to ask how the photographs turned out. She listened to his voice and found herself smiling for the first time in days. He sounded so young and upbeat.
Fortunately Dawna had just sent the photographs of Ray to her by e-mail so that Lenora could review them prior to a second meeting later that afternoon. She flipped through the images on her computer and especially liked the ones in which he stood near the weeping willow. He took such joy in his work and it showed.
She didn’t know what had come over her when she foolishly deleted all of his images from her computer last week. Or with that silliness at home in bed with the one print photo she kept. Call it temporary lust-insanity. Whatever it was, she was embarrassed now just thinking about it. Ray was charming and cute beyond words, but he was just another man, a very young one at that. There was no reason to act like a fool about him.
She decided to call him back before reviewing the photographs for her meeting with Dawna. Talking to Ray would be a welcome relief from all the crazy things going on in her life now. She searched through the business cards on her computer until she found his number and put in a call to him. The phone rang and rang, and she was about to hang up when she heard his voice.
“Hi, Ray. It’s Lenora.”
“Who?”
“Lenora Stone from the Baltimore Scene magazine. Remember? I’m returning your call.”
“Oh, hey,” he said. “I’m onsite and the phone almost slipped out of my hand. I didn’t hear you at first. I assume you got my message. How are you?”
What a question. Her whole world had been flipped inside out. But she didn’t need to tell him about that. “Oh, I’m hanging in there. How about you? How have you been?”
“Still working at the Moss Building, but it’s coming along nicely now. You wouldn’t recognize it.”
“Good to hear that. Although I’m not surprised it turned out well. You’re good at what you do.”
“Thanks,” he said. “So how did the photos turn out?”
“I just saw them. They look fantastic.”
“Really? Do you think you could send me a few if I give you my e-mail address? Having a feature with photos in the Baltimore Scene is kind of a big deal for me.”
Lenora smiled. She loved the sound of his voice. It was so pleasant. And so far removed from all the chaos in her life. Still, the smart thing to do would be to chat a bit, send him a couple of watermarked images that he couldn’t copy or use, and move on. She was oddly fascinated by Ray, so it was probably wise not to cultivate a relationship with him. After all, she had a long-term boyfriend. She and Gerald were going through a rough spot, but Lenora was confident that they would get through it just as they had all the others.
“I can e-mail them to you, but they’re going to have a watermark on them. Or I can print a few out and bring them to you if you’d like.” What was she thinking? She knew that she should not do this. Besides, she was a somewhat geeky, overweight photographer, and he likely had beautiful women falling at his feet. He didn’t have time to see her.
“That sounds good,” he said, and she smiled in giddy surprise. “How about Friday around noon?” he asked. “We’ll be wrapping up here, and my workload should be lighter by then. I can meet you at my office.”
“Sounds perfect,” she said. They hung up and Lenora stared into space. She could hardly believe what just happened. She walked into her office not thirty minutes ago and now she had a date to see Ray on Friday. Well, not a date in the usual sense. More like a meeting.
She would have loved to spend more time daydreaming about what had just transpired and what it all meant. But with the upcoming meeting with Dawna and other staff members, she didn’t have time. So she turned back to her computer and began reorganizing the photos of Ray for the magazine feature. She selected a few that she thought would be good for the cover and sent them to the shared photo printer down the hall. When she stood to retrieve the photos, she realized that her stomach was completely free of pain.
Chapter 19
Gerald called before she left her office for the meeting. He was happy to hear that she was feeling well enough to go into the office and asked when she planned to visit the lottery board. She assured him that she would go after her meeting. She halfway believed that when she said it, but as soon as they hung up she knew it wasn’t true. She would go when the time was right, not a minute sooner, and it didn’t feel right just yet.
When she reached her condo that evening, the spicy aroma of Gerald’s pasta sauce greeted her the moment she walked in the door. She was startled to find that he had already let himself in and started dinner. He used to cook for her often but hadn’t in many months.
>
“This is a nice surprise,” she said as she dropped her camera bag on the couch along with a bag of medicine from the drugstore.
“I already walked Paws,” he said. “So relax, unwind.”
“Really? And you’re cooking, too? Next you’ll tell me you scrubbed the bathroom down,” she teased as she bent over and petted Paws. She entered the kitchen, peeked over Gerald’s shoulder, and took a good whiff. “Smells yummy. But I’m afraid I can only have a taste. I’m on a low-fat diet starting today. No more excuses. I really have to lose some weight.”
“You might want to hold off and start that diet tomorrow,” he said. He scooped a bit of the sauce into a small spoon, blew on it to cool it, and fed it to her.
“Mmm. Delicious,” she said.
“It needs to simmer for another thirty minutes to bring out all the flavors. I figured you were up for a nice meal since you sounded pretty good when we talked earlier. How’s the stomach?”
“Much better,” she said. “I stopped and picked up some more medicine as a precaution. I think I’ll take some now. Be right back.”
She entered the bathroom with her stash of medicine and opened the bag. What she removed was a package of weight-loss pills, though, not medicine for her stomach. She didn’t want Gerald to know that she was using diet pills. He would probably feel they were unsafe and lecture her about losing the weight the old-fashioned way, with less food intake and lots of exercise. She didn’t want to hear that. She needed to drop the weight fast—preferably by her meeting with Ray on Friday. Unfortunately, it would be impossible to shed more than a few pounds by then, but she had to at least start. Every ounce would help.
She scanned the directions on the bottle, took her first pill, then hid the package at the top of the medicine cabinet. When she walked back into the kitchen, Gerald was placing a single red rose in a glass bud vase on the kitchen table. She jerked back in amazement.
“Wow, that’s nice,” she said. “Who are you and what did you do with my boyfriend? Kidnap him?”
Gerald laughed. “I know this has been a tough time for you and I want you to take it easy. Hope this little bit helps.”
“It helps a lot.” She bent over to smell the rose then kissed him. “Thanks.”
“How’d it go today?” he asked, walking back to the stove to stir the sauce as she sat at the table.
“Good.” She knew what Gerald really wanted to know. “I didn’t go down there,” she said before he could ask. “Not yet.”
He turned and stared at her. “All right.” He was clearly surprised but trying to pretend otherwise. “What happened?” he asked.
“Nothing happened. I’m just not ready.”
“Well, when will you be, Lenora? I don’t mean to push. I really don’t. But I’m beginning to wonder if you’ll ever get down there to claim your winnings.”
“Don’t be silly,” she countered. “How could I let that much money go?”
“Do you even know how much you’ll actually collect?”
“Depends on how many winners there were. I’ll call tomorrow to find out.”
“I already did that today. It’s public information. There was only one winner. You.”
Lenora blinked with astonishment. It somehow made winning feel even more real to hear him say that she had won the entire prize. But she also found it disturbing that he took it upon himself to check on her winnings. “I can’t believe you called before I could get around to it.”
He chuckled with sarcasm. “I just told you that you were the only winner, and you’re complaining about me calling down there? You’re unbelievable.”
“I could say the same thing about you. I can’t believe you did that.” She had a mind to tell him to back the hell off and let her handle this at her own pace. But she didn’t want to turn him off completely. “Never mind,” she said, flicking her wrist. “It’s done now.”
He sat down across from her. “Look, I’m trying my best to understand what’s going on with you. But I honestly don’t get it. You won the lottery, but you act like something bad happened to you.”
“I admit that I’m not myself. I’m not. But have you thought about what I might be going through emotionally? This is a lot of money. What if I slip up and do something stupid? I used to wonder why people sometimes took weeks and even months to claim their winnings. Now I understand it in a way that only someone who has actually won this kind of money can probably understand. They were waiting to get their heads together.”
“Maybe you’re right, and I’m just on the outside looking in at this point. Someone who can’t possibly understand what you’re dealing with.” He raised both hands, palms out. “If you want me to back off entirely, that’s what I’ll do.”
This was exactly what Lenora was afraid of. That he would get defensive and turn a cold shoulder. Why did this have to be so difficult with him? “That’s not what I want, Gerald. I want you to support me without pushing. I want you to be there for me.”
He nodded slowly.
“I’m not asking you to back off altogether,” she continued. “At times I probably need some prodding, but you don’t have to be so relentless. Sometimes I feel like I’m going nuts and I don’t need you to pile it on. Try to have faith that I’ll see this thing through eventually.”
He reached across the table, gently took her hands, and looked into her eyes. “Okay, I’m not sure I understand your thinking, but I’ll try my damnedest to be better about this with you.”
“Thanks. I appreciate that.” This was one of those times when she and Gerald were so far apart they could be night and day. But at least he was trying. He was here fixing dinner for her and attempting in his own way to work with her. How many women could say that about their men?
It was enough to make her feel guilty about meeting Ray on Friday. But not so guilty that she was going to cancel. Besides, she and Ray were meeting just to look at photographs. No harm in that.
Chapter 20
As Lenora pulled into the lot in front of Ray’s office building near Little Patuxent Parkway in Columbia, Maryland, on Friday afternoon, she reached a decision that she had fretted over for days. She would not tell Ray about the money. Yes, it was now a huge part of her life, but it also complicated things. The few people who knew about her lottery winnings—Gerald, Alise, and Monica—all acted different around her now.
Monica was calling way more than usual, sometimes several times a day, to the point of really getting on Lenora’s nerves. Especially since all she talked about was how the money would help them get into The Girlfriends.
“Girl, we are so in as soon as you let them know about all the money you won,” Monica had said when she called early that morning as Lenora was about to walk out the door for work. This was after they had talked until midnight the day before during a break in Monica’s night shift at the hospital.
“When do you plan to start telling more people?” Monica asked that morning. “ ’Cause whenever I talk to people we both know, I have to watch what I say about you.”
“When I’m good and ready,” Lenora said firmly. She was standing at the phone on the kitchen wall, camera bag dangling from one shoulder, car keys in hand, ready to leave.
“Well, how soon do you think that’ll be?” Monica asked. “I’m not trying to push you or anything, you know. Just asking.”
“It sure feels like you’re pushing,” Lenora said. “When I am ready, you’ll be one of the first to know.”
“That’s what you said the other day.”
“And I’m going to say the same damn thing tomorrow and the next day when you ask me again.”
“Whoa,” Monica said. “You don’t have to get an attitude about it.”
“If I have an attitude it’s ’cause I’m tired of you asking me the same thing over and over. ‘When are you going to start telling people? When are you going down to the lottery office?’ Not to mention that it’s eight-thirty in the damn morning and I have to get to work. Don’t you ha
ve surgical patients waiting for you to start an IV or plump their pillows up or something?”
“Good-bye,” Monica said and hung up on her.
Alise was behaving in exactly the opposite way. She had stopped calling altogether after they had gotten into a tiff about Gerald when Alise insinuated that the money would change him.
So she wasn’t even going to mention the money to Ray. She didn’t want Ray and the easygoing relationship they were developing to change. She wanted to keep things nice and simple. She might not even see him again after today anyway.
Ray worked in one of the office parks scattered around Columbia, and Lenora found a parking space in front of the address to Ray’s unit, checked her lipstick in the rearview mirror, and hopped out. She wasn’t sure whether to knock or just enter but decided to try the knob. The door opened and she stepped into a large, neat one-room office with three desks lined up against one wall. On the opposite side were file cabinets, a long narrow table, and a few odd hard chairs. Yard tools hung from hooks along both walls.
A woman who appeared to be in her fifties sat at the desk nearest the door. She smiled and beckoned for Lenora to enter. At the far end, Lenora saw Ray seated with his work boots propped up on his desk and the phone to his ear. The middle desk was unoccupied at the moment, although someone obviously worked there, given all the papers, folders, and pencils on top of it.
“Hi,” Lenora said to the woman. “I’m here to see Ray.”
The woman glanced back at Ray, and he smiled and gestured for Lenora to come and sit in a chair in front of his desk. He covered the mouthpiece as Lenora approached. “I’ll just be a minute.”
The other woman gathered her shoulder bag and left, probably for lunch, Lenora thought as she sat and placed the folder holding the photographs on the edge of Ray’s desk. She leaned back and looked around. It seemed like a busy office, she thought as a telephone rang. Ray quickly said good-bye to the person he was talking to, pressed a button on his phone, and picked up on the line that was ringing. Lenora hoped he wouldn’t feel that she was intruding and regret agreeing to meet with her.
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