Page 134 of Ten Years and Then…
She could call the company travel agency, and ask them to book a ticket to Charlotte for the next available flight, throw together a bag, and then somehow figure out where in the city he lived, exactly. There wasn’t anything preventing her. She had plenty of available credit on her AmEx, she had a ton of vacation time and her boss probably wouldn’t even ask what the sudden rush was.
She could surprise him.
Just like she had ten years ago. She even had that dress somewhere in the back of the closet. She’d never thrown it away; how could she? And it probably even still sort-of fit.
There wasn’t a reason in the world not to do it.
There still wasn’t a reason when her neck cracked, and she yelped in pain and saw the disgusting little pool of drool on her keyboard and realized she’d been sitting here staring at a blank screen for going on two hours.
In the end, she didn’t even send the belated birthday card.
Daniel, March 16
Daniel sat at his desk, his eyes staring vacantly at his monitor but all his attention focused on a night exactly ten years ago. He’d been sitting in a swivel desk chair then, too, when she’d knocked on his door and walked into his dorm room. She’d been buttoned up in a coat, which had seemed weird, it was an abnormally warm spring that year.
And then she’d unbuttoned it, and he saw the dress. And his heart stopped.
But far more than the dress had been Nora’s smile. There’d been love in it, and joy, and a hundred other things. But also there’d been a promise—that by the time the night was done, by the time she’d finished with him, he wouldn’t be able to remember his own name…
“What the hell!” The words just came out; somebody had—what? They grabbed his chair, turned him around. And there was the man who’d done it. Mr. Dellaplane. His boss. “Sorry! Uh—I was just…”
He felt heat in his cheeks, and not just there. He knew he must be bright red. “It’s fine,” his boss said, with the tiniest hint of a smile.
No, it really wasn’t. “I was just …” He had no idea why he was explaining himself, when Mr. Dellaplane was going to let it pass. But he kept on talking anyway. “Just remembering. The best birthday gift I ever got.”
His boss clapped him on the shoulder. “And the girl who gave it to you.”
There was no point denying it. “Not that I’ll ever see her again,” he answered, proud that he kept most of the bitterness out of his voice at that thought.
“We’re all professionals here, Daniel—but we’re all people, too,” his boss said, meeting his eyes now. “So you’ve got the same problem everybody else does. You think you’re the only one who ever hurt the way you’re hurting.” Daniel started to protest, but his boss waved him off. “And you’re right. You are the only one who ever hurt exactly that way. But so is everybody else.”
And that’s when, for the first time in the ten months he’d reported to Mr. Dellaplane, he noticed the slightly discolored area at the base of the man’s left ring finger. Then he remembered something else; there were a dozen photos of a young boy and girl in his boss’ office, but not a single picture of a woman who could have been their mother.
His sudden revelation must have shown on his face, because Mr. Dellaplane shook his head. “I just wanted you to know you’re not alone, that’s all. And that I understand you had a—let’s just call it a moment. We all do. Why’d you think I missed the cookout Fred put on for the Super Bowl?”
Now Daniel laughed. “I just thought you hated the Broncos.”
“Well, of course I do, but—I was having a moment that afternoon, too.” He turned to leave Daniel’s office. “If you want to bag on the lunch, I’ll tell the team. I’ll make up some excuse.”
“No,” Daniel said, and he meant it. “I appreciate it, but I’ll pull myself together. Besides, if Brenda down in accounting doesn’t get her sweet chili shrimp, we’ll never hear the end of it. Just give me a couple of minutes, let me splash some cold water on my face, and I’ll meet everybody in the lobby.”
To his surprise, he managed to get through lunch, and even the rest of the workday without thinking about that night a decade ago. It wasn’t until he got home that the moment came back—Nora’s dress, Nora’s smile.
Nora’s everything.
Chapter 43
March, 1999—Charlotte, NC
Daniel, March 26, lunchtime
Daniel was alone in the office. The rest of the team was out at Bakersfield Café for the weekly group lunch—or was it Baker’s Square? Two years here, and he still got them confused. Whichever, they were probably just now arguing over the appetizer platter versus individual plates, because Jack had an allergy to pickles and even having three deep-fried dills on the other side of the platter was a threat to his life, and Kellyanne thought he was just being high maintenance.
This was quieter, and better, and maybe he could—finally!—figure out where the bad code that had been haunting his project was hiding. He’d already made decent progress in eliminating a dozen possibilities in the half hour they’d all been gone.
His cell buzzed. What was Bianca doing calling in the middle of a workday? It must be important—not that talking with Bianca was ever not important, even when neither of them had anything important to say. “Hey, Bee. How’s my favorite cousin?”
There was a moment of hesitation on the line, and what sounded like, but surely couldn’t be, a gasp of pain. “Not much, Danny,” she said, in nothing like her usual bright tone. “Just—can you do me a favor when you leave work? Can you run by the CVS and grab me—I don’t even know. What do you get for food poisoning?” As she said it, there was another gasp, maybe even more like a groan.
