Page 44 of Ten Years and Then…
She’d surprised herself as well as him. Unlike Halloween, she’d stayed “in character” all the way through. And he’d let her, put himself completely in her hands, in a way he hadn’t done before.
As she watched him not quite snore, she thought back. Nobody had ever done that before with her, not in a bedroom—or any other context. Nobody had ever trusted their body, or their heart or their anything to her so completely, without even a word, just with the absolute belief that she would take care of them.
It hit her then. For all she’d done last night, for all that it was his birthday, the most important gift was the one he had given her, and he didn’t even know it. She only hoped she could hold on to it when she really needed it, some night that wasn’t as perfect as this.
Daniel, the next morning
Daniel awoke to the phone ringing. He had been dreaming—or maybe remembering.
When he opened his eyes and saw Nora lying next to him, a bright smile on her face, he knew it was no dream. “You’d better answer that. Whoever it is probably isn’t expecting me to pick up.”
She was right; his father’s voice greeted him on the line. “Hey, Daniel. Good morning.”
Why was Dad calling? He and Mom had called to wish him a happy birthday yesterday. Was something wrong? It couldn’t be. His voice didn’t sound upset or alarmed; he sounded excited, if anything.
“Hey, Dad. What’s up?” Nora was looking at him curiously. He had to turn away from her; there was no way he could look at her wrapped up in his sheets and talk to his father.
“I’ve got news for you, son. I wish I’d had it yesterday, it would have been a great birthday present for you. Remember how I told you there was a chance for a summer job with Bill Metzger’s brother?” Bill Metzger was his father’s boss. Dad had mentioned something about his boss’ brother at Thanksgiving, but Daniel hadn’t put any stock in it. People talked about possibilities and chances all the time, but they usually amounted to nothing.
“Yeah?”
His father was definitely excited, there was no mistaking it. This must be the one possibility in a thousand that had actually come through, but Daniel still had no idea what kind of possibility it was.
“Leo—that’s the brother—owns a textile company in Pittsburgh. Bill was telling me how he got suckered into buying all these new computers to modernize everything, he must have spent $50,000, and he has no idea what to do with all of it.” Professor Maddox had told a couple of cautionary tales along those lines in class. “So I guess Leo talked to a consultant, and they told him they’d sort it all out for him for $50 an hour, four months of work.”
“Dad, what did you tell your boss?”
His father chuckled. “I told Bill that my genius son could do a better job than those thieves in less time and half the cost, as soon as you finish the semester, and all his brother had to do was find someplace for you to stay over the summer.”
Daniel almost said, “You should have asked me first,” but thought better of it. This was such a huge show of faith from his father. “Wow, Dad.”
“Wow is right. Bill talked to his brother. Leo will pay you $25 an hour, off the books, all cash, the whole summer. And you can stay with his aunt. He says she’s kind of fussy, but supposedly she’s a good cook and there’s no rent. What do you think?”
$25 an hour, off the books. So no taxes. Forty hours a week, thirteen weeks of summer break, that was $13,000.
“I don’t even know—Dad, that’s amazing! Of course I’ll take it!” He had never set up a whole network of PC’s, let alone configured them to run a small factory. But he’d have two months to talk with Professor Maddox and his other teachers about it. He’d be ready for whatever Leo Metzger needed him to do by the middle of May. Of course he would.
And then he turned back to Nora, saw the curiosity on her face fading away, replaced by an expression he couldn’t read, and everything changed in an instant.
How could he go a whole summer—thirteen weeks!—without seeing her?
Nora, five minutes later
“You’re going where?” Nora had to hear it again. She must have been mistaken. He couldn’t have said what she thought she’d heard.
“Pittsburgh. Dad set it all up. I’m going to make $13,000 this summer! Do you know what I could do with that kind of money?” The room suddenly felt ten degrees colder, and she pulled the sheets—his sheets—more tightly around herself.
She had heard him correctly. He was going to abandon her for the summer. Just like her parents always did. And he was doing it the morning after she’d given him a night he would never forget.
She was shaking, and she felt her heart racing. How could this be happening? How had her boyfriend turned into a selfish, thoughtless jerk out of nowhere? How could he just make huge plans like that without even asking her?
“But I might be in New York this summer!” It took all her self control to stop there.
He didn’t know that. He couldn’t know that. He wasn’t a thoughtless jerk.
She hadn’t said a word to him about her summer plans. He didn’t know that one of Rachel’s neighbors was an actress on a soap opera. He definitely didn’t know that Rachel had been talking to the neighbor, and she’d promised to talk to a friend who worked at Soap Opera Digest to try and set up a summer internship there for Nora.
She hadn’t been hiding it from him. She was just waiting until it was a sure thing. She didn’t want to jinx anything by talking about it too soon, that was all.
