Chapter Six – Day Four

Sarah

“Mr. Beckett?”

He looks up at me from his desk when I peek my head in and knock lightly on the door, and holds his index finger up to signal to me.

“I want that date moved up to no later than May, Warner, or I'll have your head on a platter,” he says, before crashing the phone down to the cradle angrily. “So sorry, Miss Kennedy.”

“Don't even worry about it, sir,” I say. “Please, call me Sarah.”

“Well, now, we can't very well be on a first name basis if you insist on continuing to call me Mr. Beckett,” he says with a smile. “So, I guess it's Carl and Sarah from now on, or nothing.”

I smile. Mr. Beckett, my boss, is by all appearances a hardened man, especially in the office, the court room, or over the phone – but outside of law and inside of personal relations, he is a warm, kind man with a great smile.

“What can I do for you, Sarah?” he asks.

“Mr...Carl,” I correct myself. “I've finished filing and faxing everything that you asked me to. I wondered if there was anything else you needed me to do.”

“It's only three,” he says, taking off his glasses and setting them on his desk. “There was a ton of paperwork in there. You mean to tell me that you're already finished?”

“Yes, sir,” I say. “Oh, but I took about fifteen minutes after my break was over and I cleaned the coffee machine in the break room. The coffee was starting to taste a little funny, I hope you don't mind.”

“Mind?” he says. “Last time that machine got cleaned, I had to clean the damn thing myself. It's like none of the secretaries notice that the coffee tastes like mud.”

He's eyeing me suspiciously.

“Sarah, can I ask you a question?” he finally says.

“Yes, sir.”

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“I'm sorry, sir?” I ask, befuddled.

“Come inside, sit down, come on,” he says, motioning me over. I step inside the door cautiously, and he sits up from his seat and walks over to shut the door behind me.

I can't deny that I'm worried. I'm not a lawyer; I don't have a semblance of job security at this firm. Secretaries are a dime a dozen. Mr. Beckett is usually so organized that he wouldn't even need a secretary right away...but I need this job.

“Is there something wrong with what I'm doing around here, sir?” I ask as I sit down in front of his desk.

“Only one thing,” he says. He's come back to his desk and he sits down in his chair across from me. “There's something wrong with the fact that I can't figure out why you're wasting your entire life filing paperwork and cleaning coffee machines.”

“I don't understand.”

“You have so much potential,” he says. “Kid, you have smarts, sassiness, speed, and the drive to get it all done. Don't forget that you're the daughter of Sheldon Kennedy.”

I bite my lip.

“Sir, with all due respect,” I say, “I prefer to make my own way without my dad's influence.”

“Well, wouldn't we all,” he says. “But Sarah, your father is not a person who hears the word 'no'. You know that and I know that.”

Isn't that the truth, I think to myself.

“Your dad could get you any job you – or he – wanted,” he says. “I think I know you well enough to know that you would prove from there that you can make your own way. But here you are, stuck in a dead-end job that is not going to get you anywhere.”

“Sir, are you firing me?” I finally ask, my hands clasped tightly together.

“Not a chance,” he says with a smile. “This office hasn't run this smoothly for five years. I'd do anything to get you to stay.”

“But?”

“But I guess I'm just wondering why a girl with your skills, plus your family's influence, is spending her days behind a desk answering phones and fetching coffee for an old curmudgeon like myself.”

“Because I like to?” I say.

He raises his eyebrows at me.

“Alright, it's not because I like to,” I say with a sigh. “Mr. Beckett, my father and I had a falling out. That's why I prefer to make my own way – that's why I spend my days doing secretarial work. He doesn't want to help me, and I'm fine with it because I don't want to accept his help.”

“Is that why you've been so distracted today?”

I knit my eyebrows together. “I don't bring my personal problems to work, sir. If I've been distracted, I truly apol--”

“Maybe distracted was the wrong word,” he says as he holds a hand up to stop me. “Maybe unsettled is the right word.”

I purse my lips. I can't deny that I've been exactly that – unsettled.

I don't know what I was thinking Saturday night. Normally I'd blame it on the alcohol but I didn't even go to bed tipsy, much less drunk. I was just laying there in bed, and I couldn't sleep, and I started thinking. First I started thinking about leaving Blake in the office with a bloody nose. But then, the anger started sneaking its way in, and as I thought more and more about it, the loneliness started to creep in.

When the loneliness starts sneaking in, that's when the vulnerability sneaks in, and that's when I start thinking about him.

Not Blake...Lance.

I'm...I'm in love with him. And for some reason, I couldn't hold it in Saturday night, and I accidentally told him.

He just sat there and stared at me. He didn't even say anything. It was almost like he didn't hear me, and I thought for a while maybe he hadn't. But then he spoke.

Me?

I didn't know what to say to him, so I couldn't speak. I couldn't very well deny what I had just said, because it was clear he had heard me.

So I just didn't speak. Instead, I just got up and went to my room, completely silently, and locked the door.

I grew up to be a dignified young woman – but not an eloquent one.

When I hid in the room for the night, I was absolutely horrified. The whole situation was embarrassing – him catching me outside (in my nightgown of all things), the outrageous sobbing and carrying on, and last but not least, my big-ass mouth. I thought for sure he would follow me, and I would hear a knock on my door after a few minutes, and we would have to have the uncomfortable talk.

But he never came to my door. In fact, he must have done like I did, and gone straight to his room and locked the door – and all day Sunday, he never came out.

I knew something was different when I walked down the stairs that morning (hesitantly) and I didn't hear him cooking or smell the food. In the two total days we had lived here, he had cooked all three meals that we had eaten here. Now, the kitchen was empty.

I grabbed a bowl of cereal and sat downstairs, watching a little television, waiting for him to come down – even though part of me was dreading it, another part of me was curious to know what he was thinking. Anxious, even.

But he never came down. I went back to my room eventually, tired of waiting around, and if he ever came out of his room for lunch or a refreshment, we never crossed paths.

This morning, I managed to avoid him altogether – mainly because he left for work long before I did.

“Sarah?”

I look up at my boss, realizing I've been lost in thought for several minutes.

“I'm sorry,” I say, shaking off the spacey, dumbfounded look on my face. “What did you say, Mr. Beckett?”

“Sarah, I'm not asking this question as your boss,” he says. “I'm asking this question as a friend – or at the very least, because I care about you. Is everything okay?”

I sigh, but I nod my head and smile, even though deep in my heart...

No. Everything is not okay.

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Lance

I'm supposed to be listening. But who could listen in a consultation meeting when their entire world has been turned upside-down like mine has?

I've been going crazy since Saturday night, trying to decipher those two damn words of hers – it's you. Two of the shortest words in the English language, that almost always have a clear and definitive meaning, but when paired with Saturday night's circumstances, have had me bending over backwards trying to figure out what it all could mean.

She up and left right after she said it. I could tell she was upset. She was just as confused as I was, maybe even a little embarrassed. I sat downstairs for ten minutes, trying to decide whether I should go up and talk to her, but in the end I decided that it would probably only further embarrass and confuse her. So I went to my own room and went to bed – not that I could sleep that much.

I woke up later than planned on Sunday and immediately went into a frenzy trying to get my work done. I didn't even go downstairs to grab coffee until close to noon, and by the time I got there, it appeared as if she had retreated back to her room. I glanced to see a cereal bowl and spoon in the sink as well as a coffee mug, but those were the only traces that she had left her room since the night before.

I spent most of the day holed up in my room trying frantically to focus on and do my work. I went down a couple of times for snacks or to get a glass of water, but incredibly, Sarah and I didn't cross paths all day long.

When I left for work this morning, her room was silent. I couldn't even tell whether she was still sleeping or had left for her own job before I did.

“Lance!”

I jump when I'm startled out of my daze by my father's commanding voice, and I realize that I've been staring into space, ignoring the meeting, the clients...and my own dad.

“Sorry,” I say, trying to recover. “I must have...I don't know, dozed off, I guess.”

One look into my dad's and the clients' eyes and I can see that neither of them is impressed.

“Dozed off?” my dad whispers harshly in my direction.

“Well, I was up late looking over the case,” I say, thankful I have a way to save my sorry ass. “You see, I couldn't sleep, because I was so thrilled with the loophole I found.”

“Loophole?” one of the male clients, a partner in a restaurant business, asks.

“I'd be surprised if the judge doesn't throw the whole case out,” I say. “Ten, twenty-thousand in damages, max.”

My father looks to the client, then to me. “Alright Lance, we're listening.”

The meeting lasts another hour, most of which is spent by my father raving to the client about the brilliant loophole I've found that will save our client hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages in a personal injury lawsuit they've hired us for. By the time we shake our clients' hands and see them out the door, all four of us have a smile on our face and are happy with how the meeting went.

But after they leave, I can tell my father is still pissed.

“Alright, son,” he says with a sigh, picking up his files and folders from the table to put them in his briefcase. “What's going on? I know you weren't up late looking over the case. Any idiot straight out of law school could find that loophole in an hour. You – you could find it in fifteen minutes.”

“I'm sorry, dad,” I say. “I just...I had some things on my mind is all.”

“Well,” he says, his look disapproving. “You know, I'd like to rip you a new one. It was highly unprofessional of you to be in a daze like that in the middle of the meeting, no matter who the client is.”

“I know, dad.”

“But,” he continues, “I know you, and I know you don't space out unless it's something weighing heavily on your mind.”

I lift my eyebrows slightly and nod softly.

“Don't do it again.”

I smile at his tone.

“I won't, dad.”

“So, what is it?” he asks.

I sigh. “I don't know. You know how I told you I was living with Sarah for a while, until she gets back on her feet?”

He nods. I don't like lying to my father, but I don't dare tell him that I'm living with her to settle a cash bet with Katherine to pay off my tax debts. He would disapprove in so many ways, and I just don't feel like hearing the lecture.

“That girl you used to pal around with back in high school?” he asked.

“We hung out, but I don't know if I'd call it paling around,” I say. “Anyway, she did something weird Saturday night.”

“Son, welcome to women,” he said. “They're always doing something 'weird'.”

“No, dad,” I say, frustrated. “Come on.”

He chuckles. “Alright, alright.”

“She was fine all evening, but then I found her awake around midnight,” I say. “She was crying, just really upset. And I tried to ask her what was wrong, but she was really vague about it. But then she said she was just feeling empty, she was missing someone. I asked her who, and I expected her to say her ex-fiance, Blake. But then she said, 'It's you.'”

“You?” he asks.

“That's what I said.”

“Well, you two have been on the outs for several years, haven't you?” he asks as we've both gathered our things and started to leave the room. “Maybe that's what she means.”

“But I've been around,” I say. “She knew where I lived, she knows where I work, she saw me around town sometimes even. She chose not to talk to me.”

“Son, let me tell you something about women,” he says. “Sometimes they're feeling things they don't even know they're feeling. Sometimes, they're mad about things, and they don't even know what they're mad about.”

“Wow, dad,” I say with a smile as we stop at my office door. “That's incredibly chauvinistic.”

“Try to give a kid advice and he calls you a chauvinist,” he says. “All I'm saying is maybe she's been mad at you all this time, but maybe she's missed you too, and she didn't even know she missed you until now.”

“Yeah,” I respond, more confused than ever. “Maybe you're right.”

“Contracts,” he says, his tone becoming serious. “On my desk. By five. I mean it.”

“Five on the dot,” I say, resisting my inner five-year-old's urge to finish with 'yes, dad'.

Without another word, he walks away to go back to his own office. I glance at my watch and silently groan when I realize it's already ten to four, sling my case back over my shoulder and grab my doorknob.

I manage to drop my case on the floor next to the door before I look up and stop in my tracks. She's been sitting in the chair across from my desk, but she stands and turns toward me, re-shouldering her purse against her arm.

“Sarah?”

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Sarah

I knew he wouldn't be expecting me, but I didn't expect him to look so...deer-caught-in-headlights-ish.

“What are you doing here?” he asks me.

“I finished early at work, and Mr. Beckett told me to go home,” I say. “I knew you wouldn't be there, and I didn't really want to go home to a totally empty house, so...”

“I, uh...I didn't expect you,” he says, walking over to his desk.

“I know, I'm sorry, I should have called first.”

“No, it's okay,” he says. “Want a drink?”

“You mean, alcohol?” I ask. “It's not even four yet.”

“I'm a business lawyer,” he says. “If I didn't have alcohol in my office, I wouldn't be doing my job to my best ability.”

I smile, and he smiles back.

“Don't worry, it's mostly for show,” he says. “For show and to offer uncomfortable clients something to relax them. I have water, if you'd rather.”

“Yeah, a water's fine.”

I sit back down in the chair and release a heavy breath as he walks over to a portable bar, grabbing two bottles of water from a bottom shelf hidden from view. He walks over, hands one to me, then lifts himself to sit on the corner of his desk, close to me.

“So what's up?” he asks.

I twist open the white cap of the bottle and take a quick drink, because suddenly I'm parched. My mouth is especially dry, and it will be hard enough to say what I need to say without having a dry mouth.

“Lance, we need to talk,” I say after I've swallowed.

He's about to open his mouth to speak, but a knock comes on his door. Before he can shout a welcome, his secretary barges in.

“Mr. Bass, there's someone here to see you, and he's very insistent,” she says. “I don't think I can--”

Before she can finish her sentence, she's pushed out of the way, and he shoves his way into the doorway. I instinctively sit up from my chair and take a few steps backwards towards Lance, my breathing becoming heavy.

“Daddy?”