| |
Naomi Fairchild liked her routines. Being the office secretary for a department of math nerds required having a firm routine or they would have driven her mad long ago. So she got to her office, made coffee, and sorted the mail into the professors’ boxes. She sighed. She was going to have to take Professor Cannon’s mail down to his office again — his box was overflowing. That man. She doubted he checked his box more than once a month, especially during the summer. He maintained that anything of significance would have been in his email.
He wasn’t wrong, she conceded. But still.
She sat down at her own desk and logged into her computer. It was very quiet on campus these days. Summer session was wrapping up and fall quarter wouldn’t start for three weeks. So, she had a whole list of tasks she wanted to get done when there would be few interruptions. Unfortunately, every department on campus had the same plan, and many of their plans added things to her to-do list.
It was the same every year, she reminded herself. Don’t be grumpy.
But she was grumpy. She tried not to lash out at anyone, but she knew it. She was relieved that her boarders had gone home for a visit before fall term. Even Tim went back to Jehovah’s Valley — for the first time since he’d learned the truth about Janet Andrews. And he’d taken Maiah with him.
Maiah had come to her for advice about it. She wanted to go, she said, but wasn’t sure it would be proper. If there was one thing Naomi was convinced of, it was that a visit to Jehovah’s Valley would be well chaperoned. She encouraged her to go. They should be back next Monday. Naomi really wanted to know how that was going.
She and Janet had lunch together once. They had a lot in common, really. She was pleased with that. She even thought that Tim was pleased about it.
Hard to tell with that boy.
She was glad things had finally settled down — she really was, she told herself firmly. She didn’t even have a stranger living in her basement any longer!
She was alone in that big house for the first time ever. Kate had been worried about it —especially after all the excitement. Naomi had assured her she would be just fine.
But privately, she wasn’t so sure. She was 56 years old and she had never been alone. She had never spent a night in a house by herself. She’d gone from her parent’s house to her home with Samuel. She’d never even lived in the dorm! And then of course, she’d had Kate to raise, and then the boarding house.
Turned out she was just fine by herself.
She plowed through her email. Dr. Cannon might be right that anything significant might be sent through email, but so was a lot of total garbage. She was ruthless about deleting without opening.
She wished she could be as ruthless about deleting all of the stuff that other departments were just sure everyone on campus wanted to know. But it was harder to tell what was fluff and what was serious there. So she reluctantly opened all the .edu emails.
She paused at 10 a.m. and checked the Seattle Examiner’s website to see if Mac’s latest story was up. It was. She poured herself a cup of coffee and read it. She’d been told he was only planning a five-part series, but it had grown as more people came forward with their stories about the police in north Seattle.
And of course, she’d been in one of the stories about the bottle-rockets aimed at the roof. She’d left out all the information about Maiah, and drug runners, and Myint. Just some idiot in Greek Row. Mac had been careful with that story, she’d seen. It was interesting to be a part of a story and then read the newspaper version. It wasn’t wrong, but... maybe incomplete was the right word, she decided. She suspected that was true of all the news stories.
So there was another story today. She read it carefully. Mac really felt like one of her kids — one of her alums, she guessed. How odd things turned out sometimes.
She went back to her email. Really? Facilities was finally going to paint her office, next week? That was great and all, but how was she supposed to get anything done! She shook her head and replied with her thanks — one did not alienate Facilities! — and then sent out an email to the department chair and all of the faculty.
She paused at one email from an unknown account. Puzzled, she opened it, and then sat back in surprise. It was from Rand.
She hadn’t heard from him since that night they’d talked about Samuel and Maiah. He just disappeared. It was Stan who told her, he’d taken two weeks leave — and was abroad.
Abroad. As in Thailand? Myanmar? She hadn’t asked. She already knew Stan Warren wouldn’t tell his own mother the time of day without a lot of forethought. But she worried. Rand had been in her prayers nightly.
And in her thoughts a great deal more often than that, she thought ruefully.
Naomi,
See attached.
I’m heading home. I hope you would be willing to have dinner with me this Friday? There’s a Thai restaurant near the university I think you would like.
Rand
Well, that didn’t tell her a dang thing! She opened the attachment. It was a photograph, taken with someone’s phone. That was Rand in the center. He was a fine-looking man, she admitted, looking back at the body of the email and his offer of dinner out.
Standing on either side of him were two men. All three were smiling at the camera. One of the men had his arm around a woman who looked a lot like Maiah — a Thai woman then. She suddenly realized who they must be. That woman had to be Maiah’s mother.
And the man she stood next to had to be Samuel. She glanced at the other man — a stranger. He must be ‘Ishmael,’ she decided. She looked back at Samuel. He was almost as much a stranger as Ishmael.
He was older, of course. She hadn’t seen him since they were 40. A lot of changes happened in those years, she thought ruefully with a glance at her own body. Samuel had gray hair! She laughed a bit at that. He was thin, both of the men were, testimony to how hard these last eight months had been for them. She studied him for a long time, then shook her head. She could have walked past him on the street and not even recognized him.
She glanced at the posture of Maiah’s mother and Samuel. You could tell a lot about people’s relationships by how they stood. Maiah’s parents loved each other, she decided. She smiled. That was good.
And what did she feel?
Not much, really. She felt no connection to him at all. It had been a shock to learn of his deceit, that was most certainly true! She still couldn’t believe what he had done. Such a big lie — with such far-reaching ramifications. One big lie — Samuel Fairchild is dead — and then like dominos, everything falls down from there.
What was the scripture? Something about houses built on sand? ‘A wise man builds his house on the rock, but a foolish man builds his house on sand.’ She had built her house on sinking sand and she’d never even known it. She still couldn’t believe Samuel had cheated on her, and then faked his death so that he could play spy games. She shook her head. She’d asked Agent Warren if she should do something about the insurance claim based on his death. He’d called her back and told her no. It was a company designed to handle such things for the government Samuel worked for. There were no problems for her.
There could have been, she thought grimly. How could he do such a thing?
She didn’t think she would ever understand that. But she found that it mattered less and less, once the shock wore off. Maiah was going to live with her — taking over Kate’s tower room. Naomi was introducing her as Kate’s half-sister. No one blinked. Everyone had complicated families these days.
Naomi took another look at the photograph and shook her head. She re-read Rand’s short email. Was he asking her out? She supposed he was.
Maybe she wasn’t too old for new things. She was living alone and enjoying it, wasn’t she? She’d hosted FBI agents, and drug dealers on the run, and one of Mac’s confidential sources just fine.
She had a new daughter to love.
She looked at the photo, but really it was Rand who drew her eye, not Samuel. She probably hadn’t thought of Samuel in more than a fleeting sense in years. There had been grief, of course. But it hadn’t lasted all that long. Really, they’d been apart more than they’d been together. She’d loved knowing she had someone to love and who loved her. She’d believed he did, but maybe that was a lie too. She didn’t know. And she found that it didn’t even really matter.
Go for it, she told herself. And with a deep breath for courage, she hit reply, and sent a single word.
Yes.