It’s my fault,” Carole wailed as George turned and shot her a helpless look.
“Could you hear enough to know what he said?” George asked.
“I heard it. If only I hadn’t insisted she stay with me today. If only I’d let you take her.”
“If they wanted her,” George softly declared, “they would have waited until tomorrow or the next day. It’s not your fault. Neither of us could have anticipated this.”
“But why us?”
Her question lingered in the air for thirty seconds. He didn’t want to admit what he sensed, but as she stared at him with that helpless, forlorn, and hurting expression, he had no choice. “This guy probably thinks that because we did those Packard ads we are celebrities. After all, we both signed a few autographs.”
“But that only paid two thousand dollars,” she argued. “That went to buy our house. Then all we got was a thousand a year to keep endorsing them. They are asking for more than that!”
“You and I know that,” George explained, “some of our friends do, too, but this guy probably doesn’t.”
He held out his arms to her, but like a wounded animal, she backed off, fear and mistrust in her eyes.
“The car? It’s that car I asked you to sell so long ago. The one you just had to have. That’s why Rose is gone?”
He shook his head. He didn’t blame her for lashing out. He deserved it. In fact, he wished she’d scream at him or maybe just beat him senseless. But there may be more, and she’d had to know it all.
“Carole,” George softly said, “there is something I don’t understand. He said something about us buying the flower shop.”
“So it might be my fault for buying the shop?” she asked, her face twisting, suggesting a pain too great to endure.
“Have you told anyone about the cash we found?” He softly asked as his eyes moved from the ransom note to her tear-stained face and back to the note.
“A few people,” she cried. “Was that wrong? Did I open the door for this?”
“I don’t think so,” he assured her. “I mean, I told a few folks at the office, too. It could have been me.” He sighed. “Maybe it was both of us combined. Maybe that made us appear rich.”
“George, how much do we have in the bank?”
“A couple hundred,” he moaned. “A lousy couple of hundred.”
“What are we going to do?” It was as if her own words knocked her against the wall. She leaned on it for a moment before adding, “What are we going to do?”
He shook his head. “Don’t have enough time to sell anything. We’re going to have to come up with another way to get the cash.”
Yanking his wallet from his pants, he emptied the contents onto the desk. He quickly leafed through a host of slips until he found a yellow piece of paper with a name and number scrawled on it. Grabbing the phone, he dialed the operator and asked for long distance. As he did, his wife fell to her knees and began to pray.