Though Eliza was going to be in on Labor Day to anchor the evening broadcast, she had told Paige she wanted her to take the holiday off. It would be a quiet day, Eliza assured her assistant, and Eliza herself planned to come in late.
“Really, Paige, there’s no need for you to come in. Nothing is going to happen on Monday that can’t wait to be dealt with until Tuesday. Go and have a good weekend.”
Paige was psyched to hit the end-of-season department-store sales and she was hoping to find some fall bargains at her favorite, T. J. Maxx. She needed some new clothes to wear to the office in this, her first autumn in the working world. She had her eye on a Calvin Klein knee-length camel pea coat and she had the feeling it could be marked down this weekend.
Eliza left after the broadcast Friday night and Paige planned to be minutes behind her. She straightened up her own desk and went into Eliza’s office to make sure all was in order there. Grabbing a coffee mug Eliza had left on her desk, Paige took it to the small kitchen next door off the hallway and washed it out in the sink. She opened up the tiny refrigerator and restocked it with the Diet Snapple iced tea that Eliza liked. Switching off the light, she went back to the office to gather up her things to leave.
Conscientiously Paige checked her voice mail once more before she left. There was one new message, left just minutes earlier, in the time she must have been in the kitchen.
She recognized the voice. It was the guy who had been calling every day for almost two weeks now, professing his admiration for Eliza, telling her how beautiful she was. Paige hadn’t been paying much attention to the calls. The man sounded harmless enough—sad, really. She had deleted the calls from the machine without a second thought.
But it was different this time. He had always called late at night. This was the earliest the man had ever phoned, as if he really thought he might reach Eliza. Up until now, the calls had merely expressed admiration for the anchor-woman. What the caller said this time was different, too.
“I love you, Eliza. And I can’t live without you.”