Honor caught up with Josh and Cody at the Belleview Biltmore playground. While Cody played in the sandbox, Honor brought Josh up to speed regarding the day’s events, and then recounted her experiences with the spirits from the night before. Josh listened closely until she was finished.
“Maybe Margaret is trying to teach you the same thing she taught Darcy.”
“What’s that?”
“Whenever a man tries to dominate a woman, she can always count on the combination of her wits and her girlfriends to outmaneuver him.”
“If only I were a smarter woman with a lot more friends.”
Josh cupped her shoulders firmly with his large hands and gazed into her eyes. “Honor, I truly don’t understand how you can be so wickedly smart and not see it. And you make friends easily, so how many you have is entirely up to you.”
Honor blushed. “You always manage to make me feel better. I sure wish you were going to Chicago with me!”
Josh pointed to her cell phone. “I’m right there on speed dial, whenever you need me.” At that exact moment, her phone rang.
Giggling, Honor answered and got her flight information from Julie, just as Cody ran back to the porch.
“We’re going to Chicago?” Cody bubbled enthusiastically.
“Not us. Just Honor,” Josh corrected.
Out came Cody’s bottom lip.
“Don’t worry, Cody. I’ll only be gone for a few days. And I’m leaving a special camera and my laptop behind so we’ll be able to talk and see each other on our computers.”
His lip retracted as quickly as it had appeared, his blue eyes beginning to sparkle with excitement. “I want to talk on the computer! Can you go to Chicago right now?”
Honor and Josh laughed at the rapid mood swing.
“Sorry, I’m not leaving until Sunday. But before I go, could you do me a favor and sit next to your Daddy, so I can take a few pictures to keep me company on my trip?”
Honor snapped pictures until Cody put a stop to it, complaining, “My face hurts from smiling too much.”
She laughed, shaking her head. Then, as she knew it would, the weekend melted away.
***
On Sunday, Josh wanted to accompany Honor to the airport, but at her insistence, they said their goodbyes in the hotel lobby. She wanted to return her rental car and besides, she needed the quiet drive time to make a mental list of what she needed to accomplish in Chicago.
It was a good plan, but her mind wouldn’t cooperate. No matter how hard she tried to focus, Josh and the spirits filled her thoughts all the way to Tampa International.
Check-in was a breeze without luggage, so Honor stopped at one of the terminal shops to purchase a notebook, still hoping to formulate her list. But when inspiration finally struck, it was not a list that materialized, but a journal.
She wrote: Before I looked at them closely, I thought they were alive, sitting at the parlor table, chatting. Then I noticed they were strangely attired. Not Halloween night strange; just out of date. And then it slowly sank in. They weren’t exactly what you would call “solid”...
Honor spent the entire flight recording every detail of the past weeks in her new journal. Before she knew it, the plane touched down in Chicago. It was cold and breezy, as if the town was trying to live up to its nickname, The Windy City. She hailed a cab and settled back in the seat, trying to stay warm and already wishing she was back in Florida.
When she walked through the door of her condo, she expected to be comforted by the familiar surroundings, but instead, she felt lonely. After only a few minutes, she telephoned Josh. “I just wanted to let you know I arrived safely and I miss you already!”
“Then you should catch the next flight back.”
“Yeah, right.”
“I’m only half-kidding,” Josh insisted.
“I wish I could. I can hardly wait to see your face tonight, even if it’s only on my computer screen. I’ll call at eight o’clock, so I can say goodnight to Cody.”
After they hung up, Honor was restless. She walked from room to room, objectively appraising the spacious condo, trying to decide where she could put her mother’s grandfather clock. The earth-tone rooms were tastefully furnished, but other than a few pictures of ancestors that had been chosen more for the decorative value of their frames than for their familial connection, the condo décor was rather impersonal.
“What this place needs is a refrigerator art gallery,” she mused. She pulled her camera from her purse and wistfully clicked through the pictures. “I really miss you guys,” she whispered.
Her stomach grumbled, reminding her she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Still talking to Josh and Cody’s images, she confessed, “You know what else I miss? Chicago style pizza—and that’s an itch I can scratch right now! Then afterwards, I can run by the office to have a look around.”
Satisfied with her plan, she grabbed her keys and headed out into the cold evening. She enjoyed sliding behind the wheel of her faithful old BMW and hearing the purr of its engine, but after driving only a few blocks, she was already complaining. “I haven’t missed this city traffic one little bit!”
She counted herself lucky to find a parking spot only a half block down from Giordano’s Pizza. Outside the restaurant, a street vendor was selling toys. She paused to search his table for something Spiderman-related and was pleased to find a large package of stickers. There were several images of Spiderman in various poses, as well as some webs and several of the superhero’s archenemies. Honor grinned, realizing she could name several of the villains and wondered if Cody would be impressed. She paid for the stickers and then followed the heavenly scent of hot pizza inside.
After gorging herself on a delicious stuffed slice, Honor checked her watch and realized with a start that she had forgotten about the time difference. She only had one hour before she was supposed to call Josh and Cody. She turned up her collar against the chill of the wind, and walked another block down the street to her office. Soft Fix was deserted this time of night, so she had to punch in a security code to open the door. The sense of unfamiliarity was even stronger here than it had been at her condo. She headed down the hall to her office, turning on a few lights along the way.
When she flipped on the light in her office, Honor groaned at the mountain of paperwork that covered every inch of her desk and conference table. Honor knew her assistant liked to use her office furniture as extra work surfaces whenever she was away on business, but Julie usually made sure everything was cleared off before Honor returned.
“Well, Julie,” she mumbled, “It’s pretty obvious you thought you had until tomorrow to hide your mess.”
The words sparked an idea. “Wait a minute. No one expects me to be here tonight. I wonder if anyone else planned to clean up in the morning.”
She glanced around, wondering what she should be looking for and wished she had been more attentive during their weekly business meetings. She had never even tried to learn the coded language of the financial spreadsheets and reports. In fact, unless the topic of a meeting directly involved her area of expertise, she usually spent her time answering e-mail on her Blackberry.
Now disgusted with her own ignorance, Honor remembered William always handed out weekly financial reports during the meeting—never before. And he always insisted that everyone drop them into the recycle bin on their way out of the conference room when the meeting was over. She had admired that habit. It promoted recycling while at the same time, discouraging employees from becoming office pack rats. Now enlightened that William may have had more sinister motives, Honor rethought his methodology and realized it was a brilliant way to keep anyone from scrutinizing the details of his reports.
Angry about the potential deception, Honor went to the main conference room, pulled the lid from the paper recycling bin and looked inside. She was thrilled to find it hadn’t been emptied for several days. She didn’t know if any of the discarded reports contained valuable information, but decided to utilize the more-is-better approach to collecting evidence and sort it out later. She riffled through the contents, collecting samples of several different types of reports. She noticed some reports had been issued to specific people and had notes written in the margins. She took all the reports for comparison.
Honor made it back to her own office just in time to plug in a spare camera from her desk drawer and place the call to Josh and Cody, using Julie’s desktop computer. Predictably, Cody led the conversation, showing Honor a few pictures he had drawn and telling her everything that had happened in her absence.
“Daddy put his shoes on the bed, so I told him he better take them off or I was going tell on him,” he announced.
Honor could hear Josh in the background. “Sure… rat me out. I’m only your flesh and blood.”
Cody protested, “I didn’t tell on you, Daddy. I just told her that I was going to tell on you if you didn’t take your shoes off the bed.”
Honor laughed at the little boy’s logic.
She remembered the Spiderman stickers and held them up in front of the camera for Cody to examine. She named some of Spiderman’s enemies, intentionally getting a few of them wrong, so Cody could correct her. He did so, patiently reminding her which movie every nemesis had been in and what villainous super powers each possessed.
Josh finally intervened. “Okay, that’s enough Spiderman trivia for now. It’s time for you to say goodnight to Honor.”
The little boy’s face grew serious. “Honor, you can use some of those spider web stickers over your bed until you come back home.”
Honor thanked him, touched by his generosity almost as much as the fact that he called their hotel suite home.
Josh moved Cody aside and came into view, “Where are you? That isn’t your condo, is it?”
“I got restless and decided to come to the office for a while.”
Josh’s eyes darkened with concern. “I don’t want to sound overprotective, but are you sure you should be alone in downtown Chicago this late at night? I sure would feel better if I knew you were safely locked inside your condo.”
Honor smiled reassuringly. “Don’t worry. It’s a good neighborhood. I work late pretty often and I’ve never had any trouble.”
Josh looked unconvinced.
“I’m not going to stay too much longer. Would you feel better if I called your cell when I get home?”
“Much better.”
They touched hands on the computer screen and ended the call. When the screen went dark, Honor stared at it for a long moment, thinking ahead and wondering how she was going to make it through the long winter months without Josh and Cody.