CHAPTER TWO
'Dear Lord,' Sarah thought as she watched the corners of her brother's mouth turn up. She knew what his next words would be, they were written across his face as plain as any billboard. Her mouth hung open as she waited.
Toby's smirk grew so it almost became painful. "Sarah, I've met someone."
Tinkling, her fork fell against her plate, freeing her hand to forceful hoist her glass from the table, so she could rapidly finish the several ounces of wine which remained. She knew it. 'Damn it,' she said to herself. Aloud she asked, "You've met someone and your natural reaction to that is to buy real estate?"
"Perhaps met someone is too casual a term. We've been dating for six months."
"Six months!" Looking at the wine glass in her hand, Sarah seemed appalled at its inability to refill itself and return promptly to her side. Now useless to her, she shoved the long stem goblet aside. "You've been dating someone for six months and I'm only finding out now." Her eyes spoke more than her words, crying out their disappointment in perfect unison.
Irritated himself now, Toby shoved his plate aside, "Well, had you bothered to take my calls or return my messages once or twice, I might have been able to let you in on what was happening in my life."
"That's not fair!"
"Oh it's fair sis, it's more than fair."
"It's fair of you to just go out and meet a woman who, who what, lures you into buying a place out in the suburbs, away from your family, where you two can shack up? Jesus Toby, this is just like you. You're so...so..." her anger kept her from thinking in a steady stream of assumptions. "What do you even know about this woman? Are you sure she's single? I mean maybe she just wanted this place because she was afraid one of her husband's colleagues would see the two of you in the city together."
From his lap, the handsome young man took his napkin, wiped his mouth before balling it in his hands, then throwing it to the table. "That's right, Sarah, you got me. I'm shacking up with someone else's wife and the reason I needed to talk to my sister, the attorney, so badly is because we need someone to handle the divorce who will keep the affair from coming out so that she doesn't lose her fortune to some irrational clause in her prenup." At that he stood and made a quick snatch at his jacket on his way to the door.
Sarah followed him, "Toby, you know I don't do family law, but I'm sure we can ask someone for a recommendation. Even if I could represent you," she explained to him when his sad eyes fell to her, "it would be a conflict of interest. The opposing counsel would object."
"Jesus Christ Sarah!"
"Well they would!"
"Is this what you think of me? Do you still think I'm that impetuous teenage boy who would crush on his best friend's girlfriend?" She stared at him, confused, waiting to hear more. "Sarah, Rowan is not married." If it were possible, she turned even more red. Toby found himself smiling the more her anger grew. "Well, she is engaged, but I don't think I have to worry about that much."
She sighed, "Is that supposed to make me feel better?"
"It ought to." He watched her eyes narrow. "You're looking at her fiancé."
For a few moments, there was heavy silence in the apartment. It seemed even the outside noise had gone mute. In her forehead, Sarah's blood pumped accentuating veins in her temples. "No."
"What?"
"No, no absolutely not. Toby you're twenty one years old, you are too young to get married." She could see it now, in five years, he'd be divorced, on her doorstep, asking if he can 'borrow' her guest room for a few months until he gets back on his feet.
"Illinois state law disagrees with you," he told her stubbornly.
"Well I bet her parents will agree with me. I'm sure they're rational people. What did you say her last name was?" Already she was at the phone, ready to call in a favor.
"I didn't." Her stern look told him he best just tell her what she wanted to know. "Farthingale, Sarah, but you're not going to have any luck."
"Farthingale isn't all that common of a name." As she continued to chastise him, her fingers dialed madly. "I don't think my friends in the records department will have a problem finding her parents for me."
"I can promise you there will be no number."
"We'll just see about that," she said while she listened to the ringing on the other end of the line.
Approaching her slowly, Toby pulled the phone from her ear and hung it up. "Sarah, her parents are dead," he told her somberly.
"So she needs someone to take care of her. Fine, move her in here for a month and then I'll decide if she's ready for marriage or not." Her brother laughed. "I'm serious Toby. You don't know how painful even the most agreeable divorce can be. Woman change a great deal in their late teens and early twenties, you'll wind up growing apart and then you'll be twenty-five, divorced, women who are attracted to you won't want to take the chance that something might be wrong with you and you'll always be the one they have a nice time with, but never the one they want to grow old with."
Warm arms embraced her, soft lips pressing through her raven mane. "I'm your brother sis, but bad marriages are not hereditary." Her energy seemed to sneak out her toes just then as she fell against him. "Besides, I can guarantee you none of that will happen."
"How?" she wiped the tears from her eyes. "How can you guarantee me a girl you barely know isn't going to want more from life when she grows up."
"For one, she's almost your age."
Sarah pushed out of her brother's arms and fell back into the waiting arms of her living room chair instead. "Well I guess you showed me, huh?"
"I have to admit," he told her while she was still stunned by the news, "this is not the reaction I was expecting."
"How did you expect me to react, Toby?"
He sat on the floor next to her, looking up at his sister's exasperated face. His hands gathered hers. "I guess, I thought you might be happy for me."
"Don't you think it's a bit of a rush? I mean it's only been six months." Sarah gasped, "You didn't get her in trouble did you?"
"No Sarah, no. God you sound like dad when he decided it was time to have the talk with me."
"Well, look at you! You're barely old enough to shave." Freeing her hand she touched his face, "What do you know about being a husband honey?"
Up on his feet, the young man paced her apartment floor. "I know she's my best friend." Sarah groaned as he uttered the famous phrase she'd talked to Laney about over lunch. Mistaking her reaction for disappointment, Toby leaned over to kiss her forehead, "Second to my big sister of course. I know she makes me want to be a better person. She accepts me the way I am. I know I can't take for granted that she'll always be there and so every day I must find a way to show her how much I love her."
"And does she do that for you?"
"It's amazing Sarah. Every time she comes to my apartment she sneaks into my room and leaves a sachet on my pillow. It's this potpourri kind of mix that smells like cedar and her perfume. Sometimes, she'll beat me home, just so she can cook for me. Aaaah," he sighed. "She's an amazing cook. And children. Wherever we go, children are drawn to her. We'd like to have one of our own right away."
"Children? You two are talking children after only six months?"
Frustrated, Toby knitted his teeth emitting a noise low and rich in vibrato. "Would you please just attempt to not think the worst of her?"
"I don't see how I'm supposed to when I've never even met the woman who tricked my little brother into marrying her!"
"I was hoping you'd say that."
'Really,' she thought until he moved to face her. Then it was his broad smile that let her know she'd managed to fall right into his hands. "No, absolutely not! Toby, I'm too busy."
"Sunday. I was thinking lunch, but if dinner is better for you then we could switch."
"I have two cases to prepare for by the end of the week," Sarah said, eager to get out of the mess she'd fallen into.
Victoriously wringing his hands, Toby broadened his smile, "Perfect, then you won't need to work this weekend. Now I'll email you the directions. I've only been back and forth a few times. Rowan's been overseeing a lot of the refurbishing and the move." Sarah held her head. "A lot of the road names escape me," he went on. A skip joined his step as he gathered his keys to leave. "I'm going to stay at my apartment tonight and there's no phone at the new place yet, so when you get the directions, if you have questions, call my cell." A quick kiss on the cheek and Toby was letting himself out. Just before he left, he turned, looked at his sister with glassy eyes. "I'm so glad you changed your mind Sarah."
'Changed my mind,' she thought. When had she done that? With a resolved sigh, Sarah pressed her palms against her knees until she was standing. She cleared the pizza, recorked the wine, wiped down the glass, all like a character actor about to star in a zombie film. "Peotone?" she asked the walls disgustedly. "That's 40 miles away. I simply don't have time to travel that far. He'll understand. He's going to have to understand and what does he mean she's nearly my age?" Sarah pitched the dish cloth in her hand into the sink basin. "If she's so close to deaths door, what does he want with her? Women my age shouldn't be having children anyway. Men don't want women my age," she went on as she climbed the stairs to her bedroom, not from fatigue, from habit. "Or maybe it's not my age. I was still in my twenties when Tim left." She fell against the bed, fanning her arms over the chenille bedding. "Maybe it's just me," she resolved.
Concentrating on the high ceiling, Sarah allowed herself to become hypnotized by the subtle swirl in its texture, willing it to close in on her, confine her, make her feel safe. Interrupting her spell was the piercing rattle of the telephone ring. "Hello," she groused.
"Shantel, don't hang up."
The voice unfamiliar, she tried to correct him. "I'm sorry, b..."
"No Shantel. I'm sorry." He continued their exchange seemingly ignorant to the fact that she was not the one intended for his confession. "I shouldn't have given up on us baby. It's all my fault. I got scared."
A bit more of her mother lived in Sarah's soul than she cared to admit as she slipped seamlessly into character. "What makes you think Shantel didn't get scared too."
"Who is this?"
"Who is this?" she mimicked.
"This is Paul. Is Shantel there?"
"Listen Paul, the whole point of the ritualistic pairing of our species is so that we've got someone to share our fears with. Shutting Shantel out when she needed most to be let in, well, that was a fool's error." What was she doing giving advice to a complete stranger? "I'm sorry, I can't let you speak to Shantel."
"Why not? I only want to apologize."
"Well and good, but she's not here."
"Where is she?"
"I haven't a clue. I tried to tell you when you first rang you had the wrong number." In the crash of the receiver to the base, Sarah easily learned two things about the caller. First, he was angry. Second, he was calling from a pay phone. Assuming a bit, she imagined him well doused in alcohol, not drunk, probably his last thirty-five cents dropped in the slot to place the call, furious that his amends would have to wait to be made. In some way she might have helped, even if it was only to postpone his call until the whiskey had a chance to leave his blood stream.
"I've had enough of relationships for one day," she moaned as she slipped beneath the sheets of her bed, the only pairing concerning her as the clocks hands welcomed in a new day, being her subconscious and the sleep's seductive embrace.
Laptop making a 95 degree angle on her desk, Sarah's tired eyes scanned the captions of her received email. The name Toby Williams caught her eye. Grunting, she pressed the delete button, irritated with him for sending personal email to her work account. Having grown tired of superfluously reminding her assistant, she added a bit of dry creamer to the black coffee Annette felt compelled to bring her each morning. One by one, she eliminated the other useless transmissions, promises for sexual potency, adverts for low priced prescription medications, requests to verify accounts she didn't have, until nothing was left but the daily summary from the court and a concise message from her section head regarding the Weatherly file. It read simply, "Update?"
Her fingers pounded the keys, each stroke saying, 'Were you to trouble yourself over the cases you pass down to the partners, you would damn well know the status of the Weatherly file, you pompous, arrogant...' but the screen read: "The Weatherly file is complete," only a tiny lie she reasoned. No more phony than his concern for the file was. "I'm giving it a quick review and will have it filed by lunch."
Plucking the file from the corner of the desk where she had left it the night before, she immediately got to work on the remaining exhibits. Why she told her boss she'd have it filed today was beyond her, but she had made herself an impossible goal and now she had to reach for it. Before she could even find the reference to the next exhibit in the Weatherly brief, her monitor pinged, indicating an incoming message. "Have your secretary bring it by before you file it, so I can sign off on it."
"Are you kidding me?" she screamed at the screen. "He wouldn't know a well read brief from his fruit of the looms!"
"Ms. Williams?" Nettie asked from the doorway. "Is there anything I can get you?"
Sarah silently listed any number of things which she would have liked to add to the coffee in her hand. "No Nettie. Just please hold my calls. I've got to finish this brief by lunch."
"The Weatherly brief?" Sarah nodded. "I thought that wasn't due until Friday?"
"Hold my calls, Nettie." she barked.
"Yes, Miss Williams," her secretary complied.
Irmscher was playing with her, pushing her buttons, calling her bluff. Sarah didn't respond well to being manipulated. Knowing what he was up to made her blood boil. She would be ready when he made his next power play. "I'll dance for you once," she told her mental image of him, "but the next time I hear music, you'll change to my tune."
Despite the probability of it, Sarah completed her task and at twenty after eleven took the nearly four inch brief to her secretary and asked her, more politely than she had in days, to deliver it to Attorney Irmscher. "Oh and Nettie," she said as she watched the woman head down the hall, "let me know what he says."
"Yes, Miss Williams."
Impatiently, she waited in her chair. Mentally unable to begin work on the Bartolomucci file, she stared out the window, nibbling like a gerbil on her nails. It couldn't have been more than 120 steps to Irmscher's office. 120 steps back. Three to five seconds actually in his office. Nettie should have been back before Sarah needed to start on her left hand. "Miss Williams," Nettie said when she popped in the door.
"What did he say?" she asked anxiously.
"Nothing miss, he was at lunch."
"Lunch?"
"Yes miss, he has a meeting with opposing counsel on the Cogburn Trial." That was the big end of the month hearing. "He won't be back until at least three."
"Mother fuck!" she slammed her hands against the arms of her chair. Nettie's eyes went wide as saucers. Without comment she back stepped out of her boss's office and shut the door. 'He did it just to screw with me,' Sarah told herself. 'He knew he wouldn't be there, he just wanted to push my buttons.' She brought up her personal email account and began composing an email to Laney. Feeling more rational after she'd clicked the send button, launching her expletive laced tirade into cyberspace, she checked her inbox. Toby had sent a message there too. The MapQuest directions went on for about two and a half pages.
The intercom activated before she could even follow them out of the city. "Miss Williams."
"Yes Nettie."
"It's Mr. Irmscher on your line."
"Thank you Nettie." Sarah cleared her throat. "Hello Mr. Irmscher. The Weatherly file is on your desk sir, whenever you get back." In her head she added, 'you bastard.'
"Wonderful Sarah. Wonderful. Say, I'm here at lunch with the sharks on the other side of the Cogburn case. They want to schedule an mediation for this weekend. I know I can count on you."
Switching her eyes back onto the monitor, Sarah slowly explained, "Ahhhh, I'm sorry Mr. Irmscher, shark diving is completely out of the question for me this weekend. My little brother is getting married and I've got to meet him in Peotone this weekend. I wish I could help you out, but my hands are tied."
"I understand," he lied. The entire tone of his voice changing. "Family does come first, I suppose." Their call ended abruptly.
Sarah couldn't believe it. She had finally found something worth going to Toby's for.
It was Wednesday before the Weatherly brief got filed. Irmscher never made a mark on it. If Sarah were to guess, she would have said with relative confidence he never even read the damned thing and if he had, he took great pains in replacing the binder clips, which held together the lengthiest exhibits, to their original positions and in gently turning the pages in a soft roll so as not to crease the corners where the staples rested. Sarah waited in the office until nearly nine that night when he was expected back by at least three, but he never returned. In fact, he didn't return until early afternoon on Wednesday and even then his only statement was a black flair OK on a two by one yellow post it on the top of the brief she spent two full days laboring over. No matter. When the brief had finally been approved, Sarah logged into the Illinois Civil Court Electronic Filing website and cursed her superior with every click that attached the brief and its exhibits to the record forevermore.
Admittedly Sarah's anger stirred her so passionately that for a good number of hours Tuesday evening she performed some of her more mundane tasks, giving no attention at all to the Bartolomucci file. But, clicking the final post button to set the Weatherly brief in place renewed her spirit. In fact, she sent an email to Irmscher Thursday morning, saying she would like to review the Bartolomucci filing with him before she set it to record. When Sarah pushed send, she set the preferences to reply to her with a read receipt. And then she waited. Not that kind of occupied herself with other things while she waited sort of waiting, but that stare at the screen of her computer, daring not to blink sort, until a few minutes till two when the read receipt popped up in the lower right hand corner of her screen. Before he could click reply, Sarah was on her feet. Before his steely fingers could type out the first word of a reply, she scooped up the file. Just as he positioned his mouse pointer over the send button, Sarah knocked on his frosted office door.
With saccharin sweet overtones she exaggerated her glee. "Attorney Irmscher, I'm so glad you're in. I wanted to review the Bartolomucci brief with you. I know you OK'd the Weatherly file yesterday, but I don't want to provide just OK work for Sidley Austin, I want it to be perfect." Ah yes, they were playing her song even if it was only in her head. For the next four hours they mulled over the intricacies of the document while Sarah basically recreated it before his eyes. She asked inane questions, only to have them answered and consistently reply with, "That's what I thought and so," before she would point to her solution. In every instant it was either an exact match to his answer, or, twice she had managed to recall a more appropriate cite, or a better defense. Only then she was more than satisfied to close her lesson by asking, "Do you not agree with my choice?"
It was Irmscher's turn to be wise to her game. His eyes refused the stack of paper and held to her face as she went into her often lengthy justifications. Monotonous, "Yes, yes," concurrence spouting obligatorily from his dry, pursed lips. Until finally, as six o'clock had come and gone, he leaned back in his chair and concluded, "This is enough for one day, we'll finish tomorrow."
"Tomorrow? We've only got another half dozen exhibits. Why put off till tomorrow as they say. I mean, we did file the Weatherly brief early, wouldn't it be prudent to do the same with this one?"
"You intend to file this tonight?" he asked in disbelief of her commitment.
Sarah smiled innocently, "Indeed. It's the least I could do after all the effort you've put in." Staying was a waste of her time. She knew the brief was perfect, so much so she'd have held it together with a red silk ribbon rather than a rubber band if she could have. What mattered most, is that it was a waste of Irmscher's time and in the process a definitive statement to him about how much of her time was his and how much was her own.
It was past 9:30 when she returned to her office, a smile plastered to her lips as she recorded the brief, this time with less cursing and more praise, mostly for the filing system being available twenty-four hours a day and a little for herself, for standing up to Irmscher. There would be no arriving at dawn tomorrow, no staying until the sunset, rather she would stroll in at her normal hour, just as she had Monday.
True to her word, Sarah did not drag herself from her warm bed before the sun, but rather rolled over, well rested when the alarm sounded. Perhaps her sleep had not lasted a great number of hours, but the victory she had the night before blessed her with sweet fulfilling dreams. Fridays were casual around the office. Normally, Sarah didn't dress any differently, but she felt different today and so she reached into the normally forbidden depths of her closet and withdrew a pair of khaki slacks. They felt decadent when she slid her long legs inside. Over the cream tones of her cleavage enhancing bra, she pulled on a rayon salmon blouse. Tucking it neatly into her waistband, she threaded a thin snake skin belt through the loops of her trousers. Stepping back she admired the ensemble. When it came to the sandals, she debated for a little longer, uncertain she should push the envelope too far. Finally she settled on a leather cube heel that matched the belt, a little strappy duo with open toes. Not overly concerned with rushing to work, she took the time to match her toes to her blouse.
Today she took Michigan to Madison, stopping at a Starbuck's along the way to pick up a couple coffees and an entire berry crumbcake. It wouldn't have mattered if the Osmonds had been piping into her headphones, the spring in her step would have been as visible as it was right now. The volume was just loud enough to hear, but it may as well have been the most happening night club for how amazingly light she felt. She was almost anxious to get to work. She doubled back onto Dearborn to Bank One. She couldn't help but notice the familiar eyes watching her as she made a beeline for the door eager to get inside before she gave him cause to approach her again, to assist her with one of her stray belongs, to monopolize her day with one of his rogue smiles. The revolving door swung enough to push a breeze into the foyer and catch the attention of the security guards.
"Everything alright Miss Williams."
"Fine," she stammered. "Just fine." From the elevator bank Sarah looked out through the malted glass. He was still there, staring strangely into the building, vexation in those once happy eyes. 'Good,' she thought. 'He was too damned happy anyway.' Another victory. Nothing could stop her. Practically two stepping onto the elevator, she felt as though she floated to her floor. Plopping down a venti café mocha on Nettie's desk, she sang her good mornings. "Just make sure I get a tiny piece," she instructed as she handed over the crumb cake.
"Yes, Miss Williams," her secretary agreed, pleased to see the return of the woman she'd interviewed with. "Is there anything else I can get for you?"
For the first time this week, she was about to mean it when she said she was fine. Inside her office, Sarah rebooted the laptop she'd left overnight. When she phoned the cab she was well aware she wouldn't be working at home last night, there was no point in lugging it with her and back. It was going to be a good day, or so she allowed herself to believe. Few messages had come in over night. Weatherly and Bartolomucci had been put to bed. She could spend the day preparing for the Cogburn pre-trial in a way that would make her absence this weekend barely noticeable. Maybe she'd phone Laney and see if she wanted to visit Sumner this afternoon.
A generous slice of the berry crumbcake was brought to her on a three inch cake plate, earth tone simulated stone pattern forming a quarter inch band along the edge. Accepting it from Nettie, Sarah kicked her feet on to the corner of her desk. "Beautiful sandals, Miss Williams."
In mock anger, she groused, "Nettie, do you think you could call me Sarah?"
"Are you sure Miss Williams? Most attorneys prefer a more formal relationship with their secretaries."
"Sure they do. Until they convince them to stay late one night, nudge them into the supply closet, and persuade them over a stack of copy paper while their wives are at home tucking in their minor children. Well, Nettie. I'm never going to do that to you. So go on and call me Sarah."
"Yes, Sarah."
"And Nettie, while we're being honest with one another. My coffee." The secretary reached for the white cardboard cup, her long fingers wrapping around the corrugated heat protection band. "No Nettie, when you make my coffee. I really prefer it with cream."
"So noted."
"Thank you."
"Thank you, Miss...Sarah."
Swinging her legs off the desk and scooting to the window, she looked down at the people hurrying about. Automatically she wondered about the mystery man she had seen twice this week now. His presence seemed less coincidental now that she had seen him on more than one occasion. When it seemed she would get caught up in the redundant thought of him, she turned her attention back to the waiting Cogburn files.
It was the kind of case she hated. Around the office they called them bankruptcies gone bad. It should have been a simple Chapter 13, but something, somewhere, well before the file was set on Sarah's desk, went wrong and the mode switched from forms and predictable patterns to pleadings and chaos, a Mortgage Foreclosure. At first glance, it looked like Cogburn was a pretty decent guy, small business man, doing his best. Maybe he had a bad year, took a hit in the stock market, suffered in the new economy, or perhaps his trade had been replaced by automation. Having never met him, Sarah knew better than to ever assume that a debtor turned defendant was fully innocent. There was probably some blame to be placed on him, if she was to draft a convincing pre-trial statement for her lender, she had to believe that.
"Miss Cass on your line," the intercom announced when Sarah had done little more than copy the caption from the court's website.
"Thank you," she replied before lifting the receiver and greeting her good friend.
"You sound better than I've heard you in days," Laney observed.
"I feel better," Sarah admitted, closing her laptop and spinning in her chair. "Remind me to tell you about my last brief."
"Does that mean you're up for lunch today?"
"Sure, but no Cheesecake Factory."
There was some groan of disappointment on Laney's end, but eventually she conceded. "Where do you want to meet then?"
"Why don't you come up here and we'll figure it out."
"Alright, I'll be there at twenty after."
"Twenty after, what happened to 11:30?"
"If you don't have anything in mind Sarah, we're going to need time to figure it out."
And people had the nerve to call her rigid. "Come whenever you're ready, that's fine." Replacing the phone to it's cradle, she noticed the smile which she couldn't seem to wipe from her face. What was that strange twitter in her chest?
True to her promise, Laney arrived in the foyer of Bank One Plaza at precisely at 11:20. Sarah emerged from the elevator banks a few minutes later than that, true to her attempt to break Laney of her obsessive tendencies. "Where are we eating?" she asked first off when Sarah joined her.
"Don't care," Sarah admitted when they got outside. With little regard for her lunch companion and less for the selection of cuisine, the young attorney looked about, swiftly flicking her glance from left to right.
Positioning herself directly before Sarah, she stabilized her shoulders before asking, "Did you invite me here for lunch?" It was the attempt at innocence that made her seem even more guilty. "Sarah," she moaned. For as remarkable a body as Laney had, she lived to eat far more than she ate to live and God had graced her with the metabolism to do so.
"We'll, eat, we'll eat, I just wanted to see if there was anyone here."
"And by anyone you wouldn't happen to mean a certain little coat checker from earlier this week, would you?"
Sarah snatched her at the elbow and shuffled her closer to the building's exterior wall. "Sssshhh!"
"I see, I'm missing out on avocado eggrolls because you're horny."
"Laney!" A hot pink rose in the apples of Sarah's cheeks. "I am not horny," she mumbled a whisper. "There's a great little sandwich shop on Michigan, we'll get something in that stomach of yours and maybe you won't be so irritable."
"I'd say the same for you, but I don't think there's a sandwich for that sort of thing."
Looking embarrassed, Sarah dragged her in the direction of the deli. A small table in a back corner was available. There they sat, nibbling away on some wheat wraps, turkey with honey mustard for Sarah, ham and Swiss with dijonnaise for Laney. "So you saw him again this morning?"
"Yes, when I came in at my usual time, he was at almost the same spot from Monday. You don't suppose he's, you know, keeping track of me."
"Stalking you?" Laney asked, jutting out her tongue to lap up a dollop of mustard from the corner of her lips.
"Well no, not stalking. I mean, stalking," her head cocked to the side, "stalking? Do you really think stalking?"
Laney shook her head in reply. "I'm sure you two just have similar schedules."
"Right. We probably start at the same time."
"He might shuttle, that might be his stop?"
"Right, his stop." Her disinterest in supposition evident by the far away look in her eyes.
Slurping down the last of her Cherry Coke, Laney asked, "You're not going to spend the next week trying to run into this guy are you?"
"No," she hid her smile by raising her napkin to her lips, "not trying."
"Seriously Sarah, come out with us this weekend. I think it's just what you need."
"I would, but I promised Toby I'd come and meet his girlfriend."
"Toby has a girlfriend," Laney choked on the ice cube she'd been chewing.
Sarah waved her hand over her shoulder, "It's only been six months."
"Still, I had the biggest crush on him when we were kids."
"Oh come on." She threw a few small bills on the table. "No sister wants to hear that."
"Don't be so old fashioned Sarah, age isn't that big of a deal once you're over twenty-five."
She snickered. "Apparently, Toby's fiancé is my age."
"Fiancé!" Thank God she didn't have another ice cube to choke on. "Three seconds ago she was just a girlfriend."
"Girlfriend, fiancé, neither's permanent."
"When's the wedding?"
"If there's a wedding."
Laney shook her head. "Must you always be so pessimistic?"
"A wife's no more permanent, my dear friend." Sarah reached out for her hand and gave it a reassuring pat as her companion stared idly at the table top. "I'm just being realistic."
"Well you ought to try fantasizing a little more often."
"I don't believe in fantasy, Laney. I haven't for a long time."
Ferrari or not, Peotone was still forty miles outside of the city and forty miles could vary by as much as an hour's travel time depending upon the time of day and schedule of events. Sarah was still within sight of the Hancock after almost an hour. In a moment of absolute gridlock her forehead fell to the steering wheel as she groaned. Reaching beneath the seat, she plucked out a cd case tucked under there. Her fingers fumbled with the pages, finally settling for the first thing she could manage as it slid around on the passenger side. Slowly, the silver disc was sucked into the dash. When she heard the first note, her error washed over her like cold and stinging rain.
Another life ago, or so it seemed, when Timothy first left, one of the summer interns gave her this CD. She flipped it between her fingers like a baton. In all capital letters across the bottom, he'd written "RECOVERY MIX". Proclaiming he'd finally made it to the point in his post-marriage, yes, he called it post-marriage, because he wanted to use a more positive term, which divorce clearly was not, regardless, he was at the point he no longer required its comfort. Vividly she remembered thinking the idea of a CD providing comfort was completely ridiculous. But in an odd way, it did just that.
Perhaps she'd reached that point in her post-marriage where she needed to stop being so damned cynical when it came to relationships or maybe she did need to just spend a little more time not at the office, either way, the CD had done something important for her. She was smiling, almost anxious to see her brother and a little less worried about meeting Rochelle, or whatever her name was.
Cautiously, her right forefinger depressed the cream colored, dime sized button just to the right of the stained oak door. Through the crisscross molding over the glass, Sarah saw her brother practically running to greet her. "Sarah," he said as if he hadn't expected her, only to contradict himself, "You're late. Everything OK?"
"Fine Toby, fine. Traffic in the city, lord knows over what this time."
"You look good sis," to which she rolled her eyes, stopping them just in time to look doubtfully up at her brother. "Really. Come on in. Rowan's not here yet. She had some errands to run after work."
'Rowan,' she repeated in her head, making an effort to memorize it. Entering Toby's new home, Sarah tried not to be critical, but the place was barely bigger than her apartment. "It's cozy," she remarked, her lips only partially curled.
"I know it's not much," he recognized, "but it'll do nicely for a first home. Three bedrooms, for us, guests, whoever comes along." Toby grinned as he mentioned the amount of space. Desperate not to show her irritation, Sarah forced a smile. "Come on sis, I'll give you the full tour." Beginning upstairs, the proud new home owner showed her the master bedroom and the master bath. Both together were barely bigger than Sarah's master bath back in the city. The second and third bedrooms, the second bath, all less than fifty square feet. On the first floor he noted the kitchen, with it's fresh new custom wood cabinetry and built in buffet. Recessed lighting gave it a warm glow, while a small pantry gave him plenty of storage. A fireplace was the focal point of his living room where track lighting took over. The dining room was tiny, room for four at best, but the crystal chandelier made it seem formal. A small powder room sacrificed the bulk of what could have been its space to house a washer and dryer. The basement was finished. It would have made a good game room, Sarah thought, but Toby explained that they had planned to turn it into a craft and research room.
"Research?" she asked.
"Yes," Toby confirmed. "Rowan loves to study things, figure them out, how they work and so forth. Why practically before we closed on the house she'd already done her research on Peotone, discovering it had been named for an Indian chief who formerly roamed the area and that its rough translation meant, good place to live."
"Isn't that...nice."
Despite the honest effort, Sarah put forth. Toby could see she how much she struggled. Leading her away, he managed to conclude the tour by taking her out through the attached garage, for which they had no car, and back in through the four seasons room, accessible also, through a sliding glass door off the dining room. "So what do you think?" he asked wearily, the way one asked for truth from a cheating lover.
"It doesn't matter what I think, Toby as long as you're happy with it."
"You hate it," he assumed throwing his hands up.
"I don't hate it," she half lied. "I just don't see why you went out and bought a house so fast."
Gently, Toby encouraged Sarah to sit with him on the sofa. "If you hate it..."
"I don't hate it," this time Sarah's voice was sharp and short. Surprised herself, the next words exchanged between brother and sister were significantly milder. "I worry." It left her lips simply enough, an odd confession, a rigid admission of her deepest feelings, of emotions she preferred to keep locked deep inside. The air between them seemed to grow magnetic, drawing them closer together, narrowing what had been a spacious gap. Sarah reached her hands up for her brother's face. "I worry," she repeated. "You've never been on your own, not totally and you're only going to be twenty two in a few weeks, what if something happens. Something unexpected, something awful."
"I've always survived before." Toby held his sister to him, the quaking in her rib cage, very real, very rapid.
"You've always had me."
"Am I going to lose you, sis?" He pushed her back and looked into her swimming eyes. "I appreciate everything you've done, everything. But you can stop being a mother now. Rowan and I are in this together and I always know I can count on my big sister when I need to. You don't have to worry," he reassured her, smoothing back the hair stuck in the moisture on her cheeks.
"You don't understand, do you?" she asked rhetorically, caressing his cheek. He had grown into a handsome man. Whoever Rowan was, she was only a woman at the most basic level and no woman wouldn't be smitten by his smile, his eyes, his build, but she hoped this woman he had chosen saw deeper, into his compassionate heart that had been bruised and battered, and more so, she prayed that Rowan treated it with kid glove care. His hair was still as soft between her fingers as she ever remembered it being. "You were the only child I have ever known. When dad and Karen brought you home..."
"You hated me," he cut her off with a smile.
Giving a tug on his hair, she reaffirmed that it was less hate than it was an inability to appreciate him, but with time that changed. "Perhaps, I took you for granted, but don't you see, I grew to love you. In a place in my heart where I housed very indifferent feelings for you something happened. I made a very conscious effort to love you Toby, and that should mean something."
"Was that before or after you wished me away?"
"I told you that was a dream." Sarah turned away from him.
Toby grabbed her shoulders. "Come on, I'm kidding. Overactive imagination, remember?"
"Yeah well your overactive imagination got me grounded a whole hell of a lot."
"I did know how to play mom and dad pretty good I suppose." His lips pressed against her temple. "You did right by me sis, you always did right by me."
"Did I Toby? Did I?" she asked him, her face soaked and stained by tears. Both silent, they stared at one another, most likely sharing the same memory. The first few months after the accident were sketchy. Toby was angry and confused, but by the end of that first year he'd adjusted well enough, better than most fourteen year olds.
Robert and Karen were taking their second honeymoon. They planned a trip to Paris, 10 days, lay overs in London, red eye flights. Karen had made the arrangements, thinking Robert incapable. It seemed almost impossible to forget, a phone call at 3:30 am on a Thursday morning in June followed by a 6:15 flight to New York so she could settle the details. The crash left them with no bodies to morn. Sarah had two large oil portraits of Robert and Karen made for the funeral mass and as her stepmother would have wanted it, plenty of flowers all about. Toby sat motionless, but for when she tried to touch him, then he'd turn and wrench from her grasp. Until the night of the wake, after everyone left. Sarah was tidying up things, when she heard the tiniest whimper. Turning she found he brother, staring at her, sobbing.
Timothy was gone, left after four years of marriage. Not necessarily good years, but not bad years by any stretch. Ordinary years, mature years. They managed to tuck away a good bit of cash and Timothy wanted very much to have a child. Sarah rarely spent a night undisturbed the last two years of their marriage as he fiercely attempted to succeed in impregnating her. Fate had a funny way of working. Maybe they knew, the fates, that Tim and Sarah were doomed, and maybe that was why they never gave her a child. Maybe they knew Sarah had married a man who was incapable of igniting her soul and thus gave them this obstacle to send them in separate directions knowing neither of them would have the heart to leave a perfectly fine situation, even if something better awaited them. Either way, Toby was all Sarah had left. She sunk to her knees, allowing the boy to tower over her. She'd been staying strong for him, or maybe the other way around, but as they let the pain flow from them, they both revealed a vulnerable side. When he finally collapsed into her arms, Toby wailed like an infant. Sarah held him tenderly, rocking him softly in her arms, her lips to his forehead, her tears rolling over his crown. "It'll be alright, baby. It's all going to be alright," she lied again and again.
When she brought him back to Chicago, it was the clean start they both needed. The animosity, the opposition of all those years as siblings melted away. All that Sarah had left of her father was in Toby and she did her best to nurture it. Karen's mouth remained, but by the grace of God, Karen's words did not come from it and Karen's heart did not lie beneath. Every morning she cooked for him, every night she cooked for him, after dinner she toiled over Calculus, Biology, Government, until she felt like a mother. As fiercely as any parent's protectiveness flared in her spine and when they needed someone they leaned fully on one another. She nursed him through heartache and taught him to drive, motivated him to succeed. He graduated, valedictorian of his school, giving a moving and powerful speech about losing his parents and crediting his sister for pulling him through. Her heart swelled. Two years of college and he was working entry level with a publisher's company. A few good finds and he was quickly promoted. He was fair. He was honest.
And so, Sarah believed him when he said she had done right by him, even if she thought she should have done better. "I just want you to have everything you deserve."
"Rowan is more than I deserve, sis and this house, it reminds me of home. Comfortable, but cozy. It's all I've ever wanted."
That was true. He never much had the taste for the luxuries of life that Sarah acquired. "I know, I know," she grumbled grinding the moisture from her eyes. "Now which way is that powder room again. I'd like to not look like this when I meet my future sister in law."
Rejoining her brother in his living room, a tall amber haired woman waltzed gracefully into her path. "You must be Sarah?" Immediately she embraced the dumfounded sibling, "It is so good to finally meet you. Toby has told me so much about you, I just couldn't have started planning our wedding without you."
Only half heartedly Sarah returned the embrace, "Yes well, I am Sarah." Her irritation was more than obvious, causing Rowan to step back. "Shall we sit?" Sarah took a chair as Rowan snuggled close in against her brother, craning her neck so that her lips could graze his cheek.
"Forgive me," Toby said "Sarah, this is my fiancé Rowan, Rowan, my sister Sarah."
"More than a sister my sweet. Toby tells me you were sister, parent, friend and storyteller all the same."
"My brother exaggerates the roles I played for him."
"I do not. You cared for me always," he glanced out the corner of his eye, a broad smile speaking to Rowan in a language they'd developed merely by knowing each other, "that is why," he continued, "I would like you to be our witness for the wedding."
"What?" Sarah asked shocked. "You don't mean to suggest you're having a civil ceremony."
Rowan was quick to reply, "Quite the contrary, we don't necessary want anything as formal as a religious ceremony and so your dear brother has agreed to a more simple event in a beautiful patch of wood not far from here where we'll have a simple blessing, for which we require only one witness to be legal and binding. With your parents being gone, and we, having no family, but each other, I couldn't imagine asking anyone else to hold the position."
"I still have a mother," Sarah shot back, not at all impressed with the way in which Rowan had integrated deeply into her family.
"A mother who in as long as I have been alive hasn't once made the trip to see you, has no more connection with you but for letters and the occasional collect call."
"And still more mother to me than Karen ever was," Sarah shot back. Each hurt equally by the scathing remark of the other. "Is that it?" she asked after a deep silence. "Did you leave one mother figure in search of another?"
Silently, Rowan had left the room and now returned, a tray of tea perched on her forearms. "I think we all need to relax just a bit. I humbly beg your forgiveness dear sister..."
"Could we call me Sarah for now?" she snapped.
"Dear Sarah, then. I should have chosen better words to express your importance to your brother and therefore to me. We only wish for you be part of our happiness." Rowan went on to pour them each a cup of black currant tea, which they sipped in silence, until after some time, Toby broke that silence.
"Why are you so against our marriage?"
"I'm not," Sarah replied.
Toby snorted, "Could have fooled me. There was a day I had hoped for your approval, but for now I would ask only for your happiness, if not your true happiness, then happiness for me at the least."
"You're right," his sister conceded, "but then let me pay for it."
"No, Sarah! I...we...couldn't."
"You can and you will. Dad and Karen left me everything Toby, if I promised to take care of you. It paid your college, it paid your wants and still there is plenty left to pay for this wedding, and what it does not, I will. I have no one else to shower with generosity, who better than my brother."
"You do too much."
"I could never do enough to repay what you've done for me." He moved to embrace her.
"Settled then, where shall we go for dinner. I'm afraid my being late has left us very little time to cook," Rowan observed.
"We'll never all fit in the Ferrari," she protested.
Toby winked, "I'll squeeze in somewhere."
"No, I'll feel like a third wheel. Let's order in," Sarah suggested.
Toby chuckled. "It's not like the city Sis. There's not any of a dozen delivery joints on every block. You should find yourself a date, then we could double."
"I'll be sure enough to find someone by the wedding," she smarted.
"I hope you have someone in mind," Rowan said as she cleared away the tea.
"Why's that?"
Her brother wrapped his arm around Sarah guiding her to the car, "We're being married on the 25th of June."
"The day of the crash?"
"I want the most positive event of my life to overshadow the most negative," he protested definitively. "Now haven't you had any dates recently?"
Sarah looked up at him with daggers in her eyes. "I haven't had a date in seven years, Toby. You know that, you lived with me."
"Oh that'll never do," he said opening her door and shuffling her inside. "You should have dates at your age."
"Shut up Toby," Sarah's head shook, her hand hiding her curved lips, "just shut up."