by Emmy Eugene
“Hello?” her father said, the voice as familiar to her as if she spoke with him every day. She wasn’t sure if she liked that or not.
“Daddy?” she asked, wishing her voice wasn’t quite so high.
“Millie?”
“Yes,” she said, clearing her throat.
He chuckled and said, “Wow, that’s what the screen said, but I wasn’t sure.”
Millie didn’t know what to say. She wanted to tell him about Momma and find out if maybe he could send some money. Something.
She wanted to clear the air between them so she could move forward. So she could get past all of these tangled feelings inside her.
“Where you at these days?” he asked, and Millie blinked her way out of her own mind.
“Back in Chestnut Springs,” she said. “Did you know Momma’s really sick?”
“Oh, your mother’s always been sick.” He spoke of her in an off-hand way, like he didn’t believe her sickness was physical at all.
“Dad, she has ovarian cancer.”
“She—wait. She has cancer?”
Millie sighed, her annoyance already at an all-time high. “How—yes,” she said, deciding mid-sentence not to get into an argument with him. “I moved home to help her, because the treatments have been pretty hard on her.”
“I had no idea.” Something scratched on his end of the line, and Millie paused for a moment. She heard another voice, but she didn’t recognize it.
“Anyway,” Millie said when her father didn’t say anything else. “I don’t really know why I called. I just felt like I should.” She didn’t want to ask him anything. She didn’t want to feel indebted to him.
“How are the boys?” he asked.
“Good,” she said. “What are you up to?” Maybe she could just have a normal conversation with him, the way she did Angela.
“Oh, just life,” her father said, and that person spoke again. “Can you hang on, Millie?”
“Sure.” She actually pushed the volume button on the side of her phone so she could hear better what was happening on her father’s end of the line.
“I don’t know, sweetheart,” he said in a soft voice. “You’ll have to ask your mother.”
Sweetheart?
Mother?
Where was her dad? Who was he talking to? Did he have a new girlfriend? And why would she have to ask her mother something?
The line scraped, almost like he’d put his hand over it. Millie could still hear him when he said, “I’m talking to my daughter…my other daughter.”
Other daughter.
The words sent ice straight into her bloodstream, and she started to go numb.
“I’m back,” her dad said, and Millie had no idea what to say. “Are you there?” he asked.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Who were you talking to?”
“Oh, um…”
“Dad, are you seeing someone?” Maybe she’d been prompted to call so she could talk to her dad about Travis. She thought of him at the ranch that Sunday evening, eating and playing games with his brothers. She wanted to be there so badly, instead of stuck inside her car in the grocery store parking lot, dreading the moment she’d have to go back to Momma’s.
“Not really,” her father said, a big sigh following. “Okay, so I have to tell you something.”
“Okay.”
“I got married.”
“What?” The word exploded out of Millie’s mouth. The only way she’d been able to deal with her father’s abandonment was to know that he was as miserable as her mother. Because he was alone too. Wandering, not sure what he wanted in life.
But if he was married, he could be happy.
He doesn’t deserve to be happy, Millie thought, unsure of where the poisonous thought had come from. It was so unlike her, but the bitterness and anger were right there, as always, on the back of her tongue.
“I got married,” her dad said again.
“When?”
“Last year.”
Last year. Last. Year.
Millie could not believe it.
“I was talking to my step-daughter,” he said. “Ohana. She has to be close to your age.”
Millie bit back a horrible remark, the tears hot in her eyes. She couldn’t speak, because then her dad would hear how his happy, new family affected her.
“How old are you now, Millie?”
“I have to go,” she said in a rush and hung up. She flung the phone across the car and let her tears fall. They were partly because her father was not a nice human being. And partly because Millie wanted him to be. And mostly because she didn’t want to be this upset about a man who’d left her twenty years ago.
“Time to move forward,” she said as she wept. And she knew she needed to do exactly that. Delete the phone number from her phone. Find a job.
Get Travis back.
Her sobs increased when she thought of him. She wanted to go to him right now and tell him about her father’s new family. He’d hold her close and stroke her hair and tell her he was sorry. He’d make her hot chocolate and bring out cookies, and they’d sit together on the couch until Millie had absorbed enough of his peace.
She’d called to get some closure with her father, but she felt like at least a dozen doors were still open between them. Her phone rang, but she didn’t even try to retrieve it from the floor on the passenger side. At least it still worked.
Watching people move in and out of the store, Millie felt completely removed from the planet. She’d only felt this way one other time in her life, and that was when she’d moved to San Antonio by herself and found that the apartment she’d put a thousand dollars down on wasn’t available.
Not only that, but the owner wasn’t reachable.
She’d sat in her car then too, crying and wondering what she was going to do.
She’d survived.
She’d survive this too. She just needed to find an anchor to hold onto—and she knew who she wanted that to be.
Travis Johnson.
Her phone rang again, and Millie bent to pick it up. She couldn’t quite reach it and ended up straining her back as she stretched too far. She finally got her fingers around it to find a number she didn’t have saved in her phone.
“Hello?” she answered, probably just in the nick of time.
“Is this Millie Hepworth?” a woman asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” Millie said, smoothing her hair for some unknown reason. The woman wasn’t present.
“This is Chantelle Flood from Furniture Row. I’m hoping you’re still available for our floor manager job.”
“I am,” Millie said, her heart beating erratically now for an entirely new reason.
“Would you like the position?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Millie said. “I think I’d love the job.”
Chantelle wore a smile in her voice when she said, “We loved you during the interview, and we think you’ll do a great job. Can you come in tomorrow morning, say around nine?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Millie said again.
“Perfect,” Chantelle said. “And Millie, you don’t have to call me ma’am.” She trilled out a laugh, and Millie did too.
“All right,” she said. “See you tomorrow.” The call ended, and Millie gripped her phone tightly. She leaned her head back against the head rest. “I have a job. Thank you, Lord.”
She wasn’t overly religious, but she did believe in God. Excitement built inside her, and she wanted to jump from the car and shout her happy news to the world.
In the end, she sent a text to Angela and got out of the car to go get the milk. As she walked toward the entrance of the grocery store, she copied the words she’d sent to Ang and put them in a text to Travis.
Could she send it? Would he respond? Would he be happy for her?
I got a job at Furniture Row! Floor manager. I start tomorrow.
The words were innocuous. Easy. Nothing about their relationship. Would she send them to someone who’d taken a step ba
ck from her? It wasn’t like he’d said he wanted to step all the way out of her life.
“But he did,” she whispered to her phone screen. “He did step all the way out of my life.” He hadn’t called or texted since they’d spoken last Tuesday. That was one giant step backward from where they’d been.
Part of that was her fault, Millie knew. So she sent the text and tucked her phone in her back pocket, though it had buzzed and chimed a couple of times while she’d stared at Travis’s text.
She didn’t allow herself to check her phone again until she’d bought the milk and returned to her car. When she looked, she had one message from Travis.
That’s so great, baby. Congrats.
And four or five from Ang, with more exclamation points and more words of encouragement. Yet Travis’s single text meant so much more than Angela’s, and Millie knew then that she’d fallen in love with him.
We should talk about your family party, Millie tapped out to him. When’s a good time for you?
She drove home, and he didn’t answer. She poured milk into her mother’s cereal-for-dinner, and he didn’t answer. She told her mother about the new job, and he didn’t answer. She showered and put her hair in curlers for her first day at her big, new job in the morning.
Travis simply didn’t answer.
The next morning, Millie arrived at Furniture Row curled and pressed and glossed. She walked up to the front door, but it was locked. Feeling stupid, she cupped her hands and looked through the glass.
There was no one inside. No other cars in the parking lot. Had she heard the time wrong? Unsure of what to do, she turned around and caught sight of another car just turning into the lot
Chantelle pulled right up to the curb. “Sorry, I’m a bit late, Millie. I’ll go park around back, and you could follow me back there?”
“Sure,” Millie said, digging her keys out of her purse again. She did follow Chantelle around to the back, where they both parked next to a door there. Chantelle unlocked it and held it open for Millie to enter first.
“It’s good to see you,” Chantelle said. “Let’s go into my office.” The room was a cluttered mess, but Chantelle hung her jacket and purse on a coat rack in the corner and sat in the chair behind the desk. “I have your forms here.” She handed Millie a folder. “And today, we’ll go through a few things this morning, and then you’ll shadow me throughout the day. It’s really not too hard of a job.”
Millie flipped open the folder and found the usual forms for taxes and withholdings. “Okay,” she said.
“The biggest question is what day of the week would you like off?”
“I’m sorry?” Millie peered at her.
“You work five days a week,” Chantelle said. “It’s a full-time position, with benefits. We need you here every Saturday, and we’re closed Sundays. I’ll work the other day of the week you have off. I just need to know which one.”
“Oh.” Millie blinked. “Is there one that’s better than another for you?”
“No,” Chantelle said. “We seem to be busiest the closer to the weekend it is.”
“How about Wednesday?” Millie asked. That would give her a day off in the middle of the week, and that sounded good to her.
“Wednesday it is,” she said. “You don’t need to be here until nine-thirty. That’s when our first salesman shows up, and the two of you usually get the floor ready for open at ten.”
“Okay,” Millie said, reaching for a pen. “Can I? Then I can take notes.”
“Of course,” Chantelle said. “But I have a paper here somewhere that outlines your duties too…” She started shuffling things on her desk, finally producing the paper she wanted. “Here it is.”
Millie took it from her and saw the checklist, her heart warming. Prep floor sat right at the top. “What does prep floor mean?” she asked.
“Let’s go do it,” she said. “Then you’ll be ready for—oh, wait. Never mind.”
Millie looked at Chantelle, whose face colored. But she didn’t know what the other woman was going to say she’d be ready for, and Chantelle ducked out of the office. Millie followed her, confused.
“Our finance secretary will get everything ready here,” Chantelle said, having regained her composure. “But this is part of the floor, so you just check in with her. Her name is Andie Alonzo.”
“Oh, I know Andie,” Millie said.
Chantelle smiled. “Anything that’s been moved, you put back. The night team isn’t super great at keeping everything where it should be, and we sometimes have some teenagers who come in and like to make a mess of things. You know, a free activity on a Friday night.” She rolled her eyes and picked up a pillow from off a credenza. “This goes on the chair here.” She put the pillow in its proper place. “That’s what checking the floor is. Usually you split the store with the salesman, and you’ll rotate until you know how everything is supposed to look in every section.”
“Okay.” Millie looked at her paper, a bit overwhelmed already. How was she supposed to put things back where they belonged when she didn’t know where that was in the first place?
You’ll learn, she told herself. And it didn’t all need to be memorized today.
“The next item says water cooler,” she said.
“Yes,” Chantelle said, moving toward a large desk in the middle of the store. “This is the customer service counter. We have a water cooler here, and one by the front door. It’s the floor manager’s job to make sure they’re full and the cups are available for customers.”
“Got it,” Millie said. “Vacuum and dust the front displays.”
“Those are the ones along the main walkway there,” Chantelle said, pointing. “That’s where we put our most expensive and newest items. They need to be clean for customers.”
“Okay.” Millie continued to move down the checklist, and when Colton Carlson came in, he and Chantelle started moving through the store, cleaning it up and setting things exactly where they went.
Millie checked the water coolers and cups, she ran a vacuum cleaner, and she checked in with Andie. She had a clipboard with the salesmen working that day, and which departments they were in. The customer service manager was also under her, and Teresa handed her a radio that Millie clipped to her waistband. She felt almost like the manager she was supposed to be, and she grinned around at the huge furniture store, feeling the rush of being in charge of all kinds of moving parts.
Colton unlocked the front door, which was also on her checklist, and Millie was surprised to see a couple enter almost immediately, almost like they’d been waiting for the store to open.
Her surprise morphed to disbelief when she recognized Seth and Jenna Johnson. “Seth?” she whispered to herself. He paused just inside the door, his new wife glued to his side.
Millie’s pulse was back to that hard thumping, and she couldn’t look away from Seth, even when Colton started talking to them. It wasn’t her job to sell anything anyway. Match up the customer with the right salesmen. Make sure they were comfortable. Help with computers and delivery systems. Get them to the finance counter.
Seth and Jenna wouldn’t move, and then they parted, and Millie knew why.
Travis stood there, searching the store for something.
His eyes met hers, and even from across the distance, Millie knew he hadn’t been looking for something. But someone.
Her.
She could barely feel her feet as she started walking toward him, her heart positively leaping around her chest now.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Is now a good time?” Travis asked, knowing from the shocked look on Millie’s face that he’d surprised her. Good. He’d wanted to surprise her.
“I’m at work,” she said.
“It’s actually not ten yet,” Colton said, and then he promptly disappeared.
“I’m going to go see if Chantelle has any doughnuts in her office,” Jenna said. “Come on, Seth. She usually does.”
“You had me at do
ughnut,” Seth said, and he walked away with Jenna, leaving Travis alone with Millie.
Exactly where he’d planned to be. His pulse still ricocheted around his chest though, and Millie still looked like he’d hit her with a bolt of lightning.
“Hey, so I wanted to talk to you,” he said. “And we only have a few minutes before you really will be at work.”
“It’s my first day, Travis,” she said, and she didn’t look happy to see him.
“I know,” he said. “I called Chantelle last night.” He took off his cowboy hat and ran his hand through his hair. He resettled his hat, reminding himself mentally about what he wanted.
“I made a mistake,” he said. “Okay? I don’t want to take a step back from you. At all.”
“You don’t?”
“No,” he said. “You’ve always told me how great lists are, and I’ve been making one of the things I want.”
Millie cocked one hip and folded her arms. “Is that so?”
Travis couldn’t tell if she was flirting with him or not. “Yes,” he said simply. “And I have one outside I’d like you to see.”
She glanced around, but there wasn’t another soul on the furniture floor at the moment. Chantelle had come through for him in a big way.
He half-twisted toward the door. “Will you come out?”
Millie looked like she’d rather go to Mars, then she nodded. Travis pushed open the door and held it for her, desperately wanting to take her hand in his. The desk he’d built for her stood down the sidewalk in the shade, and he went that way, Millie beside him.
She stalled after only a few steps though, and asked, “Travis, what is that?”
He continued toward the desk, where his list waited for him in the filing tray he’d built into the top of it. He stood next to it, admiring the craftsmanship. He’d stained the wood a nice, dark mahogany that made the wood grain stand out, and he thought the desk was beautiful.
Not as beautiful as Millie.
“This is your Christmas present, Millie,” he said, putting his hand on the desk. He wondered if she’d accept the gift—all of the gift. Him included.
“You built me a desk?”
