The Buck Stops Here

by Mindy Starns Clark

  Margaret had followed along behind as we went up the hall.

  “At least your outfit looks nice today, Callie,” she chimed in tentatively. “Of course, your outfits always look nice.”

  “Thank you, Margaret.”

  Harriet tugged on my hand, and I resisted until Margaret intervened.

  “Harriet, let Callie go,” she said. “If she doesn’t mind looking like that when she sees Tom, then that’s her choice.”

  Her backhanded defense of my position was a bit startling.

  “Do I really look that bad?” I asked.

  Harriet and Margaret exchanged glances, and then they both nodded at me. I took a deep breath and exhaled.

  “Don’t either of you find this whole situation a little demeaning?” I asked. “I mean, we learn that the big boss is coming into the office during working hours—for the first time after being in business for three years—and instead of preparing presentations or double-checking our numbers, we’re running around acting like a bunch of giggling girls. Cleaning the office. Getting our hair done. Changing our clothes. What are we doing?”

  They both considered my question.

  “Maybe it’s because we do such a good job all the time, whether he’s here or not,” Margaret finally ventured. “Our presentations and our numbers are already in perfect shape. That leaves us a little free time to prepare, is all. I don’t see anything wrong with it.”

  Harriet nodded in agreement. They both stood there looking at me so plaintively that finally all I could do was groan.

  “Fine,” I said. “Call Antonio. Just give me ten minutes first.”

  “Good. I’ll wait by the front desk,” Harriet said.

  I left Margaret there in the hall and returned to my office, shutting the door behind me. In a way, they were right. I needed to face this meeting with Tom with confidence, not feeling self-conscious because I had wiped all of my makeup off with this morning’s cry.

  I powered up my laptop and quickly ran through the presentation I had prepared. If this presentation was what Tom was coming to see, then he would definitely be wowed. I had done a good job assembling a comprehensive history of the agency’s charitable works, even if I did say so myself.

  Once I felt confident that all was as ready as it was going to be, I grabbed my purse and went out to the main area. Harriet was biting her nails, and she fussed at me that she would have to get a quick manicure repair while we were there.

  The salon was only a few blocks away, so we set off on foot as I decidedly ignored the thought of whether I was being tailed at the moment or not. As we walked I braced myself for a barrage of questions from Harriet, but she was oddly silent. Finally, when we were less than a block away from our destination, I couldn’t stand it anymore.

  “You’re so quiet,” I said to her. “What are you thinking?”

  She sighed.

  “I’m just wishing that things were different,” she said. “I’ve been waiting three years to meet the man on the other end of that telephone line. Now I’m finally getting that chance, but instead of it being a happy occasion, it’s full of tension. Do you think Tom is coming here to…to shut us down?”

  Once again, my heart quickened at the thought.

  “Why do you say that?” I asked evasively.

  “I don’t know. I keep running different possibilities through my mind. Something about this meeting just doesn’t feel right.”

  We turned the corner, and with a start, I looked up to my left. The J.O.S.H.U.A. Foundation kept an apartment across from the Watergate in the exclusive Halston Court building, and I suddenly realized that that’s probably where Tom would be staying tonight. In fact, if he had flown into town early, there was a chance he was already there. The thought made my heart race.

  “Here we go,” Harriet said, opening a door to our right. We stepped into the salon and were immediately swept up into the energy and confusion of the place. Harriet had arranged for me to have a manicure, hairstyle, makeup, and a massage. Leave it to her to pamper me when I wouldn’t have considered pampering myself. I tried to object, but before I knew it I was face down on a table in a darkened room with soft music and candles and a woman kneading beautifully into the small of my back.

  By the time my massage was over, I felt like a new person. As the stylist worked me over, I tried to center myself, thinking calm thoughts and practicing deep breathing. Finally, as I sat for my manicure, I looked out of the front window and at the Halston Court across the street. The apartment was on the tenth floor, and I tried counting the windows, up and then over, to find the correct apartment. At this time of day, I couldn’t see inside, of course, but I stared hard at those windows, wishing I could just march up there and confront Tom in private.

  We had a meeting scheduled at the office, however, so I would play this the way he wanted to. My list of questions was ready, and I was determined to achieve my objective, which was to get some tangible answers.

  By the time we were back in the office, I felt much better, and my hair and makeup and nails were simply meticulous. I hadn’t needed a cut or color, just a wash and style, but I loved the way they had blown it out, giving me a look that was stylish and sleek. Harriet had been right; at least I would face Tom with confidence.

  She and I were in her office, going over some last-minute items, when we both heard voices in the front of the small building. We looked at each other, knowing it was five o’clock. I felt as though the breath had suddenly been sucked from my lungs.

  “You are a talented, intelligent woman,” Harriet whispered sharply. “Any man on this planet would be lucky to have you. You remember that.”

  I tried to regain my composure, standing when Margaret appeared in Harriet’s doorway.

  “Callie, Harriet, we have some visitors,” Margaret said smoothly, though the vivid blush on her cheeks gave away her excitement. “They’re in the conference room if you’d like to step in and say hello.”

  “Visitors?” I asked. “Plural?”

  Margaret discreetly held up two fingers in front of her and then motioned with her head toward the conference room. Harriet and I rose and went to meet them.

  “Is there any lipstick on my teeth?” she whispered as we went, baring her teeth at me in a wide grimace.

  “No, you’re fine.”

  I let her walk into the conference room ahead of me, watching as two men stepped forward to shake our hands. One was a man of about 60 with silver-white hair and an air of quiet calm. He introduced himself to Harriet and shook her hand.

  The other was Tom.

  Our eyes met and held, communicating a thousand emotions in one instant: heartbreak, fear, pain, joy. Why did our love have to be so complicated?

  “Callie,” Tom said softly, nodding, and just hearing my name on his lips made me want to both slap his face and throw myself into his arms. Instead, I stepped forward and held out a hand, which he took and held.

  “This is Kimball Peterson,” he said to me, gesturing toward the silver-haired man. “One of my lawyers.”

  My pulse surged. A lawyer? Tom had brought along a lawyer?

  I pulled my hand from Tom’s and then shook the lawyer’s hand, though I had to force myself to make eye contact.

  “You know Harriet,” I said to Tom, gesturing toward my redheaded friend.

  Tom stepped forward, taking Harriet’s hand in both of his and giving her his warmest smile.

  “We’ve never met in person,” he said, “but I feel as though I’ve known you for years.”

  Harriet seemed speechless, and I nearly smiled as I looked on. I had warned her that Tom was handsome, but I think nothing could have prepared her for meeting him in person. There was something about him beyond his dark good looks, beyond the tall and muscular physique. Tom was a presence, generating something intangible in the air around him—something welcoming and approachable and sexy and exciting. I could see that his appeal had hit her full force.

  “Th-the pleasure’s all
mine,” she said finally. “I’ve been waitin’ to meet you in person for a long time.”

  “You are exactly as Callie described you,” he said.

  “You aren’t even close to—” Harriet stopped herself, clearing her throat. “Well, Callie said you were handsome,” she added. “But that’s kinda like saying the Grand Canyon is big.”

  Everyone laughed, even me, and I was grateful that Harriet was able to break the ice. Tom and Harriet chatted for a moment about the foundation, with him complimenting her work and her always-positive attitude.

  “Shoot,” she said, “I’m just lucky to have a job I love. Helping Callie give away your money is a real hoot.”

  “Well, you are definitely an asset here, and I’m glad we were able to meet in person,” Tom said, still talking to Harriet. “But don’t let us hold you up. Margaret either. Kimball and I will be meeting with Callie for quite a while. Please don’t feel that you need to stick around.”

  Harriet glanced at me, and I nodded my head.

  “It’s fine,” I said, my voice lost somewhere down in my throat. “You can go home.”

  “Actually,” she declared to the two men, “Margaret and I are going to dinner at the Red Rooster.”

  “We are?” Margaret said from the hall.

  “So we’ll just be around the block if you need us,” Harriet added, looking pointedly at me and then hustling out of the room. I could hear fervent whispers out in the corridor.

  Tom and I looked at each other until the whispers had faded away.

  “Something tells me she doesn’t trust us,” he said.

  “She’s a good friend,” I replied. “She’s being protective, I think.”

  He did not reply.

  “This is a nice conference room,” the lawyer said, ignoring the tension and moving toward the table. “Why don’t we make ourselves comfortable?”

  “Where’s Ms. Nelson?” Tom asked him.

  “She’ll be along in a minute,” Kimball replied.

  “Callie,” Tom asked, “were you able to put together a presentation about the foundation?”

  Heart pounding, I nodded. So this was it. Tom wasn’t closing the foundation down, he was merely closing me down by replacing me with some woman named Nelson.

  “May we see the presentation now?” Tom asked.

  “Why don’t we cut to the chase, Tom?” I demanded suddenly, trying to remember the resolve I had felt that morning in George’s office. “What’s really going on here?”

  Tom glanced at Kimball and then back at me.

  “Just bear with us,” he said. “You’ll understand in a little while.”

  “Are you firing me?”

  Tom’s head jerked back as if I had punched him.

  “Firing you? Of course not. What gave you that idea?”

  “You’ve got your lawyer and you’ve got some woman coming in. I assume she’s my replacement.”

  A silence settled between us, and then Tom moved closer. I thought he was going to hug me, but instead he simply moved his lips next to my ear and spoke. The feel of his breath on my skin was like an electric current jolting straight through my body.

  “Carole Anne Nelson is an NSA agent,” he whispered. “She’s coming here to sweep the room for bugs.”

  Four

  “This is the Greater Nashville Honor Guard,” I said, moving to the next image. On the screen flashed a photo of about 30 older men posed in front of a big American flag on the back steps of their veterans’ hall. The woman hadn’t yet shown up to sweep for bugs, so we were proceeding with the presentation while we waited, pretending as if nothing were going on here other than a simple business meeting.

  “These guys provide honor guard services for all funerals of veterans in their area. They play ‘Taps,’ give a twenty-one gun salute, the whole thing. It’s quite beautiful.”

  I moved to another image, showing about ten of those men standing at attention in a cemetery in the pouring rain, one of them with a bugle raised to his lips. This photo I had snapped myself, from a distance, and though the exposure was a bit dark, I thought it captured the somber mood of the occasion.

  “In their grant request, they asked for money for additional bugles and bugle lessons. We gave them five thousand dollars toward that end.”

  The next image appeared, a glossy ad from a car company.

  “They also requested better transportation to the various funerals they serve, so we bought them this new twelve-passenger van.”

  Kimball grunted appreciably, the first sound he had made since the presentation started.

  “These men were so sweet and grateful,” I continued. “They sent a few photos with their thank-you note.”

  I moved smoothly through the next ten or so images, snapshots the men had taken of themselves on board the van. Once they had decent transportation, they had expanded their services and now, besides performing honor guard duties at funerals, they also drove all over the southeast giving free patriotic presentations in elementary schools. Their smiles were so wide, you could feel their delight coming through the pictures.

  “And that was the grant we gave the Greater Nashville Honor Guard,” I said, clicking to a new screen showing the figures. “Total value, about thirty-five thousand dollars.”

  I moved on to the next charity, and then the next, describing each one in turn, including the focus of their operation, and how we were able to help them. Moving chronologically through time, I came upon the last big grant I had given out by myself to a group called MORE. At the helm of that group were the parents of my late husband. Tom had allowed me to give a whopping million-dollar grant to the charity the Webbers had created in Bryan’s honor.

  As I looked at photos on the screen of the MORE facility, the people, and the clients they served, I felt my eyes welling up with tears. Had that million-dollar grant been guilt money? Had Tom thought he could pay off the debt he owed the Webbers with dollars? Somehow, he was involved in the death of their son. Did he really think that any amount of money could make that up to them?

  The final grant was one that Tom and I had given out together a few weeks ago, a small amount to a friend of his who was raising money to send inner-city children to summer camps. I had culled a few images from their website in order to include them in the presentation.

  “And this was the grant we gave to Kamps for Kids,” I said, blinking away my tears as I clicked to a new screen showing the figures. “Total value, almost fourteen thousand dollars.”

  I clicked to the final screen, the one that summarized everything, showing the total amount of grants we had given out since we first started. Truly, the figure was stunning: Since opening our doors three years ago, the J.O.S.H.U.A. Foundation had given away 57 grants totaling almost 16 million dollars.

  Incredible. I didn’t know why Tom had asked me to pull all of my work together into this one single presentation, but I was so glad he had. Seeing all we had accomplished since we started was truly a humbling thing.

  “Thank you, Callie,” he said as I turned off the projector light. “Not only was that an excellent presentation, but the work it represents is commendable.”

  “It’s your money, Tom,” I said, as I always did. “Giving it away is the easy part.”

  I turned around to flip on the lights, surprised to see a woman standing there in the room, leaning against the doorframe.

  “Oh!” I said, blinking in the sudden brightness. “You startled me.”

  She stepped into the room and thrust out a hand. She was tall and striking, with spiky blond hair that made her seem even taller.

  “Carole Anne Nelson,” she said. “Glad to meet you.”

  “Carole Anne,” Tom said, rising and coming around the table. “Thanks for coming.”

  “I didn’t want to interrupt your little slide show there,” she said. “It looked like you were almost done.”

  She reached into the hall for two suitcases and then brought them over to the table and opened them up.
Inside was the equipment she would be using to sweep the room for bugs.

  “This could take a while,” she announced as she assembled one of the pieces. “If you want to move into another room, I’ll call you when I’m finished.”

  Tom glanced at his lawyer.

  “I’ll stay here with Ms. Nelson,” Kimball said. “You two can go on ahead.”

  My pulse surged as we stepped out. Tom pointed toward his office down at the end of the hall, so we went there.

  His office was fairly large but modestly decorated, with a simple desk and chair at one end and a couch and coffee table at the other. It was also so rarely used that it felt stuffy when we stepped inside. Fortunately, it was at the end of the building and had two big windows along the back wall. We worked to get them open, feeling the warm May breeze sweep into the room as soon as we did.

  “I don’t know why you won’t take this end unit for your office,” he said, gesturing for me to have a seat on the couch. “It’s so much bigger than yours, and it has these windows. You’ve got nothing but a wall.”

  I sat on the couch, thinking how absurd the moment was. With all that was going on, we were conversing about who used which office as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

  “I’m rarely here,” I said finally. “I don’t need much.”

  “I’m here less than you are,” he said. “So I need even less.”

  He hesitated before sitting, and I could feel his mind working. Should he sit next to me? Pull out his desk chair from behind the desk and roll it over here? Finally, he lowered himself onto the wooden coffee table, facing me, the front of his knees barely an inch from mine. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, catching me in the intense gaze of his eyes that I knew so well.

  “So how are you doing, Callie?” he asked me in a soft voice.

  I just stared at him, wondering where to begin. How was I doing? How did he think I was doing?

  “It takes a lot of nerve to sit there and ask me that question,” I said after a moment, surprised by the anger I could hear in my own voice. Speak the truth in love, I reminded myself. Speak the truth in love.