A Place Called Home

by Jo Goodman

  The Chronicle’s building was across town from Foster and Wyndham, but the nice thing about Pittsburgh’s golden triangle was that virtually everything was within walking distance. Mitch finished his meeting with the editor of the Sunday Forum section in record time, grabbed his jacket, and hurried out of the building. He stopped for flowers, bagel sandwiches, and Godiva chocolates, and still managed to make it to the ad agency by twelve-twenty.

  Mitch thought the receptionist regarded him and his bribes with something akin to pity when he told her whom he wanted to see, but she lifted the phone and called through to Thea’s office anyway.

  “I think she’s still in a meeting with the Blues,” she said. “You can have a seat and wait if you’d like. I’ll let her know you’re here as soon as she comes out. I can’t interrupt her, though.”

  “Couldn’t I wait in her office?”

  She hesitated. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” She looked from the flowers to the chocolates and then to him again. “I know I look young and impressionable right now, but I’m grooming for the office-dragon position.”

  Both of Mitch’s brows lifted. “They have one here, too?”

  “Yes, and she’s Ms. Wyndham’s admin assistant. So, even if you got by me with this sorry Hail Mary pass you’re attempting, she wouldn’t let you into the inner sanctum.” She pointed a bloodred acrylic-tipped nail at the chairs against the wall. “I promise I’ll tell—”

  “Hey, Tamika. Who’s this?”

  The beadwork in Tamika’s hair clicked softly as she swiveled in her chair and looked up. “Nice shades, Mr. Foster.”

  “Thanks.” He pushed them up a notch so they went from his forehead to the forefront of his receding hairline. “Your boyfriend?” he asked. “You need a long lunch?”

  “No, but that’s a nice offer. This is Mr. Baker. He’s asking to see Ms. Wyndham.”

  Mitch thrust the bagel bag into his left hand and held out his right. The flowers and chocolates were squeezed in the crook of his arm. “Mitch Baker,” he said. “I’m a ...” He hesitated, not certain how to describe himself in relation to Thea Wyndham. His eyes darted to the gold Godiva box and then back to Hank Foster. “I’m a penitent.”

  Foster laughed. “Then I hope you have shoes in that bag because flowers and chocolates aren’t going to cut it.” He put his hand in Mitch’s and gave it a firm shake. “Come on back. It’s all right, Tamika. I know who Mr. Baker is. I’ll show him to Thea’s office.”

  Mitch started to follow, paused, and planning for a future of needing favors from the dragon-in-training, he placed the flowers in her arms. Her smile was beatific.

  Watching the exchange, Hank Foster shook his head. As he led the way to Thea’s office, he confided, “You’ve done it now. Upset the delicate balance of power around here.” He pointed to the aging Valkyrie at the copier. “See her? That’s Mrs. Admundson. She’s been here longer than I have. This is her desk.” He tapped it as they passed.

  Without missing a beat, Mitch placed the gold Godiva box at the center of it.

  “Good. Détente is achieved. What do you have in the bag?”

  “Bagel sandwiches.”

  “Better give those to me. They’re pretty unimpressive without the flowers and the chocolates.”

  Mitch’s eyes darted to the wrinkled brown bag he was still clutching. It was hanging from his left hand like a game pheasant he’d shot down in the wild. He held it out to Foster who snatched it up before he could change his mind.

  “Thanks.” The CEO peeked in the bag. “I’m sure these will be great.”

  “No problem.” He stepped into Thea’s office empty-handed. “You think shoes would have been better?” They seemed too personal ... worse, cliché.

  Foster didn’t hesitate. “Six and a half, narrow. They have the added advantage that no one else around here can use them.” Grinning, he pushed the sunglasses back to the bridge of his nose. “Make yourself at home. She won’t be long.” He stepped out, shutting the door behind him.

  Rocking slightly on the balls of his feet, Mitch glanced around Thea’s office, eyeing the forest green leather sofa and chairs for comfort versus style. The top of her desk was clear of the detritus of the workday. There were no Post-it notes sticking to the blotter. No message slips impaled on a spindle. No uneven stack of reading to get through. It was also devoid of personal items. No picture frames. No business cards. No crystalline paperweights or executive toys. For Mitch, who hadn’t seen the wood grain of his desktop for several years, this barren landscape was a little frightening.

  Clearly, Thea Wyndham, the neat freak, had a seriously disordered mind. In the event she dusted for fingerprints, Mitch thrust his hands in his jeans when he began his tour. He looked over her bookcase but found most of the material was work related: designer and graphics magazines that he, in some cases, also subscribed to. There were large volumes of photography by Annie Leibovitz, Mary Ellen Mark, and Richard Avedon and collections that included Alfred Stieglitz and Pittsburgher Charles “Teenie” Harris. He marveled that her plants were all healthy and well tended. He wondered what she could do with the crinkly brown thing in the corner of his office that he kept watering out of a sense of duty.

  She had the latest generation of Apple’s MacBook Pro, but the lid was closed and he doubted she had any good games. He was tempted to try out the treadmill and relieved when the urge quickly passed.

  Except for some aromatic candles on a silver tray, the surface of her credenza was clear. When he leaned forward he could actually see his reflection. Amazing. He resisted a powerful urge to place his palms firmly on the polished top just to leave signs of life.

  He nudged one of the sliding doors below open with his knee. Hunkering down, he realized he’d hit pay dirt. Her sound system was a thing of beauty and her iPod was resting snugly in its dock. Mitch didn’t even try to resist. His hands were out of his pockets before he could consider any other course of action.

  Plucking the iPod from its nest, he began scrolling Thea’s playlists and discovered Ms. Wyndham had eclectic listening tastes: jazz, classical, country, rock, zydeco. Almost every musical genre was represented in her collection. She also had some guilty pleasures, else how could one explain Duran Duran and the show tunes? Mitch opened the On The Go playlist and found her exercise tunes. She’d downloaded or copied five decades of pop tunes, chosen it seemed for their relentless beat, not their lyrics, and certainly not their subtlety. Who was this woman?

  Mitch scrolled down to “Smooth Criminal,” set the iPod back in the dock, and hit play. In moments, from unobtrusive speakers throughout the office, Michael Jackson was asking Annie if she was okay. Grinning, Mitch slid the door to the credenza closed.

  Taking Hank Foster’s advice to make himself at home, he explored Thea’s wet bar, took a bottled water, and just as he was turning away, caught sight of the crumpled pink message slip in the sink. He would have left it there if he hadn’t seen the creased letters in his own name. Smoothing it out revealed that Thea had indeed received his messages. Circled in red ink was the notation that he had called three times. The fact that it had been relegated to the sink told him what she thought of it.

  Mitch’s fingers were in the act of closing over it when Thea Wyndham opened the door to her office. He noticed immediately that she didn’t stare at him in disbelief. That would have been a compliment. No, she stared at him as if he’d just managed to meet every one of her low expectations.

  He held up the wrinkled pink slip. “Checking out your unique message filing system.” He dropped it back in the sink, then casually raised the bottled water to his mouth. “Should I put this where I found it?”

  Thea stepped inside and shut the door behind her. Michael was singing. She wished he would ask if she was okay. “Would you mind turning that off?”

  “No problem.” Mitch opened the credenza and deftly returned the office to silence. Glancing over his shoulder, he asked, “Better?”

  Thea merely no
dded. Walking over to her desk, she placed the portfolio of sketches and copy ideas she was carrying on one corner. She turned to face Mitch, her arms crossed in front her, a posture that was not defensive but demanding. One brow lifted in a perfect arch. “You’re here because ... ?”

  “Because you didn’t return my calls.”

  “Most people would understand that meant I didn’t want to talk to them.”

  He shrugged. “There are alternate explanations, you know. Like you could have a head injury and forgot how to work a phone. Or been abducted.” His dark green eyes slid over her from head to heels. “It’s good to know neither of those things happened.”

  Thea felt a slight pressure along her jawline and realized she was actually grinding her teeth. There was probably a muscle twitching in her cheek.

  “Would you like something to drink?” asked Mitch. “There’s all kinds of bottled water here. Unless you’d like something with a little bite? Then I can pour a glass from the tap. No?” He took a swig from his bottle. “Scotch? Gin and tonic? Do people still do martini lunches?”

  “I don’t know about other people,” she said with credible calm. “I don’t.”

  “Hmm.” Mitch’s eyes dropped to the silver-plated letter opener lying perfectly parallel to her blotter. If only she would pick it up and plunge it in his throat. He wasn’t sure there was any other way to keep him from making more of an idiot of himself. She looked great; there was no getting around that. With her red hair and brilliant green eyes, she didn’t require extraneous splashes of color. She had an artist’s eye for style and a way of carrying herself that would make her look runway ready in a sweatshirt and jeans. The black designer suit she was wearing could have been a ball buster: long jacket, short skirt, and tailored for testosterone, but on Thea it just seemed casually feminine. The silky thing she had on underneath had the iridescent quality of mother-of-pearl. It had shimmered when she walked to her desk. Now that she was standing perfectly still, Mitch had to wait for her to take a breath to get the same effect. Figuring there was no sense in holding his own breath waiting for her, Mitch’s eyes went lower. It was a mistake. Thea Wyndham had a lot of leg and most of it was a silhouette in sheer black stockings. He tried not to think about what was holding them up, but that was all he needed to get the various possibilities firmly in focus. Thigh-highs? Panty hose? Garter belt?

  His mouth actually went dry. He took another long swallow from his water bottle before he set it down behind him. “Nice shoes.”

  Thea looked down at her feet. Except for an edge of patent leather piping around the vamp, this pair of black heels was very plain. Her eyes returned to Mitch and in spite of wishing that it were otherwise, she knew there was a trace of a smile on her lips. She leaned one hip against her desk. “Tell me again why you’re here,” she said. “The truth this time.”

  “I haven’t had ample opportunity to be a jerk today. Thought I’d come here and get it out of my system.”

  “I see.” Thea regarded him thoughtfully. “‘Jerk’ is putting it mildly.”

  “I was trying not to be vulgar.”

  “Don’t hold back on my account.”

  “It’s not entirely for you. I’m practicing because of the kids.”

  “Good idea.”

  Mitch sat on the edge of the credenza and stretched his legs in front of him. Picking up the empty water bottle, he rolled it lightly between his palms. “I’m sorry about last night, Thea. I shouldn’t have made that crack about the clocks and—”

  She lifted one hand just enough to cut him off. “I shouldn’t have called. It was stupid. I never thought about what time the kids would be in bed.”

  “The twins go down at eight-thirty,” he told her. “Emilie collapses between nine and nine-thirty.”

  “I’ll remember that,” she said quietly.

  Mitch nodded. He watched the water bottle he was still rolling absently for a moment. “I told them at breakfast that you called last night. They were pretty upset with me that I didn’t wake them up so you could talk to them. Case called me a butthead. Grant said I was a real butthead. Emilie told me I was a dicksmack.”

  Thea’s eyes widened. “A dicksmack?”

  “Pretty descriptive, don’t you think? I don’t know where she picked that up. I don’t think she’s considered what it means in the literal sense, at least I hope she hasn’t, but she managed to use the term in the right context.” Mitch’s expression conveyed a little of his sense of being overwhelmed. “I tried to correct her and not make a big deal about it at the same time. The twins were hanging on my every word.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Yeah. Tell me about it. One of them is going to call the other a dicksmack today in school, and I’m going to get called to the principal’s office. Mrs. Leone never liked me either.”

  Thea felt the corners of her mouth lifting again. “You might want to compliment her shoes,” she said softly.

  Mitch’s quicksilver grin touched his eyes. “That works?”

  “You’re still here.”

  He chuckled and actually felt a lightening in his chest. “Do you think you’ll come out this weekend? Maybe I shouldn’t have told the kids about your call. It raised their hopes.”

  “It’s all right. I want to see them. I would have called you tomorrow. I had designated today for being disagreeable and self-righteous. It generally takes twenty-four hours for me to get over myself.”

  Mitch pushed away from the credenza. He took the water bottle to the sink and set it down there. He saw the crumpled pink slip in the stainless-steel basin and smiled to himself. He was actually glad she hadn’t returned his calls. Some things were worth doing in person. Mitch turned back to her. “What time can you make it?”

  “Three? Four? I was thinking of just hanging out, then maybe dinner and a movie.”

  “That’d be great. Saturday, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “They’ll love it. And they’ve been wanting to see Easy Kills It.”

  A small vertical crease appeared between Thea’s brows. “I don’t think I’m familiar with—” Then she saw that Mitch was just a bit too serious, his mobile mouth a tad too straight. And surely those green eyes had never been so solemn. “This is a test, right?”

  “Something like that.”

  “I wouldn’t take the twins and Emilie to see something called Easy Kills It even if it did exist.”

  “Just checking.”

  Thea couldn’t work up to being offended. “Probably a good idea. As last night indicates, I’m likely to do lots of dumb things.”

  Mitch felt an unexpected surge of sympathy for her. Thea hadn’t made a casual, self-deprecating comment offered to elicit a laugh. She really seemed to mean it. “Kathy and Gabe should have given us a test.”

  Thea offered him a small smile. “It’s kind of you to include yourself, but I have a feeling you’re a natural at this parenting stuff.”

  “Are you kidding?” He rubbed his chin with knuckles. “This morning, I was a dicksmack.” Mitch saw Thea’s smile broaden slightly but he had the odd sense it was forced, as if she were already wondering what words the kids would find to describe her. “It’ll be fine, Thea.”

  She unfolded her arms and let her hands fall to her sides. Her gaze was direct but she could not quite keep the uncertainty out of her voice. “You’re not expecting anything to come of this ...” She saw him frown and let the end of her thought just drift away.

  “What do you mean?” he asked. “Expect what?”

  “I mean, if you think that encouraging me to visit will alter my decision to take Emilie and—”

  “Stop right there. We were having a decent discussion. Let’s not ruin it by taking up that topic.”

  “I just want to be clear that—” She stopped because he sighed. He jammed his hands in the pockets of his comfortably worn, brown leather jacket and simply sighed. His expression was almost wistful. “You’re right,” she said. “Let’s not ruin it.”
>
  One of Mitch’s brows lifted. The look he gave her was clearly skeptical.

  “I mean it,” she said. To prove it she changed the subject. “Have the children been back to the cemetery since the burial?”

  “Twice.” There was a note of caution in his voice. “You weren’t thinking of taking them there, were you?”

  “No!” She repeated the denial more softly. “No. I wouldn’t do that.”

  “It’s all right, if they ask,” he said. “But you have to be prepared for the fallout. My mother took them once after Case and Grant drew some pretty terrific pictures at school and wanted to show them to their parents. It was more of an emotional roller coaster for my mother and Emilie than for the twins—that is until Case and Grant saw their Nonny and sister crying.” Mitch worked the words out past the lump in his own throat as he remembered how quiet the kids had been when his mother returned them to the house. Feeling helpless and lost himself, he’d cursed Gabe and Kathy for running out on their children, just as if they’d had a choice in what happened. It was even harder when the twins seemed to sense his distress and crawled on the couch beside him, offering the comfort and warmth of their squirmy little bodies, while Emilie, solemn and adultlike prepared him hot tea in the kitchen. “I took them down this past Sunday after church. They had fresh flowers for the vases. There were some tears but a lot of laughter, too. I’m playing it by ear.”

  Thea could have said that was all very well for him, but she was tone-deaf. She remained silent, though, transfixed in part by the momentary brightness of his eyes. It might have been a trick of the light as he turned his head, but she didn’t think so. Her heart gave a peculiar lurch and then Mitch was going on and she listened hard to what he was saying so she didn’t have to think about the other.

  “You know Gabe and Kathy have plots in the Allegheny County Cemetery, don’t you? Not in Connaugh Creek. I don’t know why they chose there, but that’s what was in their papers.”