That's Not My Suitcase

by Laina Turner

  That’s Not My Suitcase

  Sterling Towne decided to take a last minute vacation to a sunny paradise to cheer herself up after a divorce. When the airline misplaces her luggage, she thinks it's just a typical airline snafu until she gets her luggage back only to find out it’s not hers. Rather the suitcase belongs to someone who thought it a good idea to transport a gold Buddha statue via commercial airlines.

  Sterling turns the statue into hotel security for safe keeping but then her room is ransacked, and she’s sure there was someone following her in town. Does the owner of the statue think she still has it? But if so, why not just ask? She’s getting nervous, and even her new friend Steve thinks she might be in danger.

  Is she? Or is her imagination just working over time?

  THAT’S NOT MY SUITCASE

  Laina Turner

  Sterling’s Story

  Chapter 1

  Holidays suck!” I said, slamming down my cup of coffee and causing it to slosh over the sides, but not caring. I was too annoyed to care.

  Nadine, my best friend, calmly grabbed a napkin, picked up my cup and wiped up the spill, which was slowly rolling its way toward her and her winter white pants. I rarely wore that color because I could never stay stain free the way she could. Even when I wasn’t slamming down my coffee.

  “Holidays don’t suck. It’s the expectations society forces on you that suck. Don’t let society pressure you to conform to their standards,” she said in her easy manner.

  “Well then, society’s expectations suck,” I said with a smile. Nadine was right and I did love the holidays, usually. With the food, the beautiful decorations, the parties, and the shopping for just the right gift, it had always been one of my most favorite times of the year. Though, the way it was looking, I wouldn’t be invited to any of my normal parties this year and I certainly wouldn’t be having one of my own. Mutual friends sometimes had a hard time knowing what friend to stick with during situations like these.

  I hated to admit it, but right now, I was bitter. For the past year I had tried not to be. Had tried to not let my life falling apart affect me but it was hard. I was still so angry at Brian, my now ex-husband, because of the way he handled the whole leaving me and ensuing divorce situation.

  After 22 years of marriage and two kids, Brian came home one day about a year ago and announced he had met someone and was leaving me. I was completely blindsided.

  Granted, I knew we had our share of problems. What couple didn’t after being married that long? But his proclamation that he hadn’t loved me for years and instead had been carrying on a four-year affair with a colleague at his financial planning office took me by surprise. Actually, surprise was an understatement. It was full out shock. I still had a hard time believing the last years of our marriage were a sham. That the entire time he had been pretending and playing happy family man, he had been carrying on with another woman. I mean, what kind of man did that? I had been so shocked and angry when I told him that I’d thrown the coffee cup I’d been holding, just missing his head. Lucky for him I was never a good shot. I wouldn’t have thought in a million years this would happen to me.

  This had all taken place just before Christmas last year. At the time, I was devastated at his timing. That he’d ruined my holidays. But then who was I fooling, no time of the year would have been any less traumatic to have this bombshell dropped on me. So this would actually be my second sucky Christmas, though even I had to grudgingly admit I was in a little better emotional place this year and did have seeing the kids to look forward to.

  My two kids, Jaime and Joanna, were both in college. They had been Brian’s excuse when I asked him why he waited four years to kick me to the curb. He’d said he didn’t want to disrupt the family when they were in high school. He’d actually used that word, disrupt. Like he felt he’s ripping apart our family was a mere disruption. I didn’t think divorce was easy, no matter the age of the kids, but with them being off to college now, I couldn’t help but feel a little robbed of the last few years of my life where I was living a lie and just hadn’t known it.

  This morning I had been in court, going through the last steps of finalizing my divorce. Nadine was with me, being my divorce attorney and not just my best friend. It was the first time I had seen Brian in months. I guess an upside to not having small children was there were not many reasons for us to interact. Though it still hurt to see him, much more than I had anticipated.

  Here was a man I had spent half my life with and essentially, he was a stranger to me. He had done things I hadn’t ever imagined him capable of. And I thought we were going to spend the rest of our lives together. I felt very betrayed and stupid for not seeing what had been happening right under my own nose.

  “I wonder if I should call the kids and let them know. I mean they knew about the court date and all, but is there something I should say to them now that it’s official?”

  “I wouldn’t call them right now,” said Nadine. “If it comes up when they’re here, you can discuss it of course, but I don’t see any reason to bring up such an unpleasant topic on the phone. Especially with the holiday.” Nadine glanced at her watch. “Listen, Love. I wish I could stay and watch you throw more coffee around but I have a deposition to get to.”

  “I need to get back to the office, too. Maybe it will help me take my mind off things.”

  Nadine frowned. “Honey, why push yourself? Take a few days off. Hell, take the rest of the year off, you deserve it. It’s December twelfth. Not much is going to happen besides the sucky holidays,” she said smiling, trying to get me to laugh.

  It worked, at least for a few moments. We both stood and hugged.

  “Call me later,” she said. “I want to make sure you’re not drowning your sorrows in a box of wine.”

  “I’m planning on springing for an actual bottle for this special occasion.”

  We walked out and went our respective ways. My office was just a few blocks from the coffee shop so I decided to leave my car and walk back. It would give me some time to clear my head. Though, after one block of walking in twenty-degree weather, I wasn’t so sure it had been a great idea. The mid-west in December was cold. Even when the sun was shining.

  Teeth chattering, I increased my pace and soon made it to the building that housed Sterling Creations. I was as proud of it as I was my children. I jokingly called it my mid-life crisis baby. Walking into the lobby of the small building that held two offices, I looked at myself in the decorative mirror above the small table. The reflection that stared back at me was a face I thought wasn’t half bad for mid-forties. Chestnut-colored, shoulder length hair with a few strategically placed highlights that my stylist had talked me into, brown eyes a little smaller than I would have liked, but they were at least framed with decent eyelashes helped along with extend-a-lash mascara. My face was red from the cold, but I wasn’t ugly. Was I? Is that why Brian had left? Because he wanted younger and prettier?

  Normally, I was a confident woman but Brian’s leaving me for someone fifteen years younger with a body which had never been through childbirth had been a big blow to my self-esteem. I could feel tears springing to my eyes but before the waterworks could get a good start, I was interrupted by my part-time employee, Cathy. Thank goodness for her timing. I certainly didn’t want to have a meltdown.

  “Is everything OK?” she asked, looking concerned. She knew I had court this morning and finding me teary-eyed in the lobby probably made her wonder if I was upset over my divorced being finalized.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Just walked here from the coffee shop and boy, that wind is cold.”

  “I came down to see if the mail had come, but I don’t see it.”

  The mailman left our mail
on the table down here instead of climbing the one flight of stairs to our office but we didn’t mind. It gave us an excuse to make an extra trip up and down the stairs. Exercise I needed desperately these days.

  I had gained ten pounds in the last year trying to comfort myself with food and wine, and I was down to a very few items in my wardrobe that still fit. I wasn’t about to buy new clothes in a bigger size, so I needed to stop the pity eating and get back to a healthier lifestyle. Like one where I worked out a few times a week and didn’t stuff my face with pastries and nachos before I was reduced to wearing yoga pants every day.

  When we got back up to the office, I sat at my desk and opened up my laptop to see what emails had come in and what fires needed putting out. Normally the not so fun part of my job right now. They would be a welcome distraction. I liked, no make that loved, my business and had been grateful more than once that I had it to focus my energies on in the last year. It had taken my mind off my personal life by giving me something better to obsess over.

  Sterling Creations was a custom stationery boutique. I had married Brian right out of college and had never used the teaching degree I graduated with. I had spent the bulk of the last twenty years being a wife and mother but a few years ago, when both kids were exerting their independence and didn’t need me so much, I looked for things to do to fill my time.

  Nadine had a client who taught graphic design at the local community center. Basically, it was a Design for Dummies class. She encouraged me to try it, saying it would get me out of the house a few hours a week and he needed more students so it was a win-win. I figured what the hell, I didn’t have anything better going on and I had always enjoyed artsy crafty type things.

  When I walked into class that first day and realized graphic design meant design on a computer, I almost turned around and left. I was computer illiterate and just thought I was taking some kind of art class.

  As I was about to walk out, Chris, the instructor, walked over to me and convinced me to stay. He had been very encouraging and I was as embarrassed to leave as I was to stay. But boy, was I glad I did. According to Chris, I had a natural aptitude for design, which I thought was crazy at first but once I got over my fear of technology, I found I loved it. I had never thought of myself as creative before. I started to find myself waking up in the middle of the night to jot down ideas and getting really into what I was doing. After much trial and error, I found what I enjoyed most was creating custom stationery, invitations and that sort of thing. Items I felt had gone by the wayside in the current day of the evite. Technology made customization more affordable, and who didn’t love old fashioned note cards? I started making things for friends as practice and soon started getting requests. It wasn’t until my neighbor’s cousin, Lisa slipped me a fifty for ten custom-designed invitations for her five-year-old’s birthday party that charging had even entered my mind. When I protested saying she didn’t need to pay me, and certainly not that much, she lectured me on how much having this done would cost her somewhere else and fifty was a bargain.

  When she left, her fifty stashed away in my purse, I sat down at my computer and started to search for companies that did professionally what I was doing for fun. I was shocked to find she was right. People were out there charging a ton of money for this. Some weren’t even as good as mine, I thought. I was thrilled thinking I had finally stumbled on to something I enjoyed, was good at, and could be a viable business. Something to work on as the kids continued to get older and do their own thing.

  I had tried bringing it up to Brian that night at dinner and he had blown me off, saying if I wanted to make my little crafts on the side that was fine but it wasn’t something to make a living at. So I dropped it. Normally, his negative attitude would have drained my enthusiasm but something had been different that time. Instead, I just didn’t talk to him about it and didn’t give him the chance to ruin my fun.

  In hindsight, that’s how our entire relationship had been. All about him; anything that I cared about was stupid or silly, and he didn’t care to pay attention. I realized I had always accepted it thinking that’s what a wife and mother did.

  When he had announced he wanted a divorce, I had quickly demanded he give me money to start my own business. It had just popped in my head but as soon as it came out I realized I really wanted it. I wanted something to call my own. So I told him that after spending half my life doing what he wanted me to, he owed me that. In an uncharacteristic moment of guilt, I assumed, he acquiesced and gave me the money to get started and for the first year’s expenses. Money, Nadine had argued in the divorce petition, that he had given as a gift and shouldn’t count against other money owed in the split. Brian hadn’t been happy about that but it was too bad because the judge had agreed; definitely a winning moment for me in the whole ordeal. While I hadn’t received an upfront amount of money in the divorce I was lucky that if I was careful I’d have enough to live on for a while as my business continued to grow and turn a profit.

  I had thrown myself into starting Sterling Creations and it had definitely helped me better cope with the demise of my marriage. I had been too busy and excited about being a business owner to worry as much about what Brian was doing and why he left.

  Now a year later and six months of being an official business, Sterling Creations was actually making some money, not a profit yet, but some money.

  I may now be a divorcee, but I was a proud business owner and that was something to be happy about.

  Chapter 2

  Later that night, I was enjoying my nightly glass of wine and channel surfing. I didn’t see why I paid for fifty channels only to have nothing to watch and had thought more than a few times of canceling the service. It seemed such a waste but there were channels the kids liked, so I hadn’t yet done it. Though the kids were rarely here anymore so it didn’t make much sense.

  I thought about what Nadine said earlier today. Maybe I should get away. The kids would be gone after Christmas and business would be slow, so what was keeping me here? A big fat nothing. Maybe I did deserve a vacation. It would be the first vacation I’d ever taken alone and that was scary, but maybe it was just what I needed to claim my independence.

  The more I thought about it the more I liked the idea. So I went and got my laptop, bringing it back to the couch and started Googling all-inclusive vacations. If nothing else, it might be fun to look since there wasn’t anything to watch on TV. Once I got over the thought of traveling over the holidays, rather than having a family event at home, and seeing all these beautiful tropical places I began to get excited over the prospect of leaving the wintery mid-west for a tropical paradise, though the price of some of these places were enough to dampen my enthusiasm.

  About an hour later, I finished checking my selections and charged an amount I didn’t even want to think about to my Visa card. It had made me pause for a minute to ponder the responsibility of spending all that money on a vacation rather than saving it, but in the end I rationalized that I deserved it after the year I had had.

  Closing the lid to my laptop, I wondered if the finality of the divorce had sent me completely over the edge of my sanity. I had just spent five thousand dollars, which was a huge amount of money to me, on a ten day vacation to Bimini in the Bahamas. What was I thinking? Maybe that was the issue, I wasn’t, and maybe for once I didn’t need to.

  “It’s only money,” Nadine said. I had called her on my way to work the next day as I was having significant buyer’s remorse for my non-refundable purchase and had just finished telling her what I had done.

  “Easy for you to say. You’ve got a good job and a great husband,” I retorted. “You’re not losing your mind and taking vacations you can’t afford with a new business and no steady income.”

  “Your business is doing great and you have no reason to worry.”

  “But I spent savings. What would Dave Ramsey think? What if I have an emergency? The business is still so new, anything can happen. What if people stop wa
nting custom stationery?” I knew I was being overly dramatic, but I was in definite freak out mode. I wasn’t normally an impulsive person or a huge risk taker and the thought of being short on money filled me with dread.

  “Listen to me, Sterling. You need to get away, recharge, and come back refreshed and ready to kick ass. You’ve done nothing but work to try and avoid your feelings since you started Sterling Creations. You need to deal with your emotions and not push them aside by burying yourself in work, or one day you’ll have a breakdown and that will really cost you. Honestly, this could almost be considered a business expense because if you don’t get yourself in a good place and do have a breakdown, your business will suffer.”

  She was right, of course. I sighed and told her as much and then said, “Do you have a way to rationalize spending money on new clothes?”

  Nadine laughed. “So when do you leave?”

  “The morning of the 26th and I will be back Jan 4th. Hopefully a new woman for my money. That’s such a long time to be gone,” I started to fret again. “What if I’m making a mistake being away from my business?”

  “It’s the right decision! Cathy is more than capable of running things in your absence. Now stop second guessing and being a negative Nelly. I need to jump off but let’s chat tonight. I want all the details of this glorious vacation so I can be sufficiently jealous.”

  “Sounds good.” I hung up, and a few moments later pulled into the parking lot behind my building.

  I was hoping that Cathy was as positive about my trip as Nadine, since I would be dumping almost ten days of work in her lap. Though there probably wouldn’t be too much going on during that time frame. Most people would be spending their time with family, not thinking about stationery. My original plan had been to take some time when things slowed down over the holidays to do some business planning for next year and that was something I could do in Bimini. In fact, I might even be more creative in planning on a nice sunshiny beach rather than here in the cold mid-west winter.