“Such as?” Pat said.
“I appreciate it, I do, but I still need to really think about if it’s right for me and the shop,” I said, hovering half-standing.
“Why wouldn’t it be? I’ve seen your tax records; you don’t get paid much right now. This would dissolve your debt and put you ahead, it would offer job security for three years.” His bright gaze bored into mine.
I sat back down, forcing myself to hold his gaze. “Thank you, but I actually don’t have anything to sell right now. There’s a judgment lien on my business, and until I talk to the lien holders, I can’t make any decisions.”
“I am the lien holder,” Pat said.
“What… what did you say?” I whispered.
“I own the lien on your business. Timepiece is also my company.”
I jumped out of my chair and it tumbled to the floor. I stared down at him, unable to tear my gaze away from his. “What the hell is wrong with you?” I asked, fighting to keep my voice down.
Silence engulfed the room. Mark and Nicole stared at me with a mixture of confusion and shock. Pat’s expression bordered between concern and annoyance.
“Jamie—”
“Don’t say my name like you have a right to say it to me—like a friend would. You came into my shop every day, talked to me every day… what is wrong with you? What? Were you spying on me?”
He pushed the employment contract toward me. “Put past grievances aside here…” he touched his chest, “I have, and—”
“I would rather die than work for you,” I said.
“That’s a little dramatic.”
“You want to know what’s dramatic?” I asked, putting a hand on the table and leaning forward. “What’s dramatic is having your husband die and being sued for three million dollars three days later.”
“I actually sued for eight million dollars but the estate was only worth three,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “The three million didn’t even compensate Timepiece for half of the damage your husband did.”
“But you didn’t sue my husband. My husband is dead. You sued me!” I exclaimed.
“I sued the estate during probate, it was well within the law,” he said.
“And you exercised every loophole of the law to ensure you got everything. You didn’t just take Logan’s half, you took every single penny me and my daughter had. Every penny I had earned from years of working my ass off,” I said.
“You kept the business,” he said, his brows lifting.
“In name only, and only if I paid off two million dollars in fifteen years,” I said.
“Which at your current profit rate, you could do in ten and a half years. If anything, I’d say you thrived in this adversity.”
“Thrived?” I spat. Shaking my head, I leaned down and righted the chair. I looked back to Nicole and said, “Is the offer still available if I don’t join the company?”
She glanced over toward Pat, then back at me. “I’m sorry, no.”
“Alright, I’m going to have to turn down your offer. Thank you for your time,” I said.
“You’re making a mistake, Jamie,” Pat warned.
“I hope you enjoy the furniture my father made my daughter for her birthday,” I spat. I walked out of the room, wiping hot tears from my face.
Day Four: Nine-Fifteen
“Jamie.”
I turned to find Mark jogging toward me.
“I am so sorry, Mark. I just ran out of there not even thinking of you,” I said.
“Perfectly understandable,” he said, catching up. “I’ll walk you out of the building.” He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket.
“Thank you, but I’m fine.” I held up my sleeve, and the wet spot on it.
He walked me past the reception desk to the bank of elevators. We were silent as we rode down the elevators and crossed through the bright reception atrium, and as we walked all the way through the parking lot to our parked cars.
Mark stopped in front of his car. He pulled a business card out of his pocket.
“He gave me this to give to you, I can dispose of it if you’d like,” he said, handing it over.
“Thank you, but I’ll take it for my voodoo doll,” I said, reaching for it.
His face remained impassive as he said, “I am assuming you no longer wish to discuss your lien with Timepiece. I had thought it odd that they were located in the same business park.”
“The fuck?” I said, looking down at the card. “Pat gave this to you?”
“He did,” Mark confirmed.
“He is sick. There is something seriously wrong with that guy!”
“I’m not going to argue with you there,” Mark said.
“Ugh, this makes me so mad!” I looked up at Mark. “You’ve been so generous with your time, but can I ask you one more favor?”
“You can,” he said.
“Timepiece is a finance company?”
“Accounting and finance placement,” he said.
“I’m going in there,” I said.
“Why?” he said.
I turned the card around. “Pat’s full name is Patrick Kelly Sr. Just so happens that another Patrick Kelly—a young, blond, good-looking dad of one of my daughter’s friends has been asking me out lately. I actually spent the weekend hanging out with him.”
“I’d recommend you don’t go in there. This company has already sued you once; they could file charges against you if you act in any way aggressive or threatening toward Patrick Kelly Jr. in his place of employment.”
“I’m not going to do either, all I’m going to do is go in there and say hi. I just want him to know I know and I’m not doing it over the phone,” I said.
“I’m sorry, Jamie. You’ll have to this on your own, though I strongly recommend against it,” he said.
“I understand. Thank you for all your help,” I said.
“Just between you and me, I think what that man did to you and your family was very wrong under the circumstances. However, I think that what he’s doing now, with this offer—which he has not rescinded—could have motivations your anger is blinding you to.” He turned to unlock his car. “And with that, I will leave you.”
“Thank you, Mark,” I said, stepping back so he would have room to back out.
I got into my car and pulled out my phone, searching for Timepiece’s location. I clicked on the address, and pressed the button to have my phone direct me.
“Turn left onto Sea Breeze Way,” the mechanical voice said.
I followed the directions past five more identical buildings, to yet another identical building. I parked in the back of the lot and again stared at the business card.
“Fuck him,” I said, grabbing the stack of papers I’d placed on the passenger seat and climbing out of my car.
After crossing the lot, I entered an almost identical atrium, though in this building, the interior walls were covered in a green, grassy substance. A plaque on a nearby wall declared it to be ‘Green Art’. The area smelled fresh, rather than dirty or mossy.
I walked up to the security personnel lady sitting behind a similar desk as the building I had just left.
“Hello,” I said to her. “Patrick Kelly Sr. asked me to go over some paperwork with a tax attorney of the same name… I think it was in this building.” I held out the business card so she could see Patrick Kelly’s name and the cell phone number he had handwritten under it.
“Yes, you’re in the right building. And you’ve already been given a guest pass and been entered into our system?” She leaned forward to squint at my name tag through thick glasses, giving me a clear view of her neat gray bun.
“Yes, the other guard registered me,” I said.
“Alright, go ahead in. Top floor…” she typed into her computer, then said, “Suite five fifteen.”
“Thank you,” I said, heading to an elevator at the side of the atrium. A man in gym clothes got on the elevator with me, getting off at the third floor. I rode to the fif
th floor alone, finding an entrance room very similar to the one in the Harrington’s building, though there were large photographs of seemingly important people rather than free-standing wall hangings.
I gave the twenty-something male receptionist the same story, showing him the card. “He’s actually expecting me, his father called him,” I said.
“Your name?” the receptionist asked, his focus on the screen.
“Jamie Scott,” I said.
He typed into his computer. “You are in our system as a guest of Harrington Company,” he said.
“Yeah, I had a meeting with Nicole Murphy and Patrick Kelly Sr. They made an offer on my business. But Timepiece has a lien on my business, so I—”
“Oh, was it your attorney that called this morning?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
“I’ve already cleared the meeting with another team member in accounting, but you say that Mr. Kelly asked you to speak to Patrick Kelly Jr directly?” he asked.
“Yes, he told Patrick that I’d be here in a couple of minutes,” I said.
“Okay, go ahead back to suite five fifteen,” he said.
“Thanks,” I said, walking through the frosted glass door, this one with the Timepiece logo on it. I read the plaques beside each door until I saw, ‘Suite 515: Patrick Kelly, JD, Senior Tax Manager’.
I stepped through the open door to a small fore-office with a single desk and a young woman sitting in front of it. She didn’t look up as I approached, her focus pointedly on her cell phone in her lap.
I glanced at Patrick’s office door, then back the way I came. Closing my eyes, I shook my head. On an exhale, I turned back the way I had come walking toward the office door.
“Can I help you?”
I turned to see the receptionist looking up, her short, multi-colored hair sticking out from her face in all directions as if she’s just stuck her finger in a light socket.
“Are you looking for someone?” she asked.
“I was, but I think I changed my mind. Sorry to bother you,” I said.
I turned back to exit the small office when I heard the door behind me open and Patrick say, “Jamie?”
I spun slowly until I faced Patrick.
His brow was furrowed into a look of confusion until the expression fell away. His shoulders dropped slightly. “Oh,” he said.
I licked my lips, and looked the other way. “Could I talk to you for a second?” I asked.
“Yeah, um…” he stepped back into his office, “Come on in.”
I stepped into his space, taking in the floor-to-ceiling view of a park ending abruptly to overlook the ocean. I took a seat at his desk, glancing between his photos of Kay: Kay as a baby, laughing in a posed photo with him, Kay on a swing set, Kay spinning in a tutu.
He didn’t sit in his desk chair; instead he stood with his profile to me, facing the wall.
“So this was some sort of corporate espionage thing? And just for the record, that sounds way cooler than what you did.”
“What did my father say to you?” he asked.
“He wants me to work for him under a three-year contract; he offered to buy my shop, offered more than it’s worth by a hundred thousand…”
“You should do it,” he said.
“Why? So I can get my very own ‘Welcome to the Company’ cake?”
He turned with a grimace on his face. “I really don’t think he’s trying to make you his slave. What I said to you—that was about my relationship with him. Not about the way he treats his employees.”
I huffed out a laugh. “Just some advice; the barbeque was completely overkill. I was planning on selling the shop to Harrington’s before I realized who was behind the offer. You could have saved yourself a small fortune in beef. Free advice for next time,” I said, getting up out of the chair.
“The barbeque wasn’t about my father’s offer,” he said.
“Yeah, whatever. I thought coming up here and rubbing your face in the fact that I know who you really are and what you were really doing would feel satisfying, but it doesn’t. This just feels sad… and disgusting. I’m going to go. I guess I’ll see you around Coral Elementary. Yay,” I said, dryly.
“I’d like a chance to explain,” he said.
“I don’t really need an explanation. I barely even know you. I just don’t appreciate the falseness of what you were doing. It’s funny, because my sister warned me about you and your family and I totally dismissed it.”
“We weren’t being false,” he said.
“You didn’t know who I was when you asked me out? You didn’t know that your company took everything from me?” I asked.
“I knew,” he said.
“That’s what I thought. Oh, and since you started working here three months after you got divorced two years ago, you were working here while your company sued me. See, I might not have gone to college, but I can do the math. You were probably even part of the legal team, weren’t you?”
He sucked his lower lip into his mouth and let is slowly roll out from behind his teeth. “Only in an advisory capacity,” he said.
“You knew who I was when they sued me?” I asked.
“No. I found out a month later at that school board meeting. I’d seen you dropping off Sarah in the mornings before that, but I never knew your name.” He paused to run a hand through his blond hair. “I found out and I… used it against my father. I was very angry with him at the time. I’ll be honest, I told him to hurt him, not to help you. I threw it in his face that after all his speeches about making the world a better place he had just beggared a new widow who had a child with autism.”
“You used my child’s diagnosis as your weapon against your father?” I asked, blinking at him and shaking my head.
“I’m not proud of it, but yes, I did. I found out that he was barely familiar with the case, he’d just been briefed about the accident, then on the financial aspects and the repayment plan acceptance.”
I didn’t respond, just stayed standing and staring at Patrick.
“All year he kept asking me about you—asking about Sarah, so I told him what I knew. I asked your friend Beza about you… not to tell my father the information, but because I was interested in knowing more. I also… I asked you out on a date for me, not to trick you into any kind of deal with my father. And, my brother and his wife don’t know any of this.”
After standing for a full minute, staring at him, I said, “Okay. Thank you for telling me what I hope is the truth. I don’t want to date you…” I shook my head, “Or be your friend. But I’m not going to confront you again or freak out on you, so don’t worry about that. I’ll be as friendly as I can be under the circumstances, but please don’t seek me out, especially at my work.”
“Jamie, I—”
“And no Pizza Arcade this evening, though I’m sure you could have guessed that one. I don’t even really like that place anyways.” I turned away from him, heading for his office door.
“If it makes any difference, this is the closest I have ever seen to my father admitting that he was wrong,” he said.
I grabbed the handle to his office door. “I’m really not interested in signing away three years of my life to ease his conscience.”
Day Four: Ten-twenty
No one stopped me or even looked twice at me as I left Patrick’s office and retraced my path out of the building. Across the parking lot, I climbed into my car and sat, staring out the window. The edges of my vision blurred as my eyelids grew heavy. My stomach growled at the same time a headache pounded in my skull. I blinked away the light, and found it difficult to reopen my eyes.
I closed my eyes and leaned forward.
The sound of people talking somewhere nearby had me shaking my head and opening my eyes. I felt sweat gathering in my armpits and behind my neck.
I blinked at the clock. It read twelve-ten.
“What the—?” I rubbed my face with my hands. “Oh, crap.”
Glancing ar
ound my car, I saw hordes of people dressed in business attire walking in groups to their vehicles. After a quick scan of the parking lot, I didn’t see Patrick.
Starting my car, I rolled down the windows, sticking my face out to take a few gulps of fresh air. Backing out of my space, I joined the traffic feeding onto Sea Breeze Way, and continued to stop and go all the way to the freeway entrance.
When I reached my apartment building, I circled the parking lot. A sigh of relief left me when I saw that all that was sitting in Clarke’s space was a puddle of oil. Circling around, I parked in my space.
Trudging from parking lot, I unlocked my house, relocked it on the other side, set my phone alarm for an hour later and passed out on my couch.
What felt like minutes later, I woke to an incessant beeping. “Get up, Jamie, go shower,” I whispered. But instead, I reset my alarm for thirty minutes later and passed out again.
On the second time waking up to my alarm, I forced myself up. Going into my room, I changed out of Beza’s pantsuit and into jeans and a ‘Flaming Lips’ T-shirt. My hair felt sweaty as I gathered it up the best I could into a ponytail.
Leaning forward, I washed my face. The cold water, followed by the coarse feeling of the towel, finally rid my eyes of the heavy feeling.
When I reentered the living room, my phone lit up with a text message.
Cameron: Did everything go okay today?
Me: Today was horrible.
Immediately the phone rang with Cameron’s smiling face lighting up the screen.
“Hey,” I answered.
“Hey, baby, what happened?”
“Turns out the potential buyer also owns Timepiece and is the lien holder on the Coffee Stop.”
“They were trying to screw you over?” he asked.
I sighed. “Not exactly, they were more trying to acquire me and Chris with the shop, but I have no interest in working for them.”
“I get that after what they did. Did they want you to keep running the shop?” he asked.
“They’ve been keeping careful track of our profits and I guess we’re outperforming them by a decent margin. They wanted me to be their general manager for the county, but I’d have to sign a three-year contract.”
The Fourteen Day Soul Detox, Volume Two Page 12
