by Lynn Rae
There was a buzzing noise followed by Roger saying hello to someone. She peeked up over the edge of the computer screen to see him talking on his phone. “Yeah. What? Really? Where?”
He scrambled for a piece of paper and wrote something down and then hung up his phone. “Guess what, folks? Someone took a picture of our head and put it on the Internet!”
“Where?” Shelly immediately grabbed for the piece of paper with one hand and beckoned for Emily’s computer with the other. “Emily, go to this website right now. What, is it a Facebook page?”
Taking the scrap and peering at Roger’s cramped handwriting, Emily typed in the URL as everyone gathered around behind her, crowding the corner. Dave and Roger stood at her left as Shelly pushed in at the back of the chair. Paul was on her right, six inches away from her and making her shaky. She glanced around, uncomfortable with the sudden press of people as Paul’s hand reached around and touched the edge of the keyboard.
“How about we move this to a better spot so we can all see? That okay with you, Emily?”
She nodded wordlessly, not daring to look at him as he slid the computer to the middle of the table. With a press of the Enter key, her search resulted in a brand-new page featuring a picture of the unattached head of the statue. She sucked in her breath, startled by how violent it looked. The sad eyes of the bronze man stared right at her, the dark patina of his face and hat marred at the neck by a bright gold slash where the saw blade had cut through the metal. A hand braced the head into an upright position, and there wasn’t much more visible in the picture.
“Dear, God,” Shelly muttered. Emily shook her head once and shivered when Paul’s hand rested on her shoulder. She wanted nothing more than to rise from her seat and press herself against him, but instead, she clenched her hands against the edge of the table. “At least no one’s dumped it in a pond like the police thought.”
“Is there anything written about it? A ransom note?” Paul asked, his deep voice so comforting it made her ache. She shook her head once to clear her distracted thoughts and looked at the screen. The page was titled, “Off With His Head,” and beyond a few comments below the picture, there wasn’t much information other than the page had been created a few hours before. It already had fourteen likes.
“I need to police to take a look at this.” Shelly snatched up the note. “Roger and Dave, get that money together. Emily, I want to see the webpage updated today and a press release in my e-mail by this evening. Paul, meet me over at the police station so I can get a ride home.”
Shelly gave her brother an intent look, and Emily wondered what was being communicated between the siblings. The older woman limped out of the room, and both Dave and Roger sighed.
“Would you look at that? They put it right up there for all to see.” Dave leaned closer to get a look, and Emily scooted her chair away, unknowingly pressing into Paul’s leg. Again, he touched her shoulder.
“Balls out bold,” Roger said. “Excuse my French.”
Emily decided not to react. With this new crisis, Shelly was apparently taking over the committee again, so her time serving would likely be cut short. She could endure a few more moments with Dave and Roger.
“You guys let me know when you need a check. Emily, we don’t want to keep you from your work,” Paul said, and she turned to look at him this time, hurt at his dismissal. All her frustration and upset came bubbling back. None of this was how her day should have gone. She’d been looking forward to leisurely morning sex with Paul, breakfast, and perhaps spending more of the morning together before coming to this meeting. But instead, she had new work assignments and regrets. Paul watched her, his mouth tight.
“Fine. Yes, that’s right. I have a lot to do.” Tearing her gaze from his, she focused at her computer screen. She couldn’t even think what to type first, the broken statue’s mute features depressed her almost as much as her current situation.
Roger and Dave shuffled around the conference table, bumping chairs as they went.
“Paul, you want to pony up some cash now?” Dave asked as he held out his hand. Roger paused in the doorway, his mouth twisted into a smirk.
“I’ll get you a check tomorrow.”
Emily heard the resolve in Paul’s voice and closed her eyes for a second. If only he’d stay behind and talk with her, let her know how he was feeling, and what had happened with his daughter after she’d left. Yet again, she wished she’d been brave enough to call him earlier, just to get a better understanding of what might be happening between them. Instead, she’d driven across the county and gone through a drive through to order a strawberry milkshake. Neither the calorie-ridden treat nor her tears had soothed her.
“Drop it by the office anytime. Hey, Rog, what do you say we hit Poppa’s bar and see if they’ve got the game on?” Dave’s voice faded away as he walked down the hallway, and Emily tensed. She was suddenly alone with Paul and didn’t know what to do.
The chair next to hers squeaked as he pulled it out and sat down. She stopped looking at the blank document on her computer and turned his way. He was staring at the floor, his hands clasped together in front of him.
“Emily, I’m sorry.”
She nodded and swallowed hard, her mouth dry. He raised his head and watched her with sadness. He sighed and glanced over his shoulder at the door. The hallway beyond was quiet, but there was no telling how long that would last.
“How are you?” He shook his head once and leaned her way, his hands perilously close to her own. “What a dumb question, you aren’t okay. You can barely look at me.”
“No, Paul, stop.” She reached out and touched his wrist, unable to resist her urge for contact any longer. As soon as she felt his skin, he curved his fingers around hers.
“I’m so sorry about this morning.”
“I know. I’m sorry, too.”
“You shouldn’t feel sorry about any of this. You didn’t do anything wrong.” He exhaled sharply and narrowed his eyes. “Tell me how you are, please.”
Tears prickled in her eyes, and she wished for some control. She’d already cried about this enough today. “A little shaky, but more worried about you. How’s Courtney?”
“I don’t know, she left the house soon after you, and she hasn’t called. Mike told me she’s showing a house this afternoon, so I’m heading over there after this. She’s posted some things online she shouldn’t have.” This last admission made her stare at him as her mind conjured all sorts of horrible scenarios. “Her friends have joined in. I don’t want you to see it, so don’t look even if someone sends you a link, okay?”
She nodded, the whole concept of cyberbullying taking on a new, more personal edge. Hopefully none of them knew her name. “You think it’ll die down after a while?”
“I hope so, especially if she doesn’t add any fuel to the fire. Her friends will move on to the next thing. I just need to communicate that to her, but I’m not sure how to go about it.”
Emily didn’t want to advise him on how to deal with his daughter. After all, she’d been the cause of the drama. He laced his fingers with hers, and she gripped him tighter. “This is a big mess, isn’t it? What did your sister say?”
He leaned back and shook his head once. “Just about what you’d expect. I’m not her favorite brother at the moment.”
If Paul was on Shelly’s bad side, Emily didn’t want to consider what her status was with her boss. “What are we going to do?”
He shrugged and looked down at their entwined hands. “Anything we do is going to upset someone. My daughter is falling apart, my sister thinks I’m a fool, and I’ve put you in an awful position. I couldn’t have made this worse if I’d set out with a flow chart.”
It hurt so much to say it, but she knew she needed to give him an out. She’d pushed him too far, too fast, and she wasn’t going to cause him more grief with his family. She just had to be brave enough to say it. “Maybe we should ease back.”
Her throat tightened when Paul�
�s head swung up, and he stared at her with a frown. “Courtney’s going to adjust to this. Shelly promised she wouldn’t do anything, and she won’t make it difficult for you here.”
He sounded like he almost believed it. On her exceedingly limited acquaintance, Courtney didn’t strike her as very rational, and from what Emily knew about his sister, acceptance wasn’t a big part of her nature. Emily hadn’t even considered how challenging it would be to work with a supervisor, the mayor of an entire town, out to get her. She’d be in for barbed comments, assigned the worst projects, and have zero chance of retaining her job or even getting a recommendation. Paul was a good man, and she didn’t want to become a wedge between him and his family. She didn’t have the strength to put him through any more grief.
“Paul, please,” she said, swallowing back rising tears. “I don’t want to cause you or your daughter any more pain. She needs you, and I—”
“You don’t need me?” The quiet anguish in his voice matched what was roiling in her heart.
She sucked in a breath and glanced away from him to check the door, hoping no one was lurking outside and listening in. She lowered her voice and leaned his way, so anxious to find a way to be close to him. “Not if it’s at the expense of your family. I’m not worth it.”
“No, Emily—” Paul tightened his grip, and her chair rolled his way.
Despite the blood pounding in her ears, she heard a noise from the hallway and pulled back, gratified to see Paul blink a few times as he collected himself. Just as they disengaged their hands from each other, Shelly appeared in the doorway, her mouth pulled down in a slash of displeasure.
“What are you still doing in here? No, forget I asked, I said I wouldn’t. Emily, when do you think you’ll have that reward notice ready? Send the copy to me before you post it so I can check it over. The police said to use the regular city number for contact and the general e-mail.”
Emily nodded, careful to avoid looking at Paul as he faced his sister.
“Paul, come on, I need to get home, and you need to go see Courtney. People are going to be calling me, and I don’t want to get stuck here all afternoon.”
Shelly stared at her brother as he slowly rose, brushing his hands over his clothes. He collected his jacket from the back of a chair and gave his sister a pointed glance.
“I’ll call you later,” he said as he walked out the door, and Emily’s heart sank.
Nothing had been solved, nothing was better, and somehow, she felt worse now than she had since this terrible day had begun.
Chapter 8
“I’m about a block away, Mike.” Paul tried not to sound as irritated as he felt as he reassured his brother-in-law that he was indeed going to see Courtney. She was holding an open house at small, newish housing development on Palmer’s west side, and he hoped they could hash things out. The setup felt like a combination of a subtle sales tactic and family time, but at this point, Paul was willing to try. Courtney had been silent since the incident, other than her friends’ wild antics on Facebook. Paul would rather be calling Emily, but he knew he needed to wait until she was done with Shelly’s directives. He wanted to have uninterrupted time with her in the worst way, and that wouldn’t happen until he’d made an effort to mend things with his daughter.
He pulled to the curb in front of a grouping of traditional-looking, tan brick townhouses, stopping behind Courtney’s Prius. He couldn’t resist checking the registration tag of her car when he exited his car and was slightly mollified that she’d at least made her way to the Department of Motor Vehicles in the past week. There was a nice Laskey Realty sign poking out of the small lawn, and he double-checked the number on the door before he rang the bell.
Within a few seconds, the locks clicked and the door opened, with Courtney half-hidden behind it. Paul took a deep breath and resolved to be as mature as he could be about the situation.
“Hi, Dad. Uncle Mike just called and said you were on the way.” She gestured at the foyer behind her. “Come on in.”
Paul stepped inside the house, his shoes clattering on the bare tile of the entryway. The place was more spacious than it looked from the outside. A large living area with French doors leading to a patio stretched in front of him, with an open kitchen filled with shiny new appliances along the other. But he wasn’t here to look at a house.
“Courtney,” he said, caution making his voice sound strange in his ears. He didn’t know if he expected an apology, tears, or for her to ignore what had happened entirely. “Let’s talk about this.”
“I’m not sure what to say.” Courtney looked away as she shut the door behind her.
His impatience flared at her disingenuous statement. “You could explain why you reacted the way you did this morning. Other than the obvious.”
She flinched and pushed her hair over her shoulders as she walked toward the kitchen where color copies of the listing were fanned on a granite counter. “I don’t know.”
Not a good enough answer. “Then you need to figure it out pretty quick, unless you want me to make some observations.”
With a sigh, his daughter slipped around the counter and ran her fingers across its surface. “Dad, it was just such a shock. I didn’t need to see you that way, ever.”
“I never intended for you to see me that way.” That was an understatement. Not for the first time since that morning, Paul wondered how much of himself he’d managed to cover up. “So, we were both shocked and uncomfortable. I’m talking about how you treated Emily.”
Courtney threw her hands up. “Sorry, I wasn’t up to shaking Emily’s hand and pretending I didn’t see her naked on top of my dad.”
Paul nodded. “I realize it wasn’t ideal way to introduce someone to you.”
Courtney grimaced. “I don’t want to meet her.”
“Why not?”
“Why would I want to meet some hookup of yours?”
Paul was silent with shock for a moment. “She’s not a hookup. I’m insulted you think I, or she, would just hookup with someone at random.”
Courtney sighed and raised her eyes to the sleek, steel light fixture overhead. “God, Dad, I understand you have needs. I mean I saw your, you know. But I’m not interested in getting to know whoever you’re banging. It’s bad enough that I saw her naked.”
He had to recalibrate the daydream he’d had of inviting Courtney to lunch with Emily and him sometime this week. He also had to remind himself just because he wanted his daughter to be more repentant, it didn’t mean she was capable of awareness outside her personal bubble, at least not without a lot of pushing.
“Besides, I already know who she is. Aunt Shelly told me.” Courtney tossed this off and raised her chin. Of course Shelly had put two and two together and evidently told his daughter about Emily. How much she, and by extension her malicious friends, knew remained to be seen. “She’s not that much older than me, Dad.”
Paul hoped he hadn’t winced too much when Courtney parroted one of Shelly’s objections. He could hardly argue away the math, so he didn’t bother trying. Since Courtney seemed determined to be uncooperative, he decided to segue into another point. “Courtney, I’m sorry I lost my temper about the car and house keys. I handled it badly.”
Her eyebrows went up. “You did. It really hurt me when you took them away. Like you were getting rid of me.”
Paul swallowed. He’d really erred in his timing on that. Not only had Courtney been faced, very vividly, with the reality of another woman in his life, he’d also torn away some of her ties to him and by extension, her mother. Even though his daughter was an adult, she was still new at it and shaky on her foundations. Irresponsible friends and a deadbeat boyfriend didn’t help matters either.
“Courtney, I’m not getting rid of you. Never. I just felt disrespected in my house. That whole interaction was tough on everyone.” He stopped before he mentioned how hurt Emily had been, sure it wouldn’t go over well with Courtney. “How did that dent get in the car, by the way?”
She had the grace to blush. “It was parked, and when I came out, the dent was there. I didn’t run into anything, I swear. It won’t happen again.”
He waited a beat for her to offer to pay for the damages, but she picked up a stack of business cards and lined up the edges with a quick snap instead. He resisted his urge to agree it wouldn’t happen again, because she wasn’t driving his car for the foreseeable future.
“Courtney, I hope you understand, we’re both changing our lives. It’s been a long time since Mom died. You’re working hard, living on your own, and it’s time for me to live, too.”
She sighed and almost rolled her eyes as she scattered the cards along the countertop. “Dad, fine, have sex. Trust me, I’m never going to walk into your bedroom ever again, no matter how worried I am. You have no idea how sorry I am that I did.”
That might be as close as he was going to get to an apology. “Courtney, there’s another thing you need to understand about Emily and me—”
“You aren’t dating her, are you?”
Well, not technically since they hadn’t gone out to dinner or even lunch yet, but that wasn’t a detail she needed. “We’re involved and I care about her, Courtney. I’m only telling you this so you’ll understand why I’m really displeased about the comments you posted on Facebook.”
There it was, the meat of the issue. His daughter screwed up her face like she’d smelled something foul. “How did you see it? You don’t even like Facebook.”
“How I found out doesn’t matter. What you need to know is that some of the statements your friends made could be construed as threats.” He held up his hand to hold off her protests. “It doesn’t matter if they meant it or not, what matters is what’s been posted for all to see. You need to get them to cool it, Courtney. How would you feel if a bunch of people you didn’t know were writing things like that about you?”
“Nobody would, I’m not acting like a—”
