The Darkest of Shadows

by Lisse Smith

  She didn’t need to tell me twice. I rose, and without another word, I skipped off through the trees toward my favorite running track. It would be a long run today, a long, exhausting, freeing run.

  TEXT: Didnt go well.

  REPLY: Dont worry. Ur not ready.

  TEXT: Not sure i will ever be ready

  REPLY: Then dont picnic in the park…

  TEXT: ha ha. U so helpful.

  REPLY: Tell me about it…I should start charging you for all this counseling.

  TEXT: Add it to my tab.

  REPLY: U know I get double time when you text me after midnight which you do often!

  TEXT: Maybe one day i will get a hang of the time difference. But then maybe not. Night night.

  It took me longer than I thought to get over the emotions of Saturday’s lunch. I didn’t attempt to venture out of my apartment on Sunday; being around people would only aggravate me more. I settled on the lounge with one of my favorite books and read the day away while I listened to the sound of the rain falling outside my window.

  Sally didn’t mention our lunch on Monday morning, and neither did I; and I noticed that she also refrained from her usual morning commentary of whatever Liam had done to amuse her over the weekend. I was very good at pretending things didn’t happen; it was part of how I survived, how I continued to function alongside the normal people.

  “Good morning, beautiful ladies.” Ashlan’s voice echoed from inside his office.

  “Morning, Ashlan,” Sally and I echoed back, sharing amusement in our morning routine. Ashlan enjoyed keeping things light and delighted in bellowing his morning welcome to us.

  Patrick chose that moment to appear in the office. “Ash, my office,” he called through Ashlan’s open door; then, with a nod of welcome to me, he walked into his office. Ashlan, moving faster than I’d ever seen him, closed the door behind them both.

  Sally and I shared a confused look and returned to our own work. Patrick wasn’t usually that fierce in the morning; he normally would have stopped and had a chat with us before closing himself in his office for the first half hour of each day. He always took that time to get himself together, to sort through his e-mails and phone messages before the pressure of the day took over his attention. For him to call Ashlan into his free time was unusual and could only mean that something was wrong.

  “Sally, Lilly,” Ashlan interrupted us both when he stuck his head out Patrick’s door about a half hour later. “Could you both come in here, please?”

  Crap, this doesn’t sound very good. I followed Sally into the office and sat down in one of the chairs across from Patrick’s desk. Ashlan resumed his own seat, and Sally took the one remaining.

  Patrick looked unwell—sad, tired, and definitely not his usual self. “What’s wrong?” I prompted.

  “Harbour Industrial Park,” he said. I knew the place; it was a new major shipping development project we had started, a joint venture with another contractor out of Germany. The site was near Antwerp in Belgium and had a massive budget. It was one of our most promising investments.

  “There was an explosion last night, and six of our men were killed.” Patrick’s words left me shocked. “Most of them were our German colleagues, but Lincoln Xavier was also in the accident. He didn’t survive the blast.”

  Now that was a name I did know. Lincoln Xavier was Samuel Parsons’s heir apparent. Samuel had never married or never fathered any children, so he willed Cartright and Nagel to his sister’s only child, Lincoln Xavier. My understanding of Lincoln, having never met him personally, was that he was a responsible, sensible, middle-aged man who held a genuine love for the company. He would have made a good General Manager. Shit.

  I watched, somewhat stunned, as Sally dabbed the tears from her eyes. It would make sense that she would feel more emotion—she was Sally, for a start, but she also probably actually knew Lincoln. Not that I would have cried anyway; I don’t cry. I can’t cry. It was just another thing that had been taken from me.

  “They’re flying Lincoln’s body back here for burial, but I need to go over to sort through some things. Damage control. We’re going to cop a lot of flack about this, and I need it quieted down fairly quickly,” Patrick said.

  “Ash is going to stay here and cover this end, but I’d like you to come with me, Lilly.” His eyes met mine.

  “Sure,” I answered instantly. “Whatever I can do to help.”

  “They are organizing a memorial for the men who were killed,” he continued. “They were all from the same contracting firm, and the group memorial will be held in their home town. I’ll need to attend, and it will look better if I don’t go alone. I need a woman in the group; you’ll mellow the sentiments down.”

  Funerals. I must have gone a funny shade of grey, possibly white, because not only did I start to see strange lights flicker across my vision, but Patrick leaned forward in his chair, and Sally suddenly gripped my hand.

  “Lilly?” Patrick’s voice gradually intruded into my mind. “Are you all right?”

  Sally was rubbing warmth back into my hands. I blinked a few times and noticed that Patrick had come around his table and was squatting in front of me.

  Too close. They were hovering, too close.

  I rose so suddenly that my head swam and Patrick nearly overbalanced; only by reaching a hand behind him did he keep from landing on his ass.

  “Lilly?” A chorus of concerned voices followed me as I crossed the room to the windows, but Patrick was the only one who actually followed me. “It’s all right, you don’t have to come,” he said slowly. “I’ll find someone else to go.”

  “I don’t do funerals.” The words came out a bare whisper.

  “Don’t worry about it. Sally can come instead, and you can stay here with Ash.” Even without looking at Sally, I knew she wouldn’t be happy with that arrangement. She hated to travel, or at least she hated to travel without her family. On more than one occasion, she had told me how much she loved that Ashlan didn’t travel as much as Patrick.

  I shook my head. “No, Sally can’t leave Liam,” I reminded him. “It’s OK. I’ll go. I’m fine.”

  “You don’t look OK,” he countered.

  This was my job, this was what I was good at; and Patrick did a better job when I was there for him to bounce ideas off of. I supported him, and in this time, when he really needed me, when he truly needed my support, I couldn’t back down. “No. I’m fine. I’ll be fine.” God, I hoped that was the case. I would be fine with everything, right up until the funeral, and even then I couldn’t tell you how I’d go.

  Everything moved very quickly after that. A management meeting was called, and it was decided that Patrick and I would go, along with Michael Saunders from legal and Stephen Dent from HR. The four of us should be able to work our way through any problems we might find over there.

  TEXT: Big accident at one of our projects. Have to go to the funeral.

  REPLY: U ok

  TEXT: Dont know

  REPLY: Tell them no

  TEXT: Not that simple

  REPLY: Let me know when.

  TEXT: k

  Michael and Stephen were both sent home to pack. A private car would pick them up and take them to the airport to meet our 1:00 p.m. plane that was taking us direct to Antwerp.

  “You stay here,” Patrick told me, as we filed out of the conference room. “I’ve already packed, so we’ll just drop past your place on the way.”

  OK, so I really didn’t want Patrick at my house, but there didn’t seem a reasonable way out of it; so I tried not to let it worry me.

  “Sorry,” Sally whispered quietly to me as we left. She gave me a quick hug, which I backed away from almost instantly, and then gave me a sad wave as we left.

  “Where do you live?” Patrick asked, as we hopped into one of the company’s town cars.

  I gave him my address, having to force the words past the lump in my throat, and then prayed to God he wouldn’t remember it later.


  He nodded to the driver, and we pulled out into the traffic. Patrick was quiet for the journey, seeming lost in his own thoughts, which I was pretty sure weren’t happy ones. He didn’t even attempt to come in, which I was inordinately grateful for. I really wasn’t up to the fight or the injured feelings when I told him no. Maybe he realized that; maybe he just wasn’t interested in knowing where I lived; maybe he was too caught up in the problems we were facing to notice. Whatever the reason, I was relieved.

  We took a private jet to Antwerp. It was a subdued and, in my case, a nervous flight to Belgium. None of what was coming would be pleasant. Part of me wanted it to hurry up and be over with, but the other half wanted it to never happen.

  The site of the accident was not what I expected. They had only just started construction on the site, and it was still in the earthworks stage, so there wasn’t actually much destruction. What there was, however, was a sizeable hole in the ground.

  “What happened?” Patrick asked one of the foremen, as we stood behind some barricades, looking down at the damage. A group of them had converged on us the moment our car had pulled up to the site. They had been expecting us; Ashlan had been in touch with both the site and Patrick on the journey and had forewarned them of our arrival.

  A middle-aged, dark-skinned man stepped forward and, with a heavy German accent, explained, “We were drilling down for the foundation pilings to the right of the main explosion.” He indicated an area on the right of the hole, where the remains of some sort of machinery lay scattered and broken. “The men were welding the support braces on the cages that were going down the pilings, there.” He indicated the large crater in the ground. “We think one of the drills hit a gas deposit, because it blew the drill clear out of the ground, and that blew the casement structure all over the place. Some of it must have hit one of the welding units, because the next thing we knew, the whole site went up.”

  Jesus, there must have been a serious amount of gas to have blown that hole. I wondered morbidly if there were even any bodies for the families to claim.

  “Freak accident,” the man went on. “Shouldn’t have happened. No one’s fault.”

  “OK.” Patrick nodded. “I’ll need a meeting place; we’re going to have a few conference calls with people back in London and in Frankfurt. Is the site safe?”

  “Yes, yes.” The man nodded enthusiastically. “It’s safe, the gas has all burned out, and the fires are gone.”

  Not too long after that, I found myself in a shabby demountable fitted with nothing more than a table and a few chairs. We would have to make do with Patrick’s mobile for the conference calls; there wasn’t adequate infrastructure for anything else.

  “Ashlan,” Patrick said, calling everyone’s focus. Michael, Stephen, and I sat with Patrick on a conference call to Ashlan and his engineers back in London. “They tell me it was a gas deposit that blew when they drilled down. How did that happen?”

  “Shouldn’t have,” Ash responded. “There isn’t any gas on that site. We did a full geotech assessment of the development, and the only thing that’s under that dirt is more dirt.”

  “Who did the geotech?”

  “Enviro LCS,” Ash answered. “Same one we always use.”

  “Get them on the phone, and get some answers. Someone’s at fault here and it isn’t going to be us,” Patrick replied.

  There was a shuffle of noise from Ash’s side of the conversation before he responded, “Done. Simon’s onto it.”

  “The drilling explosion wasn’t the cause of most of the destruction,” Patrick admitted. “They were welding nearby, and the debris from when the gas blew the drill out overshot the welders, and they all went up together. There’s a fucking crater here that you could hide a small house in, Ash.”

  “There is going to be some serious Occupational Health and Safety shit come up about this,” Stephen added. “Like, what were the welders doing near the drill?”

  “The welders should have been safe. There was a clear enough distance for them to operate in a safe manner, and they had all the appropriate safety measures in place. It was a freak occurrence for the drill to blow like that,” Ash told us.

  “Freak accident or not,” Stephen continued, “the authorities are going to want answers, and that isn’t going to cut it. I’m going to be fielding their phone calls very soon, and I’m going to have to give them something better than ‘freak accident.’ If it was such an uncommon thing, then I’m going to need reports that state it, legitimate reports, solid substantive reports—so someone had better get writing fairly soon, ’cause the government officials aren’t going to wait long.”

  “Ash, get your guys on that and the geotech issue,” Patrick ordered.

  “You got it.”

  “Can you get people out here who know what they’re doing, and make sure this site is safe?” Patrick continued. “I’ve had someone tell me it is, but I’d rather it was someone you trust telling me that, instead of some random on-site.”

  It took some serious action on everyone’s part, but by the time we got back to our hotel that night, we had most of the issues settled. The media had been issued a release, hastily prepared by myself, and a press conference in the morning would finalize that and ensure that Cartright and Nagel came out unscathed from the incident—or as unscathed as it was possible to be with six employees blown up.

  We had good people, our people, flying over from London in the morning, and they would be left in charge of the cleanup and ensuring the process moved forward again. This was going to cost some serious dollars in delay and cleanup, but there was a huge margin for contingencies in the budget that should easily cover the expenses. Provided no more accidents happened, the project should still return a reasonable profit.

  “You did really well today,” Patrick congratulated me as he escorted me to my hotel room later that night. “It was a hard day, and you stepped up. Thanks.”

  “I see why you get paid the big bucks.” I smiled slightly at him, and he nodded with just a trace of a smile.

  “Good night, Lillianna.” He turned and walked two doors down to his own room. I was pretty sure he would sleep well tonight. It had been a long, exhausting day.

  TEXT: Survived

  REPLY: K

  “Here,” Patrick pushed his mobile into my hand. “Hold onto this in case Ash rings while I’m out there.” We were waiting in a side room of the hotel we were staying at. I figured this place was easier for us, so that’s where I organized the morning press conference.

  We were waiting on some information from Ash, which he was still compiling; and it didn’t look like he would have it ready for the press.

  “If he calls with the information, just give me a wave, and I’ll tell the press we’ll distribute it via e-mail to them; but if he doesn’t call, I won’t mention it.”

  I nodded in understanding. “Sure. Good luck,” I said. He disappeared through the door and into the room where the hordes of waiting media gathered. I’m very glad it’s him out there and not me.

  Stephen and Michael stood on either side of Patrick at the small podium; they were there more as a show of support than in any real advisory capacity. If anyone should have been up there, it was Ash, but he was busy coordinating the actual site—that, and he was still in London—so we compromised with Stephen and Michael. I would have looked silly up there with them, so I waited off to the side of the room, but through the open door I could clearly see Patrick as he fielded question after question from the media.

  He’d been out there a while, maybe forty-five minutes, before his phone started vibrating. He was one of those people who didn’t have a ringtone on his phone; he rarely put it down, so the vibration of it was enough for him to know it was ringing.

  I realized later that I should have taken a moment to actually check the caller ID before I answered it, but I was anxious to hear from Ash; so when it finally vibrated in my hand, I didn’t think, I just accepted the call.

  Hind
sight is a wonderful thing. I certainly wasn’t prepared for the barrage I got from that phone call.

  “Hello.” What I really wanted to say was “What took you so long?” Lucky I didn’t.

  “Who is this?” the female voice queried.

  “Sorry, this is Lillianna, who am I speaking to?” Obviously it wasn’t Ash.

  “Lillianna!” I hadn’t realized how much venom someone could attach to my name until just then. “Why are you answering my husband’s phone?”

  Ex-husband, I thought she meant, but I didn’t correct her. “Hi, you must be Claire.” I tried to sound upbeat, but that was difficult, when she very obviously had issues with me. “Sorry, Patrick isn’t here at the moment; he’s in the middle of a press conference. Can I get him to give you a call back when he’s free?”

  Awkward…

  “I think you’ve done quite enough for my husband already, thank you,” she snapped. “And in the future, I would appreciate if you would refer to me as Mrs. Sloane.” Well that’s just weird, and inaccurate.

  I was impressed with how little her words affected me. “My apologies, Mrs. Sloane. Was there a message you wanted me to give Patrick?” There was no way I was going to call him her husband. I’d seen the divorce papers; if she didn’t believe it yet, she would when they were served to her.

  “You stay away from him,” she hissed at me—yes, she actually hissed. I pulled the phone away from my face a bit, thankful that she wasn’t there in person, or I was pretty sure I’d be covered in spit by now.

  “I’m sorry, but I have no idea what you’re talking about, and I think it’s best that you take this up with Patrick.”

  “Take what up with me?” Patrick’s voice, spoken quietly from beside me, scared the crap out of me, enough so that I had to juggle to keep hold of the phone.

  “Um…” I hesitated, not quite sure what to do.

  “Who’s on the phone, Lilly?” he asked, finally realizing that something was wrong. He held out his hand for the phone.