by Hunt, Angela
She unlocked the apartment door and stepped inside, inhaling the scents of dust, mildew and the previous tenant’s cigarettes. Daylight fringed the closed draperies and seeped onto the worn carpet, a nondescript shade designed to hide dirt. Gina tossed her purse onto a patched vinyl chair and moved into the kitchen, situated not more than ten feet from the front door.
She hated this apartment. She hated smelling it on her clothes, coming home to it after a long day and making love to her new husband beneath its stained and cracked ceiling. Newlyweds deserved a fresh beginning, but on their salaries, she and Sonny had only been able to afford this pigsty.
Now she had fifty thousand dollars, enough for a down payment on a nice house in a good neighborhood…but Sonny had a dream. And while a house might bring her happiness, Sonny’s dream would surely prove to be the worthier investment.
After starting dinner, she slid the check into an unmarked envelope, then slipped the envelope beneath a folded napkin. Humming to herself, she moved to the oven. Two chicken breasts bubbled in cranberry sauce; two baked potatoes hissed in foil jackets. She had a salad in the fridge and bakery rolls in a basket. Sonny would appreciate a good dinner—enough, she hoped, to listen to her proposal.
She stiffened at the sound of a key in the lock. He was home. Time to begin.
“Hmm, something smells good.” Her handsome husband stepped into the rectangle that defined their small kitchen and dropped a peck on her cheek. He shrugged out of his jacket, then noticed the dishes on the table. “How long have you been home?”
She took his coat. “I told Mr. Thomas I had a headache.”
“Do you?”
“Not anymore.”
She draped his sports jacket over the back of an empty chair, then sidled past him on her way to the oven. “I have something I want to discuss with you, though. An idea I’ve been contemplating.”
He sank into his chair and loosened his tie. “Honey, I’m really tired. I’m not sure I’m up to talking about a bigger apartment even though I know how much you hate this place—”
“I could be happy here awhile. With no kids, we’re really not that cramped.”
His left eyebrow rose a fraction. “What do you have up your sleeve?”
“You want French dressing or Italian?”
“Blue cheese, if we have it.”
She pulled a nearly empty bottle of his favorite dressing from the refrigerator, then drizzled it over the salad. She talked as she worked, her determination like a rock inside her as she carried the food to the table and explained her strategy: they would start an insurance company like her father’s, but they would insure only low-risk clients. No smokers, no one more than twenty percent overweight, no one with a chronic illness. With a good actuary and careful planning, they could earn a profit within six months. Within a year, they could begin to issue more conventional policies.
Sonny’s mouth twitched with amusement. “Honey, we can’t open a business. We’d need seed money, an office, equipment. We could barely afford to pay the rent, let alone hire an actuary—”
She sat down, pulled the envelope from beneath her napkin and handed it to her husband.
“What’s this?”
“A bequest.”
He opened the envelope, then gave her a bright-eyed glance, full of memory, pain and awareness. “From your father?”
“Yes.”
He didn’t have to say anything, but in his eyes she saw the pain of his father’s indifference, the sting of his stepmother’s callousness. After a long moment, Sonny’s gaze caught and held hers. “You really think we could pull it off?”
She raised her glass. “I do.”
Sonny lifted his goblet and touched it to hers. “Then let’s go into business together.”
They rose from their seats and met in the middle, sealing their bargain with a kiss.
Caught up in a wave of sympathy, Michelle watches Gina unfold her bent legs and settle into a more comfortable position. Despite that bit of snappishness a few moments ago, the lovely redhead is obviously one of those women with a built-in sense of social grace. Michelle has always admired women who were born to success, but how they manage to remain impeccable and impressive in difficult situations has always been a mystery.
She’d be insane with worry if she’d left children at home with a hurricane approaching.
“Your kids,” she asks. “How old are they?”
The redhead crosses her legs at the ankle. “Nineteen, seventeen and fifteen. Old enough to take care of themselves, I know. But still, a mother worries.”
“I don’t blame you.” Michelle glances at the panel of darkened elevator buttons. “This entire situation is frustrating.”
“Yes,” Isabel whispers. “I am frightened.”
Michelle falls silent as the sound of the whistling wind penetrates the elevator shaft. Amazing, that they can hear it from this sheltered center of the building. When she signed her rental agreement two years ago, she learned that the Lark Tower met Florida’s hurricane requirements and was capable of withstanding winds of up to one hundred miles per hour. At the time of its dedication in 1972, the Lark was a marvel of engineering, but Florida has beefed up its building codes in recent years and the Tower has never experienced the brute force of a category-four hurricane. Though the building wears its age with a certain grace, its glass exterior has weakened. Those wide, aging windows will be especially vulnerable to flying debris.
Michelle rode out the last hurricane, a category three that came ashore two hundred miles south, at her condo. Aside from a few fallen branches, Tampa home owners experienced only minor effects, yet buildings in Fort Lauderdale and Miami suffered severe structural damage and residents endured two weeks without power. If Felix proceeds as predicted, they’re looking at a scenario that could be much worse—
She can’t dwell on those possibilities. She won’t.
“This is scary,” she admits, looking at Isabel. “But I’ve been more frightened.”
Gina’s mouth curves in a smile. “When?”
Words spring to Michelle’s lips: This morning. When I realized I might be pregnant.
She can’t say that, though, not here. She needs to reserve that discussion for Parker, who will understand the tumult of emotions that gripped her as she held the pregnancy test kit.
But conversation in the elevator is a good thing. Talking will keep their minds occupied and help pass the time until help arrives.
Michelle folds her hands and smiles at the redhead against the opposite wall. “Have you ever felt really hopeless? Before today, I mean.”
Gina almost laughs aloud. In the last few hours she’s been overtaken by so many emotions it’s hard to single one out from the pack.
But she knows hopelessness. Before the betrayal, before the anger, even before this frustration, she stood beneath the cold shadow of despair and felt its breath on her face.
She drops the reins on her thoughts and drifts back to a summer day at the beach. “One summer—it was 1990, I think—Sonny, my husband, and I had decided that I should take a week off and head to the beach with the kids. Sonny kept working, of course, but he’d drive over for dinner and we’d sit and watch the sun set over the gulf. Our daughter was a baby that year. Our son was three.
“One night I was lying on a beach blanket, propped up on my elbows, sort of in a daze. The day had been unbelievably hot and humid—one of those days when you feel like you’re breathing through a wet washcloth. Sonny and Mattie were splashing at the pool while the baby and I watched the sun go down. After being alone all day with two kids, I was drained, almost too tired to think.”
“Anyway, after the sun set, I turned around and saw Sonny coming toward me. I was about to ask what he’d done with Mattie, when suddenly I heard a woman screaming by the pool. That’s when I knew—Sonny didn’t have Mattie at all. The pool had him.”
Even now, the memory has the power to shiver her scalp like the grip of a nightmare. “I ra
n toward the pool,” she says, a tremor rippling her voice. “I don’t remember it, but later people told me that I screamed with every step. By the time I got there, a man had dived in and pulled Mattie up, but he was as blue as ice. I handed Mandi to someone and tried to perform CPR on Mattie, but nothing I did seemed to help.”
Gina glances at the others. The maid is not looking at her, but a quiver touches Michelle’s chin. “Was he…okay?”
“The rescue squad came and took him away. They let me ride along, and I heard one of them radio ahead and say they were coming in with a DOA. Then the man who was working on Mattie yelled that he’d found a pulse. After that, I hung on to my son’s hand and didn’t let go until they pried me loose at the hospital.”
Relief floods Michelle’s features. “He was fine, then.”
Gina shakes her head. “It was touch and go at the hospital. They didn’t know how long he’d been underwater, so they didn’t know if he’d suffered brain damage. And he’d inhaled water into his lungs, which made him susceptible to pneumonia, so they told me his chances weren’t good. All that night I paced in that ICU corridor and begged God to let me keep my son.”
From the edge of the emergency lamp’s glow, the maid whispers, “Did He answer?”
“Who can say?” Gina can’t stop herself from laughing. “That night I’d have prayed to Santa Claus if I thought it would work. Desperation does strange things to people—makes you want to make promises you know you can’t possibly keep. Anyway, I promised God that I’d stop working and concentrate on my kids, do whatever it took to be the best mom in the world, if he’d heal my boy. The next morning, Mattie woke up and started talking like nothing had happened. But I’ve been unable to go near anything deeper than a bathtub ever since.”
The Hispanic girl stares at her with chilling intentness for a long moment, then crosses her arms. “I believe in God. I pray to Him.”
Gina pushes her hair back, the better to return the girl’s stare. Of course the maid believes in God; she’s Hispanic, which means she’s Catholic. And probably as superstitious as a gypsy.
She smiles at the Mexican girl. “‘And almost everyone when age, disease or sorrows strike him…inclines to think there is a God, or something very like Him.’”
Across the car, the brunette chuckles. “That’s funny. You make that up?”
“No. It’s a verse from Arthur Hugh Clough.”
“Oh.” The brunette straightens, a frown puckering the skin between her eyes into fine wrinkles. “So…you didn’t keep the promise you made that night?”
“I did—not because of some bargain with the Almighty, but because I realized how precious my kids were. By then it was an easy decision, because the business was doing well. Sonny didn’t need me at the office and I was glad to be out of the picture. We decided our kids were the most important thing in our lives, so I was happy to make them my priority.”
A tiny flicker widens Michelle’s eyes. “Seems to me your kids would be better off watching you make something of yourself.”
Gina smiles, simultaneously amused and annoyed by the brunette’s naiveté. “I didn’t have anything to prove. I’d already graduated magna cum laude from Brown, married and helped my husband start a business. I wanted an opportunity to help make something of my children.”
“Interesting perspective.”
Gina tilts a brow. “Why do you say that?”
Michelle shrugs. “The women I knew growing up hardly ever left the house—especially my mother,” she says, slipping out of her raincoat. “She’d get up, have a cigarette and drink gin for breakfast. A steady diet of soaps in the afternoon, crackers and soup for dinner if we were lucky, reruns and more booze at night. By the time I hit high school, my mother’s rear had worn a hole into our sofa cushion.”
Gina shifts her gaze to the elevator panel, sensing the younger woman’s embarrassment. Michelle Tilson might be inexperienced in some areas, but apparently she had learned other lessons the hard way.
“You felt hopeless the night your son almost drowned,” the brunette continues, folding her coat. “I lived with hopelessness for nineteen years. There weren’t many jobs available in my little town, but I picked wild blueberries when I could and sold quilt squares cut from old dresses I bought at a church thrift shop. As soon as I had enough money to leave home, I packed a bag and hightailed it out of town. I swore I’d do anything to make it on my own, but I’d never live with hopelessness again.”
Gina lets her head fall back to the wall. “Where was this place?”
“Bald Knob, West Virginia.” Michelle snorts softly. “The kind of place you’re always glad to say you’re from.”
Gina tilts her head, suddenly seeing Michelle Tilson in a new light. Perhaps this situation has a silver lining—this woman is someone who might become a friend. Once this sordid mess with Sonny is straightened out, she can see herself playing golf or having tea with Michelle Tilson, perhaps sharing a three-day weekend at the Saddlebrook resort….
“I would never have guessed you were from the mountains. You seem quite…cosmopolitan.”
“Oh. Well.” Michelle’s obvious resentment evaporates as she laughs. “I had TV, you see. Nothing else to do in the trailer at night. So I worked on my speech, forcing myself to talk and behave like the characters on Home Improvement and The Cosby Show.” Her mouth quirks with humor. “Claire Huxtable did more to mold me than my own mother.”
Gina closes her eyes, grateful that neither of her daughters will ever be able to make such a statement. “I doubt that. Our mothers affect us more than we know.”
“Maybe. But I feel like I’ve spent more time undoing my momma’s influence than—well, never mind. I don’t like to dwell on the past. That sort of thinking is unproductive.”
In that reply, Gina catches the cadence of a southern accent. Michelle might have removed herself from the mountains, but she hasn’t completely removed the mountains from her speech.
She is about to compliment Michelle on her accomplishments, but at that moment the overhead lights come on, an unseen engine hums and the elevator begins to rise.
CHAPTER 12
Michelle blinks in the sudden brightness, then glances at her watch. Ten-thirty. Could Parker still be in his office? The fire alarm would have rattled any ordinary human being, but Parker isn’t ordinary when it comes to business. Plus, he said he’d wait for her.
She exhales a long sigh. “You see?” She hugs her raincoat to her chest and smiles at the housekeeper. “I told you the power would come back on.”
She looks at the elevator panel, where the button for the twenty-fifth floor finally lights. Now they have moved out of the concrete shaft into an area with landings and doors she will never again take for granted.
Maybe her plan is still feasible. She can go to her office, grab Greg Owens’s fake file and hurry to Parker’s suite. From the sound of the wind she can tell the weather has worsened, but it won’t be so bad she and Parker can’t drive to her condo and talk about the future.
Twenty-six, twenty-seven. Only nine floors to go.
She pushes herself up. “This is good,” she says, her eyes fixed on the elevator buttons. “We’re almost home free, though we should definitely take the stairs down. I wonder if we can reach that repair guy and tell him not to come—”
Her breath catches in her throat as the lights dim and go out. The car shimmies to a halt, darkness closes in, and the bright square on the panel fades into blackness. After a moment, the emergency light above the telephone speaker begins to glow again.
Michelle groans. Fresh misery extinguishes her hope as she slides back to the floor and lowers her head. To her left, Isabel presses her hand over her mouth as if she might otherwise cry out.
Across the car, Gina lifts her chin. “Nil desperandum,” she says, her voice filled with a surprising calm.
Michelle crinkles a brow. “I beg your pardon?”
“Horace. It means never despair.” Gina folds her ar
ms across her lap. “You’re the one who said we should expect the power to cut in and out.”
“Yes, but I was hoping—”
“Better keep a tight rein on that hope,” Gina says. “And don’t forget about Murphy’s law. If something can go wrong—”
“Why can’t something go right for a change?” Michelle’s misery vanishes, replaced by a rising rage. “And don’t give me some two-thousand-year-old guy’s opinion, because I don’t care what Horace or Plato or Socrates had to say. They aren’t in this elevator. They don’t know what we’re going through.”
Gina stares back, her eyes bright with speculation, her smile sly with superiority. “They went through worse than this, I’m sure.”
“I don’t care. All I know is that I came down here for something important, but now I’m stuck and it’s not only my day that might be ruined, but my entire career.”
No longer caring what the other women think, Michelle slides her fingers between the elevator doors and pries them apart. They open as before, creating a space of about four inches, but this time that space reveals light and carpet and landings above and below a concrete divider.
“Helloooo! Help!” she shouts, her lips inches away from the opening, then slips her arm through the gap. Her flapping hand is only a few inches above the carpet on the upper level, but it should be visible to anyone passing by. “Can you help us?”
She waits, listening, but apart from the caterwauling wind, both levels are heavy with after-hours quiet. Through the gap on the upper floor she sees a leather chair, a potted palm and a tasteful trash bin. She crouches to shout into the lower landing. “Hellooooo? Anyone there?”
“Save your voice,” Gina says. A glaze comes down over her eyes as she props her elbow on a bent knee. “I’m sure all of us have important reasons for being here, but we’re alone and we’ll stay alone until after the storm passes. We have to wait. We have to be calm. And it might be helpful if we can focus on other things.”
Michelle waits another moment, then pulls her arm in and watches the doors slide back together. She is on the verge of arguing out of sheer stubbornness when a small dose of common sense dribbles into her brain. As much as she hates to admit it, Gina is right about one thing: frustration is not a helpful emotion, and could be as crippling as panic.
