by Melissa Good
She took out a pen from her backpack and propped her head up on one hand, thinking briefly and then starting to write.
Hello, people.
Big surprise to get to my hotel and find a card from you all waiting. I appreciate all the time you took to put down a few words, so I thought I would take some of my own time and send a note back to you.
Dar paused and considered. Then she smiled a little and put her head back down on her hand.
I know we only met a few times, in a bad situation. But sometimes bad situations bring out the best in people. From what I saw here, and across ILS, the best of ILS was truly extraordinary and you all
were definitely a bright spot on a dark day. A lot of you wrote that you were honored to work for me. That’s hugely flattering, but to be honest, it was always my view that I worked for all of you rather than the other way around. That’ll surprise people to hear but if you think about it, I expected 110 percent from people because it’s what I gave.
A part of me will always live at ILS. There are things that are written into the DNA of the place that came from my blood and sweat, and those of you in Netops are going to run into crap with my initials on it for a long, long time. Likewise, a little bit of my head and heart will always be wondering how it’s going, and how everyone is.
She had to stop and sit back, surprised to find herself in tears. It was a little overwhelming and uncomfortable. She waited it out, until her chest relaxed and her throat eased.
“Wow. Where did that come from? Am I that sentimental?”
Dar didn’t think she had a reputation for soft-heartedness, especially among these people. She looked down at the letter again, half minding to throw it away.
Then she sighed and picked up her pen again, wiping the moisture from her eyes and continuing to write.
At any rate, I hope you all go on being successful at what you do, and take the company to new places. Maybe we’ll meet sometime down the road. Thanks again for the note and good luck to all of you.
She paused again, then smiled, and signed her name. She got up, grabbed an envelope and the FedEx pack that had the Herndon office’s address and headed for the door.
“NO!” KERRY JERKED awake with a yell, sitting up and groping out with her hands to fend off the remnants of a nightmare that had her heart pounding so fast she couldn’t count the beats.
“No,” she uttered, covering her eyes with one hand, her entire body shaking. “Just a dream. Jesus.” After a moment she caught her breath and felt for the table light and turned it on, just as Chino started anxiously licking her ear.
“Ahh!” Kerry stifled a yelp until she realized what it was. Then she was shoved backwards by her upset pet, and Mocha climbing up into her lap. “Stop! Stop it!” she yelled, sharply. “Hey!”
Chino’s ears went back as she stared in wide-eyed alarm, while Mocha cowered down flat on the bed.
“Sorry guys.” She got herself upright again and leaned against the headboard, a violent headache making red flashes against the inside of her eyelids. “Shit.”
She still felt short of breath from a nightmare of being trapped under the half collapsed wall with everything pressing against her and air growing short. There was no way out because she was alone and Dar wasn’t with her.
Just herself and the smell of burning and being aware that she couldn’t move and no one knew she was there.
No one to hear her screaming, just darkness and pressure and a terrible, terrible fear. Of dying. Of being alone.
Her hands were shaking. She tucked them under her arms and rocked forward, putting her head against Chino’s. “Sorry I yelled, honey.” She watched Mocha squirm closer. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I was just scared myself.”
Chino whined and licked her cheek.
“Thanks, Chi.” Kerry closed her eyes and breathed in the scent of fur and the clean linen around her. “Oh, boy. Glad that doesn’t happen often.” She straightened back up and wiped the back of her hand across her eyes, blinking a little into lamplight.
Mocha made a little burbling puppy noise, snuffling at her fingers.
“Yeah.” Kerry sniffled a little. “You guys want some cookies? Let’s go down and have some cookies and milk, how about that?” She waited for the animals to move and then pulled the covers back, getting out of bed and heading for the steps. “I need some hot milk anyway, and some aspirin.”
She glanced at the wall clock as she reached the bottom of the stairs, its luminescent face displaying three o’clock at her. “Great,” she muttered, crossing the living room and entering the big cobalt blue and white kitchen. She flipped the light on as she cleared the arched entryway.
The tiles were cold against her bare feet, but she ignored that as she went to the cookie jar and opened it, removing a few of the biscuits and offering them to her attentive furballs. She watched them crunch for a minute, then went to the refrigerator and opened it.
Hot milk. She closed the door and went and got a cup, then went back and filled it from Dar’s beloved milk dispenser. She drizzled some honey in it, then put it in the microwave and started it heating.
That gave her time to do something about her headache. She shook out a couple of pills from the bottle in the cupboard and swallowed them down with a mouthful of water. “Shit.” She turned and leaned against the counter, folding her arms over her chest.
Aside from the headache and the still perceptible chill in her body, she was now very wide awake. The thought of going back to bed was exceptionally unappealing and when the milk was done warming she took it into the living room and turned on the TV instead.
She sat down on the couch, wincing a little as the cold leather surface hit her skin, then relaxing as it warmed up. She picked up the remote and surfed through the channels, bypassing a veritable cornucopia of infomercials and settling on a cartoon instead, turning the sound down a little as the colorful figures danced across the plasma display.
Chino jumped up onto the couch and curled up next to her. Kerry reached over and scratched behind her ears. “Chi, that really sucked,” she said. “I hate nightmares. Why do I always have them when Dar’s gone?” Which wasn’t really true. She didn’t always have them and she’d had one or two with Dar right next to her. Kerry calmed down and flexed her hands, the tension easing out of her. The thing was, when she had a bad dream and Dar was there, well, Dar was there and she’d wake up and hug her, and that chased all the shadows out fast.
Dar was very dependable that way. “Cornerstone of my life.” Kerry murmured, ruffling Chino’s fur. “What would I do without her, Chi?”
“Growf.” Chino put her head down on Kerry’s leg.
“Damned if I know.” Kerry let out a breath, rubbing her temples. Then she opened her eyes and looked around. “Where’s Mocha?”
Chino’s eyebrows twitched.
“Mocha!” Kerry called out, then cocked her head to listen for puppy toenails. “Oh, crap.” She hauled herself to her feet and started looking around. “Mocha!”
Chino hopped down and trotted after her, sniffing around in a puzzled kind of way.
“Where is he?” Kerry checked around the kitchen, then went back and stuck her head in Dar’s office and then the bedroom. Nothing. “One place left to check.” She went back into the kitchen and opened the back door into the garden, immediately regretting it as the brisk air hit her lightly clad body. “Mocha!”
Chino bolted down the steps and across the grass, being met halfway to the gate by a small, dark form. “Growf!”
“Yap!” Mocha galloped toward the steps, his small ears flapping.
“Get up here.” Kerry patted her leg, waiting for him to patter past before she closed the door again. “You little bugger.” She rubbed her arms. “It’s cold out there.”
“Yap!”
Well, at least it had taken her mind off her nightmare. Kerry went to the hall closet and got out a sweatshirt, pulling it on over her head and then laughing softly as it came down to h
er thighs and the sleeves went past her hands. She pushed the sleeves back up to her elbows, then went back to the table where she’d left her hot milk.
Only to find a white stained brown face looking at her, licking his lips.
“Mocha.” Kerry put her hands on her hips.
Mocha licked his lips again and got his front paws down off the table, looking innocently up at her.
Kerry picked up the cup and took it back to the kitchen, rinsing it out and refilling it. She put the cup back in the microwave then crossed her arms, trying to figure out what to do next.
Finish the milk, she decided, then maybe catch a nap on the couch. Maybe think about the first time she’d slept there on that stormy day way back when.
She smiled, remembering how carefully she’d printed out all the material she hadn’t even looked at, just to prove to Dar that she’d stuck around for legitimate reasons. What had they been? She still didn’t remember, and looking back she was pretty sure neither of them were fooling themselves or each other as she pictured those blue eyes watching her as she entered that kitchen wrapped in Dar’s blanket.
Nothing of business in them. That faint little smile, that knowing arch of that dark brow and Kerry knew she was lost. Even now she felt it, a rolling, sweet richness of the soul and she somberly realized she might have found the genesis of her nightmares, this understanding of what she had and was unconsciously so afraid of losing.
Kerry removed the cup of milk and brought it back into the living room. At least that was a damn good reason. She sat back down on the couch and put her bare feet up on the low table, idly watching Chino and Mocha play with a tug toy. She sipped from the cup and put her head back against the cushions, feeling the last of the twisting leave her guts.
Her mind shifted to another track. Would Dar have felt it, when she woke from the dream? Sometimes it seemed like she could, in that odd, rarely spoken of synergy between them. But surely Dar was sound asleep herself, tucked into bed up in Washington.
Surely. But Kerry wondered if she went up and retrieved her new gizmo, if there wouldn’t be a note there for her. With a wry grin, she put the cup down on a higher side table this time, and got up, stepping over the tussling Labradors and walking up the steps.
She felt a tickle of anticipation in her stomach as she went into the bedroom, looked at the Handspring on the bedside table and saw the stuttering red light of a message waiting. She picked up the device and glanced at it, shaking her head a little when she saw Dar’s name outlined in the back light. “Maybe it’s just a coincidence.”
She opened the note, saw the single word, ‘nightmare?’ on it, and abruptly sat down as her knees threatened to unlock and refuse to hold her. “Holy shit.”
Dar knew. Without a question, no doubt at all this time, sharp as a laser point. “That’s so creepy.” She whispered. “But I guess in a good way.” She hit reply and answered the note.
Honey, I don’t know how you know this stuff, but yeah. Freaked me a little, so me and the kids are downstairs and I’m drinking hot milk and thinking about you. I was remembering that first day I fell asleep on the couch and it made me feel a lot better. Go back to sleep!
She shook her head a little and sent the note. For someone as relentlessly logical as Dar was, to have this odd sense be a part of her—well, really, be a part of both of them did seem weird and strange. It went against everything her mind told her was rational, and edged into the sort of thing she regarded as—out there.
Dar, of course being the logical person she was, simply accepted it and said it didn’t bother her since it wasn’t like something she had any control over.
Kerry wasn’t bothered by it either, she supposed, she was just curious about how it all worked. “I wonder,” she mused. “Maybe when we go out to the Grand Canyon, around those places a lot of people are into that stuff. Maybe we could ask someone.”
The Handspring sputtered red again. She chuckled and opened the response from her apparently still awake partner.
I don’t know. I just get this feeling in my gut when you’re freaked out and given what time it was, and the fact you were safe at home I figured it had to be a dream.
Kerry smiled. Elementally logical.
I remember that day. I remember watching you sleep there and wanting to crawl into the couch with you. You probably would have freaked out.
Kerry laughed silently.
Hon, maybe, maybe not. By the time I was offering to cook for you I’d sorta figured it out.
I probably would have freaked out. But it ended up all right anyway. You go back to sleep, too. See you tomorrow, hon. Miss ya. Love ya. DD
Kerry read the words a few times. “Cornerstone of my life,” she said. “Okay well, I should get back to bed because otherwise tomorrow morning’s going to be a real bitch.” She got up and went back downstairs to rescue her milk, draining the cup and bringing it back into the kitchen.
Then, with a soft grunt of decision, she turned and crossed the living room again, but this time she went into their bedroom and rolled herself into the water bed. She turned up the heater a trifle before she pulled the covers over her and closed her eyes.
WAKING UP A few hours later was still a little crunchy, but a cup of coffee resolved most of that and Kerry got herself and the dogs into her car and on the road in relatively good order, though a bit later than the previous day. She settled her sunglasses on her nose for the ride, the weather being bright and sunny, with just enough winter chill that convinced South Florida it did, too, have seasons.
There were already a half dozen cars in the parking lot by the time she got to the office and as she pulled up Mayte came out to greet her. “Morning.”
“Hello, Kerry. May I take one of the doggies? You have your hands so full.”
“Sure.” Kerry amiably handed over Mocha’s leash, not in the least fooled by the excuse. “Things quiet this morning?”
“Oh yes. Much more than yesterday,” Mayte said. “The new security man is here and he is very nice.”
They walked into the building, which was filled with a low buzz of activity that surrounded them as they walked up the steps to Kerry’s office. She spotted Mark and Carlos talking in the hall and waved at them, then crossed through Mayte’s office into her own.
Chino trotted obediently after her, going over to the dog bowls in their raised platform and drinking from one.
Kerry put her messenger bag down and took her seat.
Mayte poked her head in. “Kerry, would you like some coffee? I am going to take the little one down the stairs, and I could bring some back for you.”
“Sure, thanks.” Kerry sat down and started up her desktop. A soft knock at the door and she looked up to find Mayte and Maria’s new assistant peeking in. “Hi. Good morning.”
“Pardon, ma’am, but you have a delivery. Is it okay?” the girl said in a soft voice.
“Sure.” Kerry folded her arms as the woman backed up and allowed a man carrying a basket to enter. “Ah.”
He came over and put it down on her desk. “Here you go, ma’am. First delivery of my day.” He handed her an envelope. “Enjoy.”
Kerry regarded the basket after he left. It was completely covered in multicolor cellophane and she decided to open the envelope before she risked unwrapping it.
There was a very good chance it was from Dar. But there was always a possibility it was from a prospective vendor, or even from her friend from the previous morning, in which case there could be anything including road kill inside. She’d gotten something like that more than once from business rivals, mostly full of vinegar and sour grapes.
She opened the envelope and took out the card, opening it to find a simple message that put a smile on her face.
Thought you could use breakfast. C’ya. DD
“Aww.” She put the card down and took a pair of scissors from her drawer and sliced through the cellophane.
Mayte entered with coffee. “Oh, that is so nice.”
&
nbsp; “Yeah.” Kerry folded back the wrapping to expose a big package of pastelitos. “Let’s pass them around. I can’t eat all these. Dar decided to send breakfast in.” She selected two of the treats and handed off the rest of them to Mayte.
“Dar is very sweet,” Mayte said. “So thoughtful to you.”
Kerry smiled in acknowledgment as she sat back down. “She is. I’m a very lucky woman, and believe me, Mayte, I know it.”
Mayte grinned, but just waved as she took the tray of pastelitos out.
“I sure as hell know it.” Kerry took a contented bite of her pastry and turned to her computer, only to be interrupted again by a knock. “Yes?”
“Miss Kerry?” The new girl was back. “There is a policeman to see you.”
Oh well. Couldn’t expect pastelitos baskets every time. “Send him in, thanks, Zoe.” Kerry took a sip of her coffee as the policeman entered. She recognized one of the officers she’d spoken to the day before. “Good morning.” She gestured to one of her visitor chairs. “Officer...?”
“Rudolfo Sanchez.” The officer sat down and pulled out a notepad. “Good morning, Ms. Roberts. I just wanted to circle back with you on the situation we had here yesterday.” He cleared his throat. “Was going to drop by here late yesterday, but I had a call I was on.”
“Sure, no problem.” Kerry leaned back in her chair and took a sip of coffee. “My staff said it’s been quiet so far this morning.”
Sanchez nodded. “Yeah, we kept Patterson—that’s the guy— overnight in the holding station. Figured he could use a night under a roof anyway.” He glanced at Kerry. “Joe, by the way. Joe Patterson.”
