Helene waved a hand. “It doesn’t matter whose idea it is. The idea’s only the beginning, not to say it isn’t a good one. What matters is what we do with it, and we’re going to do something great.”
“It matters that you didn’t give me credit,” Alyssa persisted, her frustration mounting by the second.
“Alyssa.” The older woman sighed. “This isn’t the time or the place. And I know it’s a cliché, but it sounds like it’s time to remind you that there’s no ‘i’ in ‘team.’ We’re here to make a difference. That’s the only thing that matters. And, just a gentle reminder, you’re here to do a job. Right now, that job is to go over there by the door and say goodbye, leave these wonderful people with their very best impression of us. I’d suggest, if you want to contribute, that you go over there and do it.”
Alyssa was never sure, afterwards, how she’d made it through the rest of the evening. She’d wanted to walk out then and there. She couldn’t even have said why she’d stayed to say her goodbyes to the donors, to settle with the caterers and the museum staff, even as her mind raged. Except that Helene was right. This was her job, and despite everything, she needed to do it. She’d spent days—no, she’d spent weeks planning this event, and she couldn’t stand not to see it through.
She didn’t even have a chance to talk about it with Joe until the last guest left, until he’d retrieved her coat, escorted her down the museum’s steps and waited with her for the valet.
“What happened?” he asked when he’d put the car in gear, was headed down the drive. “My place?” he added.
“Yeah,” she said, watching him take the first turn for the five-minute drive back to his loft. Then she took a breath and told him.
“Damn,” he said.
“Yeah.” She laughed, but it was an angry laugh. “So what do I do now?”
“Right now? What do you want to do?”
“I want to—” She stopped, nonplussed. “I want to run. I want to run away. I want to get out.”
“Want to ride the bike?” he asked, pulling into his garage. “That’s what I do,” he added when she looked at him in surprise. “Speed. Wind. Get away. Want to do that?”
“You’d take me?”
“You bet I would. Tell you the truth, I could use it too.”
He got changed with her, found a heavy jacket for her to wear, gave her a helmet, and then rolled out of the garage and into Saturday night. Up and over to Lombard Street first, back and forth on the zigzag course of it, a little too fast around each sharp curve, seeming to know that she needed to be on the edge tonight, that she needed the adrenaline.
She held on and felt it and wished they could go faster, and he turned around and went up the hill again. And then she got her wish, because he was riding through the darkness of the Presidio, across the Golden Gate, the big bike splitting the night, the towers and lights flashing by, and she knew that to her left there was water all the way to Hawaii, all the way to Japan, and she felt the freedom of it, felt the limits falling away.
He was riding the same roads he’d driven after their beer with Cheryl, and for the same reason, but he was right, it was better on the bike. Better to be going fast, to feel the wind and the cold and the noise, to forget everything and hold on to him and feel.
By the time they got back to the loft again, she was cold, and numb, and done. Joe helped her off with the coat, the helmet, took her into his bedroom and helped her get undressed, took her into his bathroom and turned on the shower for her, all without any unnecessary words, and she was glad, because she didn’t want to talk.
She stood in the shower for what felt like an hour, let the water wash over her, warm her up, and, finally, came out and put on a T-shirt and underwear and crawled into bed beside him, because he was already there.
“Thanks,” she said.
“No problem.” He pulled her to him so her head was resting on his shoulder, his arm around her.
“I don’t . . .” she began, then stopped. “I don’t want to. Not tonight. I just want to go to sleep.”
“I get it,” he said, and she could hear the smile in his voice.
“You don’t mind?” She’d been spending more than half of her time here, and they almost always made love, because they both wanted it. But tonight, she didn’t. She’d got dressed tonight thinking about him unzipping her dress, about him seeing her in her prettiest underwear, about what they’d do. One more thing Helene had taken from her, and the rage rose at the thought, but she didn’t want to deal with it. She wanted to be done with this day. She wanted to go to sleep and shut it out.
“Of course I don’t mind,” he said. “You’ve had enough. There’ll be another night. Go to sleep.”
So she did.
She woke to the gray light of early morning, the previous evening’s events filling her head. Joe was still sleeping, so she got up and dressed, moving quietly so as not to wake him, wrote a quick note and left the loft.
She ran. Across the empty streets of early Sunday morning, ignoring the red lights, because she couldn’t stand to stop. Into the green space of the Presidio, because the empty dark had called to her the night before, and she wanted to be here, away from people, away from cars. Just running, nobody but the occasional jogger, the odd dog-walker to see her. Nothing but the air and the movement, her body working out the tension, and her mind going along with it.
It was two hours before she returned to find Joe working, as usual.
“Sorry I was gone so long,” she said.
He shrugged. “You left a note. Good run?”
“Yeah. You’re not upset that I didn’t invite you?”
“You needed to be alone. I need to be alone a lot too. I made oatmeal.”
“Thanks.” She went to the stove and dished it up.
“So I was thinking,” she said when she was sitting at the dining table, and he’d come to join her.
He looked at her, but didn’t say anything, so she continued. “Part of me wants to quit, right? Last night, I wanted to quit so bad. Because I’ll never get ahead. It’ll never happen, not with Helene in charge. Not if she’s going to take my good ideas and say they’re hers. Not if she’s going to keep me doing the scut work while she does all the glamour parts. I’ll never get ahead. I get that.”
“Sure,” he said, then waited.
“But I don’t want to quit,” she said in frustration. “If I do, what happens? Helene’s still got my idea. Then she’s doing my Geek Day, or somebody she hires is. And they aren’t going to do it as well as I could. I know it, and I can’t stand it. I have all these ideas for it, and I want to do them, and I could get Alec and Rae to help, too, and this would be huge, if I did it. I’d make it huge.”
“Sure,” Joe said again. “And me, too. I’d help.”
“And you,” she agreed. “And also—this matters. Remember how I said I needed to do something that matters? Well, I found it. This is it. Those kids matter, and I can help. All those things Helene said last night—I can do it. I can help, and I want to do it.”
She ran down at last, took a sip of her coffee.
“Then,” he said, “that’s what you should do.”
“And I don’t want her to win,” she went on, barely hearing him. “No, scratch that, I can’t stand to let her win. If I quit, she wins. She’s got my idea, and she wins. But if I stay and work for her, doesn’t she win then, too? How do I win? That’s what I can’t see. And I want to win. I want to do the right thing, but I want to win.”
“How about if you stay and don’t work for her?” he asked. “Don’t you win then?”
“Well, yeah. That’d be the dream. What do I do, though, kill her?” She had to laugh at that, even as upset as she was. “Now there’d be a permanent solution. Sounds pretty good to me right now, I’ll tell you that.”
“Except that you’d be unlikely to be around to plan your Geek Day,” he pointed out. “So I think we’d better come up with something else.”
“I s
hould fight,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said. “You should fight. You know why bad people win so much? It’s because good people aren’t willing to fight, or they don’t know how. I know how, and I’m going to help you do it.”
Less Than Cinderella
It was a whole week more, though, before she got the chance. Dr. Marsh had been at a conference, and nobody else would do. And then there’d been the wait for the appointment, his surprise at the request.
“We like to go through channels here,” he’d said when she’d asked him for a meeting.
“I know you do,” she said, trying to curb her frustration. “But it’s important, or I wouldn’t ask you. Please. Fifteen minutes of your time, that’s all.”
Now, she stood outside the door of his office and knocked.
“Come in,” she heard.
“Here we go.” She took a deep breath, wiped a sweaty palm over the leg of her slacks, and opened the door, her laptop and a file folder clutched tightly in her other hand.
Dr. Marsh looked up. “I didn’t realize you were bringing somebody else to the meeting. Jim, wasn’t it?”
“Joe.” He took a seat beside Alyssa in one of the two visitor’s chairs across the desk from the Director.
“So,” Dr. Marsh said. His face was still pink, but it wasn’t as pleasant as it had been at the party. “What’s this all about?”
“I requested this meeting,” Alyssa said, “because I thought you should know that Helene appropriated my fundraising idea, the one we spoke about at the party last week. The idea of the field day for the tech industry, what I called Geek Day. I can’t find any evidence that she gave me any credit, did she?”
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I still don’t understand. You’re here to talk to me because you had the original idea for her plan? Shouldn’t you take that up with her?”
“No. I didn’t have the original idea for her plan. I had the whole plan.” She opened her laptop, swiveled it around to face him, and showed him, as Joe had instructed her, the information from her file’s “Properties” menu showing the date she’d created it, then handed him a stapled printout of all her slides.
“This was my presentation to Helene a month ago,” she said. “Please tell me if it was the presentation she gave to you.”
He reached for a case on his desk, opened it and removed his reading glasses, used both hands to put them on, then adjusted the printout so it sat perfectly aligned on his wooden desk, and she wanted to scream. She waited, tense and expectant, as he flipped through page after page, until he finally looked up at her, his face serious.
“Yes,” he said, “this is what she presented.”
“I can verify,” Joe said, “that Alyssa has been working on this idea for a good couple months. I saw her produce this presentation. I listened to her rehearse it. This was her idea, and hers alone.”
“I’m still not sure,” Dr. Marsh said after removing his glasses and going through the whole process in reverse, “why you’re here, uh . . . Joe. We prefer to keep our internal affairs internal, and surely Alyssa doesn’t need moral support to bring this matter to my attention.”
“That’s not why I’m here.” Joe reached into the folder that Alyssa had laid on the desk and pulled out another stapled collection of papers. “I’m here to give you some additional information.”
The glasses, again. “What is this, exactly?” Dr. Marsh asked.
“That,” Joe said, “is the transcript of a conversation Alyssa had on the telephone with Helene’s—Helen’s, I should say, because that’s her name—parents. The parents she has. The parents who raised her, because it turns out that she’s quite a bit less than Cinderella. She was never in foster care. She was never abused or abandoned. Her mother’s a homemaker, and her father’s an engineer with the Highway Department. They go to church. Her mother was her Girl Scout leader. And there was no CASA program in Tennessee thirty-five years ago, by the way. Everything she said in that speech of hers was a lie, and an insult to kids who actually live the life she talked about.”
The Director was looking rattled now. “The second document,” Joe went on, “is her record from the University of Tennessee. You might want to keep that one a bit quiet, because I didn’t exactly go through channels to get it, but that’s her record. As you can see, she took courses there for a couple years, but she didn’t do well, and she sure didn’t graduate. She didn’t graduate from any university at all, from what I can find out. Can I ask if you did a background check before you hired her?”
“No,” Dr. Marsh said. “But I take it you did.”
“I did,” Joe said. “I also spoke to a few people at the Carolyn G. Haskill Foundation. She had a reputation over there, maybe not with the people you talked to, but with the people who worked for her, for sure. A reputation for going through staff, for promoting herself first and foremost. It got her ahead, but at a cost. The cost being quite a few good people who are now working someplace else.”
“I’m glad for the information,” the Director said, “but I still don’t understand how all this concerns you.”
“Ah. Why do I care how Second Chance does, besides my interest in Alyssa? Fair question, and I have an answer.”
He sat there, looking big and tough and solid, and said it. “You see, that would be because I’m Alec Kincaid’s business partner. As in Alyssa’s brother. As in the guy you probably think of as your second-biggest donor.”
And then he reached over and pulled out the last thing in the folder, three pages of photocopied documents stapled together, and placed them in front of Dr. Marsh. “And one other reason, too. The reason I care what happens here? That would also be because I’m your first-biggest donor.”
A long silence followed as the Director flipped pages, took in the amounts on the photocopied checks, then looked up at Joe. “You’re Anonymous. You’re the Six-Million-Dollar Man.”
“That would be me,” Joe said. “But there’s a time to be anonymous, and there’s a time to speak up. And I’d say this is my time.”
Not a Fight
She was coming home from yet another momentous first day, but a completely different first day. For one thing, this was her first day without Helene. And for another, she was coming home to Joe’s place, and he was there. She’d texted him that she was leaving work, and he’d come home early to meet her, and she was glad.
She walked through the front door and straight into his arms, stood with her face pressed against his chest, letting herself relax into the comfort and security that was Joe. Having him hold her didn’t solve her problems, but it sure felt that way. Maybe it just made her feel like her problems were solvable.
“So what happened?” he asked when they were on the couch and she had a glass of wine in front of her, because this was a Wine Night, that was for sure.
“I didn’t hear all of it, of course,” she said. “But she didn’t go quietly. I heard there was some yelling.” Telling him allowed her to relish it all over again. “There may even have been some throwing things. I wanted her to come back into the office. I wanted to see her face. But the bookkeeper came in and packed up her desk. Too bad.”
“Yep,” Joe said. “They say living well is the best revenge, but sometimes, revenge is the best revenge. So she’s gone. What are they going to do about replacing her?”
“I haven’t heard much, but Dr. Marsh did say that whatever happens, Geek Day is my project. I get to manage it. I’m sure it’s wrong to be so pleased for myself after such a shakeup for Second Chance, but too bad, I’m excited anyway.” She was smiling, because she couldn’t help it. “I’ve spent all day making lists and notes. I’m going to make this the biggest thing to ever hit the tech world, you wait and see.”
“You don’t have to convince me.” He was smiling back at her, his thumb rubbing over the back of her neck. “My money was on you from Day One. You’ve got the opportunity. Everything you do with it now—that’s all on you. I know you can do it.”
>
“I can,” she said. “And I’m going to. You wait and see.”
A week later, though, she wasn’t feeling nearly so warm and fuzzy towards him. They’d gone to the gym together after work, were back at his place again, and Joe was heating up chili.
“So do we have plans for Memorial Day weekend?” she asked him. “Coming right up. Do I get to see what the cabin looks like in May? Do you get to drive me crazy checking my gear if we go for a hike?”
“I need to go out of town on Saturday,” he said, not responding to her teasing at all, which had her paying attention.
“Oh?” She stifled her disappointment. He was being cautious, she decided, because he was afraid she’d have a fit about him not spending time with her. She pulled greens out of the fridge and dumped them in a bowl, reminded herself to stay casual. She’d told him that she understood his workload. Time to prove it, because this was where the rubber met the road. She certainly couldn’t accuse him of not caring about her, of not paying attention to her. He’d done nothing else, lately. “Work thing?”
“No.” He gave the pot a stir. “Going to Las Vegas.”
Her hands stilled on the knife she’d been using to chop tomatoes. “Oh?” she asked again.
“Yeah. Something your dad said I should do.” When she didn’t answer, he went on. “That day when we went up there together. I decided, you fought for what you wanted. Time for me to fight too.”
She’d never known what they’d talked about that day. Joe had come out of her dad’s study more silent and closed off than ever, and she hadn’t pressed him.
Now, though, she did. “Something about your past,” she guessed. “About your mom, or your dad?”
“Neither. Something about me.” He kept stirring, even though she could tell the chili didn’t need it. “When I was a kid,” he said, and she could sense the reluctance in him, “I did some shoplifting.”
“Huh. Isn’t that pretty common?” she asked cautiously.
Asking for Trouble (The Kincaids) Page 26