Children.
It always came back to children.
The story of her life.
Better not to dwell on that at the moment.
Lily slid off her drafting stool and walked over to her desk. She felt a head rush when she saw the large square envelope from her old alma mater. Now what did they want? She’d sent an extremely generous check, and that should have been the end of it, but here they were, writing to her yet again. Her heart jumped up into her throat as she slit open the envelope with her nail. Her sigh of relief was so loud it bounced off the walls of the workroom. A thank-you card. She was so light-headed with relief, she sank down on her chair to pull herself together. Seconds later, she was rummaging in her desk for her scribbled notes. She’d called PAK Industries twice to try and locate Pak, as he’d introduced himself to her years ago, to no avail. Mr. Peter Aaron Kelly was out of town, she’d been told. She’d even tried through the Alumni Association to find Pak’s home address, but they wouldn’t give it out. She supposed that was a good thing.
Lily sighed again when she struggled with her thoughts in regard to the head of PAK Industries. She’d thought of him often during the past years because they had so much in common, and yet they didn’t really know each other. A brief encounter, a five-minute lunch, yet she still remembered him so clearly. He had become one of the richest men in the world. She was no slouch in that department herself. While her revenues couldn’t quite match Peter Kelly’s, they were up there with so many zeros she often got dizzy when she looked at her financial statements.
How clearly she remembered the day she had decided to track down Peter Kelly. It was the day the first invitation had arrived. She told herself that if there was a way for her to find out if he was attending the fund-raiser, she would consider going herself. She needed to talk to him. Or someone. Preferably him.
Lily pushed the thank-you card around on her desk with the tip of a pencil. She moved it one way, then another until she finally tipped it into an open drawer. Good. Now she didn’t have to look at it. She slammed the drawer shut with way too much force.
The phone on her desk chirped. She pressed the button for the speakerphone to activate.
“Are you ready for your lunch, Lily?” Penny asked.
“Sure, send it in. And bring the paper and two cups of coffee.” Like she was really going to eat lunch. These days she nibbled, and that was about it. She wasn’t sleeping either. A dangerous combination, Penny had chastised her. Half the time she was walking around like a zombie. Why? She knew why but didn’t want to face up to her past. No sense lying to herself. That was why she wanted to talk to Peter Kelly.
Lily looked up when her lunch was set in front of her. It looked good, but, as usual, she wasn’t hungry. She reached for the coffee and gulped at it as she opened the paper. She always went to the financial section first. Coffee cup in hand, she looked down at the photo and article that took the entire half of the financial page above the fold. The cup dropped from her hands as she stared at the man she had just been thinking about. She stared at the picture for a long time as she tried to control her trembling body until she realized it wasn’t Peter Kelly she was now staring at but Senator Hudson Preston.
Why did this particular picture of those two men put her in such a state of panic? When she couldn’t come up with an answer, Lily sat on her hands to stop them from shaking. What was wrong with her? It was Peter Kelly who rendered her witless. She didn’t even know Senator Preston.
Almost an hour later, Lily managed to get up off the chair she’d been sitting on. Her hands felt numb. She gathered up the newspaper with averted eyes and scrunched it into a ball. Then she mopped up the spilled coffee that had soaked into the blotter and puddled on the carpet. While she was doing that she was talking to her secretary, instructing her to book a flight to San Francisco so she could attend the fundraiser at Berkeley. “An early flight tomorrow morning.”
Lily leaned over her desk, her hands gripping the edges. She’d made a decision. She’d actually made a decision. Not just your run-of-the-mill decision but an important one. So important, she felt like her very life hung in the balance. At least that was how she felt at the moment.
Lily jammed her cell phone into the pocket of her jeans. She looked around to see where she’d tossed her straw bag. She slung it over her shoulder, but not before she jammed a matching straw hat on her head. She almost ran from the office, shouting orders over her shoulder. Before she ran into her private elevator, she shouted, “I’ll call, and you’ll see me when you see me.”
How blasé that sounded, Lily thought as she climbed behind the wheel of her Range Rover minutes later. Her stomach in knots, her thoughts all over the map, she barreled out of the parking lot and on out to the road that would take her to Interstate 26 and downtown Charleston, where she lived on the Battery. A half-hour drive, depending on traffic. Time to buy an outfit for the black-tie dinner at Berkeley. Maybe another new outfit for the day after. A travel outfit. Lily tried to remember the last time she’d gone clothes shopping. When she couldn’t, she gave up. She wondered if she had enough time to get a facial and a haircut. Just the thought of getting a haircut sent shivers up and down her spine. Some inner instinct warned her that she needed to look as successful as she was if she was going to see Peter Kelly. Assuming she would meet Peter Kelly if he even showed up for the fund-raiser. Well, she’d just have to make the time. The worst-case scenario was that she would have to pay extra to have the beauty shop stay open to accommodate her.
As Lily drove toward Charleston, she let her mind wander back to her past and the years leading up to the present. She had so many regrets these days. She’d hoped to be married with children by now, but that wasn’t happening. She didn’t think it would ever happen. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing. She was married to her company and would just be cheating a husband. She had no motherly instincts, but there was a reason for that. A reason she didn’t want to dwell on. How sad.
Lily tried to remember the last time she’d had a real date. Well over a year ago. Penny said it was because she was too intimidating. Penny also said her standards were way too high, and at her age, she needed to stop being so picky. Lily didn’t even bother to offer any rebuttal because Penny was right. If things continued the way they were, she was going to end up an old maid, rocking on her verandah and staring out at the ocean.
Lily continued with her soul-searching. She’d always been a methodical kind of person. And analytical. She rarely made a mistake, but when she did, it was usually of the mega kind. To date she regretted only two things she’d done in her life. The first one was going into the teaching field. She simply wasn’t teacher material. While she admired all teachers, she herself had no desire to mold young minds. The second mistake was to donate her eggs to that awful clinic. How young and stupid she was back then. How needy, how greedy, how goal-oriented she was during that last year at Berkeley.
With all that on her shoulders, it still boggled her mind that she’d made a go of the little business she’d started in her grandmother’s garage. These days she ran a company that netted a billion dollars annually.
All of that, and still she was an emotional wreck, teetering on the edge. For months she’d known she had to do something to turn her life around. Then when the invitation arrived to attend the special fund-raiser, her mind had kicked into high gear. Why she thought Peter Kelly could help her was beyond her comprehension. Some deep part of her gut said that since he was part of her past in a minimal way, the answers had to lie with him. “Maybe I’m in the throes of a nervous breakdown and too stupid to know it,” she muttered to herself.
Lily had reached Charleston. She parked by the outdoor market and made
