looks, I’m not terribly hungry. I-I guess I’m still full from dinner.”
“Full?” Grandpa Stu eyed me closely. “I saw your plate when that fella from the hotel took it away. You ate no more than half your steak and no more than a quarter of your potatoes.”
“I ate my chocolate cake!”
“You ate some of your chocolate cake—not all of it.”
“I was excited for Sam.” I looked from my grandfather, to my empty plate, and back again before returning it to the pile. “And… I was busy talking to Andy.”
“He ate his food,” Grandpa Stu pointed out.
“I don’t know, Grandpa, I can’t explain it.” I fussed with the container of plastic forks and when they were neat and orderly, I dropped my hand to my side. “It was a big night, you know? I guess I was just busy soaking everything up.”
He polished off his umpteenth Napoleon of the night, tossed the plate into the trash can in the far corner, and then motioned for me to follow him down the hallway and into my office. Once inside, he flipped on the overhead light and pushed the door closed enough to give us privacy but not enough to be rude to my guests. “Talk to me, Sugar Lump.”
“Grandpa, I can’t be in here. JoAnna went to a lot of trouble to put this shindig together for me and Sam. In fact, that’s the only reason we’re even still doing this—because of Sam.”
“And Sam is loving every minute of it.” Grandpa Stu made his way around my desk and dropped into my chair with an audible oomph. “I’m mighty proud of that young man, Sugar Lump.”
It felt good to smile if even for just a few moments, so I gave into it as I wandered over to my draft table, my eyes barely registering the pitch it housed for yet another client I was trying to woo over to Tobias Advertising Agency. “I have no doubt it will be the first in a long line of awards for our Sam. He’s incredibly talented. Tonight just proved I’m not the only one who sees it.”
I turned at the sound of my desk drawer opening and then closing. “Do you need something, Grandpa?”
“Nope. Just fiddling with things the way you’ve been fiddling with things all night.”
I made my way back to my desk and sat down on the chair normally reserved for clients. “I haven’t been fiddling with things.”
My grandfather’s left eyebrow rose halfway up his forehead. “Oh? You tellin’ me JoAnna didn’t have to shoo you away from the candy jar on her desk within just a few minutes of you getting here?”
“She’s always shooing me from that jar.”
“Because you’re getting into it, not playing with it.”
I started to deny the accusation but when I realized I was obsessively running my finger across a faint scratch on the top of my desk, I pulled my hand back, shoved it under my thigh, and said nothing.
“And when Carter was using his finger to re-curl that one strand of hair next to your ear”—he pointed to the left side of my face—“you kept messing with that folding chair out in the reception area so much Sam actually wedged a coaster under it so you’d quit making that sound.”
“The legs were uneven.”
“It’s a folding chair, Sugar Lump. No one expects it to be premium seating.”
To argue would be futile. My grandfather was right. I’d been fidgeting pretty much non-stop since I got in the car with Andy for the ten-plus mile drive from the award show venue. “I still can’t believe what happened to Deidre.”
“I know. I’ve thought about it a time or two myself since we’ve been here. And I’ve said a few prayers for that young woman and her family. But playing with jars and chairs isn’t going to change anything. And this was a very big night for Sam and for you. Don’t let things that are out of your control taint that. Although, truth be told, I think it’s your name that shoulda been called for that fancy gold storyboard thingy.”
“Thank God it wasn’t.” Andy peeked around my office door. “Mind if I crash?”
My chair (or what was normally my chair) squeaked under the decreasing weight of my grandfather’s body as he pushed back from the desk and stood, the smile I’d loved my whole life on full display. “Not at all, young man. Especially since the sight of you in that doorway managed to get this one”—he pointed at me—“to smile for the first time since this party started.”
“I’ve smiled!”
“Not like that, you haven’t.” Grandpa Stu came out from behind my desk, stopped beside my chair just long enough to kiss the top of my head, and then smacked Andy on the back as they passed one another in the doorway. “If you can get her to keep that smile longer than a minute or two, I’ll buy you a beer before I head back to Kansas City.”
“I’ll do my best, Stu.” Andy waited until my grandfather closed the door completely, and then made his way over to me. “I meant what I said, you know. I’m glad you didn’t win that award tonight.”
When he perched on the edge of the desk and reached for my hand, I gave it willingly. “I’m sorry I was such lousy company on the way here. I guess I was still in shock.”
He squeezed my hand ever so gently until I really looked at him. “If you remember, I didn’t say anything during the drive, either.”
I thought back, and he was right. “I keep hearing that sound, and seeing her face just before it all happened. And when I’m not seeing her, I’m seeing the faces of her husband and parents as—” I tugged my hand free of Andy’s grasp and used it to try and push away the image in my head. But all it did was advance forward to the moment Deidre’s husband backed away from the huddle of people around his wife to let loose the kind of tortured scream I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to forget.
Andy raked his hand through his hair. “And I’m hearing and seeing all that same stuff and thanking God you didn’t win that damn award. Because if you had, that would have been…”
His words disappeared behind his fist as he turned and looked out my office window to the small side alley that separated my building from the drycleaner next door. But it didn’t matter. His anguish and the reason behind it were crystal clear.
But before I could gather my own emotions enough to string together a coherent response, his focus and his hands were back on me. “That woman is dead because of a wrong place/wrong time moment. And it could have been you, Tobi.”
I looked down at his hands on mine and worked to steady my breath. “So you saw it, too?”
He drew back but his gaze never left mine. “Her fall? Yeah. Her family’s anguish? Yeah. That look on her face as I imagine she felt the platform starting to give way? Yeah. I saw it all just like you did—like everyone in that entire ballroom did.”
“I’m talking about the look just before the platform gave way,” I whispered, though why I felt the need to whisper in a closed office was beyond me.
“I think she felt something we couldn’t see.”
Again,
