“Loved that shit, keep goin’,” Alyssa urged.
I looked to Josie. “Those lamps from that lighting warehouse. Terrible displays but that standing one and the matching table one, in iron, looking like they’re made out of loops. The standing one in the sunken area, the one on a table up top. Bringing the two areas together.”
“Those were beautiful, Amelia,” Josie said softly as I felt a hand again at the small of my back, gently pushing me.
“The daybed at your interior designer’s showroom,” I kept at it as Josie backed up and Alyssa pushed me toward the front door. “In fact, that whole area. That cream painted iron side table that looked like tiered flowers. The rug that was all pebbly. The fantastic lamp that had that pearly base that looked like it was made from the inside of shells. I want that in my bedroom on the other side of the fireplace. Oh, and those rugs. The memory foam ones. Three of them for the kitchen, sink, work area, stove.”
“How much time we got?” Alyssa muttered.
“Some of the specialty shops will be closed, but we can still get to the mall,” Josie replied, backing out my front door that she’d opened.
“Toss pillows,” I mumbled. “Pottery Barn. Those huge downy ones with those covers in those deep colors.”
“Beep the locks, bitch, we’re outta here,” Alyssa ordered.
I heard the locks on Josie’s Cayenne beep.
Alyssa shoved me in the front seat and Josie got behind the wheel while Alyssa hauled herself into the back.
And away we went.
It took another four hours and we closed down the mall, but we got my stoneware, the kitchen rugs, the toss pillows and new towels for all the bathrooms. We also got new bed linens that would match the seating area. Further, we found a new set of bed linens for Olympia’s room, a paisley of bright pinks and oranges, her favorite colors.
In fact, the Cayenne was not small, but it was stuffed full by the time we made it home.
And Josie had called her designer, reserved the items I wanted, all I had to do was go in with my credit card and arrange delivery.
The next day, I went out to do that and get the rest (what I could fit in my car, which was a single lamp and the wineglasses) and I ordered what needed to be delivered and set up, including a new TV, DVD player, receiver, Xbox, printer, laptop and desktop PC. I’d even found a table that worked with the chair for the landing, highly distressed wood planks at top and bottom, positioned and cut round, held together by swirling bands of wrought iron.
It was amazing.
The rest of the day I ran load after load in the dishwasher, cleaned and put away the wine glasses, laundered and put away the towels, the same with the linens, making the beds.
The day after that, the deliveries began, the TV mounted, the system set up, the receiver connected to the house’s surround sound system (though all the components had to be put on the floor since I didn’t have a media cabinet), the computer stuff set up, also on the floor in the back room.
I needed a desk.
I went out and bought a pad of paper.
I came home and made a to-do list.
Several of them.
I also spent hours taping paint chips up on the walls, changing them out, rearranging them, standing back and assessing, moving them to another area with different light.
I was off and running.
*
I was crazy.
Even knowing this, I did a U-turn on the quiet street (my fourth) and drove past the church again.
Definitely crazy.
I kept driving.
Then, like they were someone else’s hands and feet, mine executed another U-turn and this time I didn’t drive past the church.
I parked in front of it.
I looked up at the white building with its stained glass windows and high bell tower.
I’d never had a job. Not once. I didn’t even work in a local ice cream shop as a teen just for fun.
I’d gone to college at Stanford where my father went, got a liberal arts degree, studying English Literature because even I could read.
I’d done well. I’d graduated cum laude. My father had been summa, but as I was a girl, he didn’t expect much and he’d been pleased with my standing.
I didn’t go to work after. Girls like me didn’t work. I had a job I would fulfill, a job my mother had chosen for me: being the wife of a wealthy man, keeping his home, raising his children, continuing my ultimate role of being a Hathaway, and sitting on as many volunteer boards of appropriate charities that would have me.
Before I met Conrad, I’d lived off my trust funds and I had a good time. I absolutely did. I went out in little black dresses with my girlfriends. I drank cosmopolitans. I flirted. I dated.
I did all this appropriately. It wouldn’t do for me to get a reputation. It wouldn’t do for me to have the kind of fun an early twenty-something might wish to have.
So I didn’t.
When I met Conrad, I’d been at a charity ball, wearing a fabulous evening gown. We’d been standing by a stone balustrade on a back balcony of a fabulous estate. I’d gone out to get away from the oppressive heat of a crush of bodies and he’d gone out to get away from the oppressive company.
For me, him so beautiful in his well-cut tuxedo, his hair slightly overlong, a quiet rebellion I found titillating, it was love at first sight.
He’d told me he’d felt the same thing.
Now I was thinking it was my cleavage and, although they weren’t long, they had been shapely, my legs through the slit in my dress.
We’d dated. We’d become involved. We’d gotten engaged. We’d married. And I’d done what I was supposed to do.
I became the wife of a wealthy man, took care of his home, raised his children, and sat on every board of an appropriate charity that would have me.
In other words, I was good for nothing. I couldn’t find a job outside of entry level even if I tried.
I knew it.
But I couldn’t shop for furniture to fill my eternity. I couldn’t bake because there was no one to eat it but me, and I loved doing it, but didn’t have a taste for eating it. I couldn’t read entire days, weeks, months, years away.
I needed to do something.
On that thought, resolutely, I pushed out of the car and walked to the church.
Once inside, I found being in a church in the middle of the day for no reason was not like it was in the movies. A well-meaning pastor didn’t show up nearly instantly to sit with you in a pew, listen to your worries and share his wisdom.
Although the church was open, no one was around.
I gave it time then went wandering. Down a side hall and back, I found a small sign that said “Office” with an arrow.
I followed the arrow.
At the end of the hall, a door was opened. I turned to it and stopped in its frame.
It was definitely an office, a relatively nice one, not huge, not tiny, an official-looking desk with a small but beautiful stained glass window behind it, a woman at the side of the desk leaning over it, scribbling on a piece of paper.
“Um…excuse me,” I called.
She jerked straight and turned startled eyes to me.