“Nonsense. I want you to have it. I know you might not open a lot of letters with it, but I thought it would make a cool bookmark. And hey, you walk home, which often worries me. Stick it in a book but use it as a knife if you ever need it, Lord forbid. That’s a joke and a bad one. I hope you like the gift.”
“Of course I do,” I say, and with a forced serious voice, only a hint of laughter to be found in my words, I add, “Who doesn’t want a Tiffany letter opener for a bookmark and weapon?”
She smiles widely. “Exactly. Now I must go to my meeting. And you need to stop being so hard on yourself. I know floor three is your safe zone, but it can just as easily be the prison that holds you captive. And the worst kinds of prisons, Mia, are the ones we don’t know we’re in until we’ve escaped. Because we often don’t escape at all. Think about it.”
With her statement ringing with a little too much truth, I push to my feet as well and walk to the door, pausing with a thought. “Kara,” I say, turning to face her. “There was a man hanging around the library for a couple of days. He attended the presentation. He seemed important. Neil held the meeting for him. I looked at the board members’ photos, but he isn’t included. Neil mentioned budget cuts. Do you think he was some sort of outside auditor?”
Her brow furrows. “I don’t know who that would be, but I’ll see if I can find out. But, Mia, we are paying for ourselves with the auditorium. Think positive. Maybe he was here to learn how to do what we do in other places.”
I nod and exit her office with my silver Tiffany letter opener, in a long, pretty blue box.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Listen to the silence for it has much to say.
—Rumi
Present . . .
There is silence all around me, hollow, empty, suffocating, as if I am in a box, a prison I am desperate to escape.
With a gasp, I blink into consciousness, my back to the solid surface, my gaze blurry, refusing to focus. Slowly, too slowly, images form. Stairs. Concrete. Railings. I’m in the stairwell of a building. What building?
A damp, cold sensation washes over me, centered in my core. I swallow against the dryness in my throat, and my gaze lowers, drawn to the ground, where it lands on something long and silver, stained with red. The letter opener. The Tiffany letter opener. It was . . . it was in my . . . bag. It can’t be here, but where is here?
There’s a sharp pain in the area where icy fingers wrap my belly, and I lower my chin, panting, a dark stain across the pretty fuchsia dress I was wearing. I love . . . this dress. It’s ruined now. There’s a flash in my mind of a struggle, and a sob escapes my throat, dampness clinging to my cheeks, rapid pants following until I scream. I just scream and scream some more. “No! No! No!” And then there are no more screams, no more words. There is just this quivering, quaking sensation in my body, and an odd, almost humming sound sliding from my lips.
I think I should run, but I don’t know from what, and it doesn’t matter.
I can’t run.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The past . . .
Even salt looks like sugar.
My father often says, “Don’t trust everything you see.” I don’t think he made up that saying, but he uses it as a litmus test in his work. Right now, I feel that saying reflected in my life. For instance, my parents’ pizza night being shunned is not really about cholesterol but rather the state of their relationship. The gift for filling in for my boss and making a fool of myself and her is not really a congratulatory gift, but rather a sympathy gift. And the notes I’ve been receiving aren’t really random. I just don’t know the truth behind them yet.
I’m still pondering my list of things that might not be what they seem when I manage to place my butt back in my chair in front of my desk, only to have Jack sit down beside me. “Well? What’s the word? Are you fired or promoted?”
“Promoted?” I snort. “Hardly. That was never an option, and you know it. However, oddly, considering all, I was given a celebratory gift for finishing my first presentation. This.” I slide the box over to him.
“A Tiffany box? Fancy.” He opens the lid and glances at the letter opener and then at me. “Is this from Kara?”
“Yes,” I say, and I go on to vocalize the answer to “Why?” as it hits me. “I think it’s a pity gift.”
“If she’s bathing in cash.” He pulls his phone from his pocket and punches in a few keys before glancing up at me. “A four-hundred-dollar pity gift?” He rotates his phone and shows me the eBay auction with the same item. “I don’t think so, Mia.”
My brows knit together. “Four hundred dollars?” I reach for his phone and stare down at the eBay listing in disbelief. “Why would she give me a gift this expensive at all, ever? I don’t even give wedding presents this expensive.”
“Maybe she gets a bonus if she hits certain goals, and you helped her do that.”
“It’s a four-hundred-dollar letter opener, which, by the way, she suggested I use as a bookmark.”
“Her husband makes a lot of money,” he reminds me. “But she could be expensing this as well.”
“Neil yelled at me about budget cuts Wednesday. No way is she expensing a Tiffany letter opener for me, of all people. None of this makes sense.”
“Maybe you’re thinking too hard. Obviously the presentation didn’t go as badly as you thought.” There’s a cackle of laughter from outside the door. “I better get back out front. The foot traffic is heavy today.”
“I’m coming, too,” I say, sliding the Tiffany box into my top desk drawer, but I don’t immediately follow Jack out of the office. I linger on his perspective now, only to purge it with a hard rejection.
He’s wrong, I think. The presentation did not go well.
My gaze lands on my coffee cup that reads, Red suits you.
That’s wrong, too. Red has never been my color.
What is happening in my life right now?
Everything is contrary to the truth.
“Don’t trust everything you see,” I whisper.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
On my way home, I stop by the liquor store with the intent of grabbing a couple of bottles of wine, admittedly a little nervous about carrying a four-hundred-dollar letter opener in my bag, at least while it’s in a box. As Kara said, it really would make an excellent weapon, and with that strange tingling sensation on my neck, I decide that if anyone tries to take it from me, I’ll fight. I’ll use the letter opener as a weapon. I almost laugh at the idea that I could ever do any such thing, my mind going back to my ten-year-old self. I’d freaked when I’d accidentally tripped my friend Ana, and she’d cut her arm open. I’d struggled to help her and soon discovered red really is not my color. The blood had sent me into panic mode, and I’d screamed louder than Ana. I think we all knew at that point that med school was not in my future. I was not, and am not, the bravest of them all—or anyone, for that matter.
I’m certainly not tonight, as the weirdest forty-eight hours of my life has me jittery and on edge. I truly can’t finish up in the store soon enough.
I’ve just paid for my purchases, and I’m headed for the door when Ben enters the store. I suck in a breath at the unexpected encounter, and as if I’m in a jungle with a bear charging toward me, my gaze cuts left and right, in a wild hunt for safety, only to find the crush of people too deep on either side. By the time I’ve ruled out avoidance, Ben is standing in front of me. “You stalking me or what?”
“Would it convince you to wear earbuds when you clean?”
His lips quirk. “You just won’t quit about the earbuds, will you?”
“It’s a reasonable request.”
“It’s a free country and all that shit,” he rebuts. “I can wear ’em or not wear ’em.” He steps closer. “You’re just as free as me.” He steps around me and walks away.
I’m just as free as him?