“Maybe.” I clasped her arms and squeezed. “But you promised you wouldn’t set me up anymore.”
She laughed and stepped back. I twisted the stool to face her. Sitting to standing, we were eye to eye.
“Sharing a couple drinks with two cute guys is hardly a setup. I’d never break my promise.”
I arched a brow.
“Not until I forget it, at least.” She flapped her hand in front of my face. “Never mind all that. I came back to thank you. This trip is going to be amazing. I’ll forward you the link and our flight info.”
“Do I need to do anything?”
Isabel shook her head. “It’s all scheduled and paid for, but you should at least check out the website. It’s gorgeous—dresses are supplied, hats, shoes, everything. Wait till you read about all the activities.” She glanced at her watch again. “Now I really do need to run.”
With that, she waved and disappeared.
I looked to Moira. “I don’t think she ever doubted I’d say yes.”
Chapter 5
I received copious e-mails and texts over the weekend. Isabel didn’t have time to meet again, much too overwhelmed, but she did have time to send long lists of to-dos, to-packs, to-sign-up-fors, and to-read-up-ons. It was a good thing Golightly was off my plate, because I was now overwhelmed too—by Regency England.
Feeling a little bored on Sunday, I played with my dad’s latest gift. It was an extraordinary dispenser made from antique kitchen tools, fine copper wires, and several porcelain knobs used for electrical wiring back in the 1920s. It dropped out Skittles for me—one every 2.2 minutes.
“I figure at fifty-four Skittles per bag, if it takes you two hours to eat a bag, you might stop at one,” he’d said.
He had made it for work. He knew Golightly was giving me fits and that I either constructed wire animals or ate Skittles when concentrating. After dinner, while we dismantled some of its larger parts to fit into my car, I didn’t have the heart to tell him of Golightly’s demise. I simply gave him a kiss, a hug, and a thank-you.
So instead of measuring life at work, my gizmo measured cleaning at home. My apartment took half a bag, and my car a quarter. When I called Dad to report, we spent fifteen minutes pondering what we could measure in Skittles and how many each project might take. We determined cleaning his garage workspace would take at least three family-size bags.
“It’s only noon. What will you do with the rest of your day?”
I looked around the apartment. I often worked on Sundays, not because I had to, but because I found doodling and design relaxing. There was no work. But there were lists.
“Isabel sent me tons of stuff about our trip. I need to sort through it all, and I think I better brush up on my Austen. Maybe grab a book or two.”
“That’d be nice.” I could hear him nod with each word.
He said little after that and we hung up, both lost in thought. Dad probably headed to the garage, his sanctuary. I grabbed my keys, headed for my clean car and for BookPeople on Lamar.
After riffling through the entire Austen selection, I chose its only copy of all Austen’s novels in one volume. It was huge and heavy and smelled like leather. The woman at checkout turned it over and over in her hands.
“You can get these for free on an e-reader. They’re in the public domain.”
“I know and I probably will, but I love books. The weight. The smell. The bigger the better. It’s a shame Encyclopedia Britannica doesn’t print all those encyclopedias anymore. Weren’t those the best?”
The woman sighed the equivalent of a Whatever and rang the sale.
I patted the book’s dark green cover as if to soothe any hurt feelings. I’d gone over the top with the whole Encyclopedia Britannica thing, but books—heavy books—meant something to me, and at well over a thousand pages, this one was larger and heavier than my meatiest college textbook. I already loved it.
My mom had always insisted on paper, and because she couldn’t do much but read, people gave her books. She loved them all—and the heavier, the better. She said they felt like blankets resting on her lap. Our house growing up was filled with electrical wires, brothers, and books. So purchasing a large book in her honor was only right.
I spent the rest of the afternoon and well into the early hours of Monday morning reading. Mom had first introduced me to Jane Austen in the seventh grade. She wasn’t well that year and we spent much of our time together with me reading aloud. Pride and Prejudice was first, Emma next. But eventually I had my own reading to do for English classes, so my indoctrination into Austen’s remaining novels was postponed.
The Austen I remembered was not the Austen I encountered now. That Austen was staid and challenging. And I’m sure my slow pace and mispronunciations must have driven my mother crazy—words like reverie and supercilious. She never mentioned it, though, or let her smile waver—Austen and I were her delights.
Mom’s devotion to those novels made sense to me now. Jane Austen understood people, and she was funny. Being an engineer, analytic and literal, I knew I was probably still missing nuances and subtleties and most of her brilliance, but what I caught was captivating.
She wrote with such precision that a single phrase evoked an emotional response. She elicited laughter, warmth, and even a sense of awe. Across two hundred years, I recognized her characters in the here and now. She wrote about people I knew.
Northanger Abbey struck me most forcibly. I found someone there so clearly drawn that I recognized words, phrases, even mannerisms. I finally put the book down at three o’clock Monday morning. I needed sleep. I would need a fresher mind to tackle all I’d found there.
I’d found Isabel.
On Monday morning, I stopped just inside WATT’s front door. Karen was hovering outside my cubicle. Her frosted hair, cut precisely to the chin, shifted back and forth as she scanned the office.
Three hours of sleep were not sufficient for this . . . I pulled my bag tighter on my shoulder. I could feel the instant she spotted me.
“Mary? A moment.”
Rather than point me toward my cubicle or into a conference room, she walked straight past me and pushed out the door back to the parking lot. On her way past she offered the tiniest of smiles. She was playing with me. Giving me what I wanted—almost. I steeled my expression and followed.
Karen pointed a few feet away to a small gravel area, landscaped with cacti and other native plants, and stepped right into the gravel. “Nothing is private in that building. How anybody gets anything done is beyond me.” She shifted around to secure firm footing before looking to me. We stood eye to chin. I slouched to compensate.
“I looked for you Friday, but you were gone.”
“Oh.” I wasn’t sure how to answer her. I wasn’t an hourly employee, and I hadn’t left until after six.
“I’m re-tasking you to battery improvements and the hearing device Benson is testing. It shows great promise. Ask him for his notes.”