Swept Away

“All right, but what about all those awards the city and state have given to you and to the agency? They can forget about what you’ve done for that city?” She could imagine him snapping his fingers when he said, “Just like that? It’s sickening.”

“Don’t worry, Papa, I’ll be fine.”

“Then what’re you doing home this time of day? I couldn’t believe it when Enid told me you’d gone home.”

“Best place to clean out my mind. I was in no mood to console the sixty-seven employees who’d be drifting into my office for assurance that they still had jobs. How’s Mama?”

“Pretty good today. She’s asleep right now. Don’t worry, Veronica. As long as you do your best, you can hold your head up. You’re competent. Nobody can take that from you.”

“Thanks, Papa, but right now I don’t have much enthusiasm for service to the public.”

“It’ll come back. Looks like we’ve both met our Hendersons.”

“What do you mean?”

“Long story, child. There was one in my life once, and he won, too. But only for a little while. So chin up.”

“Thanks, Papa. Love you. Give Mama a hug.”

“You know I will. Talk to you later.”

She went back to her knitting, more tranquil now, musing over her stepfather’s comment that he, too, had met his Henderson. But if she knew Sam Overton, he’d said as much on the subject as he ever would. She searched for a solution to foster care but couldn’t think of a workable alternative. Still, something had to be done. Restless, she put her knitting aside, went to the Steinway grand in her living room and began to practice a song that her choral group had chosen for its next performance. But after half an hour she gave it up, went out on her back porch and sat there, looking at the ripening of spring, trying to count her blessings.

Schyler had been home twenty minutes when the phone rang. He lifted the receiver, knowing instinctively that the caller was his father.

“You didn’t call to let me know how the case went,” Richard Henderson said to his son. Not accusing; he didn’t do that. He merely stated the facts.

“I didn’t have anything to rejoice about. I lost, but I’m not sorry.”

He could imagine that his father, knowing how he hated to lose even the most trite argument, raised his antennae.

“Why not?”

“Instead of answering my question, she asked me if I wasn’t demanding that she pay for someone else’s sins. Dad, that thing cut me to the quick. Maybe I was. I…I just don’t know.”

“Don’t punish yourself for nothing, Son. You said the case had merit. You questioning your judgment?”

“Yeah. I don’t know. The case against the agency made more sense than the one against her.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “For the life of me, I don’t know why I went after her like that…like a lion after a gazelle. She…she’s…”

“I see. You liked her. You more than liked her, you bent over backward not to let your feelings get in the way, and you think you overdid it. Right?”

Arrow-straight as always, Richard couldn’t have put it plainer. Schyler rubbed his square chin and released a breath of frustration. “Something like that but, well, that’s history now. Our paths won’t cross again unless we meet at a conference, a fund-raiser or a civic meeting.”

He rubbed his chin, reflecting on what could have been. Too bad. Rotten, lousy timing. This woman had gotten to him in ways that he couldn’t have imagined. And right then, he didn’t want to examine his feelings, a mélange of almost everything a man could feel for a woman. Almost. Something remained that he’d never given to any woman. But if he got to know her…

“Would it help to call her and tell her you’re sorry, or maybe that you’re glad things worked out as they did?”

He didn’t believe in putting Band-Aids on life-threatening wounds. He’d take his medicine. “I don’t think that’ll help, but you’re right. I ought to do something to restore her status in the public’s eyes. I’ll call a news conference. That’s how it got started.”

His father’s low growl of a laugh had always comforted him in an odd way. “You going to eat crow?” Richard asked when he finally stopped laughing.

Schyler didn’t catch anything amusing. “Don’t like the stuff. No way. I’ll fix it, though.”

Veronica flicked on the television in her office, leaned against her desk and watched Schyler tell the press that his complaints against CPAA and Veronica were not substantiated and reminded them that the case had been thrown out of court. When hours passed and not a single reporter had telephoned to get her reaction to the press conference Schyler had called to exonerate her, she knew the damage to her and the agency exceeded what she’d imagined. She was no longer good news copy, and she said as much to her deputy.

Enid tried without success to camouflage her disheartened mood. “When a man drops an egg, he thinks his only problem is cleaning up the mess. Does he stop to deal with the fact that there is no longer an egg?”

It surprised her that she didn’t want to hear him vilified. “Don’t you think he tried to repair the damage?”

Enid sucked air through her teeth hard and long. “Not in my opinion. He should have come right out and said he made a mistake in bringing the charges, that he was wrong and next time he’d see to it that his assistants did a better job of getting the facts.”

Visions of his eyes glistening with heat for her flashed through Veronica’s mind, and she remembered his words: “You were right there with me.” He’d wanted her and hadn’t tried to hide it, and he had known that she reciprocated what he felt.

Veronica leaned back in her chair, folded her hands behind her head, crossed her knees and pondered Enid’s attack on Schyler. She thought for a few minutes before answering. “You’re forgetting that the girl was missing, he didn’t know where she was and, when she surfaced on a charge of stealing food she was a shell of her former self. His crime was in caring too much.”

Enid rolled her eyes skyward, crossed and uncrossed her ankles. “If you say so. I don’t know what we’re going to do, though. Fund-raising’s going to be a problem.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll think of something. Right now, I need a change of scenery.”

Chapter 2

At home later that day, she walked around her elegant town house. She picked up a paperweight and stared at it. For the past five years she’d done nothing but work. CPAA had been her whole world. She thought of what she’d done with her life and what she hadn’t done. As a child, she’d had such promise, gifted in music and art. But she’d chosen the safe way, a career that would enable her to make a good living and help her parents. She’d done that. Renovated their home, refurnished it and eased their lives. But her dreams were still that, dreams. She’d never swum in the Pacific; stood before the Taj Mahal; skied on a mountain top; gazed at the Mona Lisa; flirted with a handsome Egyptian; and she’d never sung Billie Holiday songs in a jazz club.

She might have made a difference in the lives of a few people, but in the world? Not at all. And what could she show for her thirty-two years? A busted career. And the misfortune to have met, in a battle that had ruined her, the one man who had made her fantasize about love in his arms. A picture of herself in her high school cap and gown mocked her from the top of her piano. Oh, what hope and what naiveté. She’d had the world on a string then. But a decade and a half later, she still didn’t have the nest, children and love that she craved, and she’d lived a life of adventure only in her dreams.

Her thoughts went back to her childhood, filled with love and her parents’ caring. But it had encompassed only a few short years. Study and work were about all she had ever known: work for food and clothing; study for the scholarships that would take her to the next level. And when she finally reached the top, staying there had consumed all of her time and energy. She had never known a man’s love, never enjoyed a carefree vacation, never spent hours chatting with friends. She hadn’t lived, only worked and struggled. And what had it brought her? She wanted to taste life, to do the things about which she had always fantasized, and to shed her affected aura of ultraconservatism.

The next morning she called Enid to her office as soon as she got there. “Sit down and brace yourself. I’m taking leave from the agency. Then I’ll decide whether to remain.”

Enid’s mouth opened wide in a wordless exclamation of horror, and Veronica could see that she’d shocked the woman.

“You’re not serious! Veronica, don’t do anything you’ll be sorry for. Wait a few months until all this settles. I know you’ve—”

“I’ve spent the night thinking about it, and I need to get away from here, at least for a while.”

Enid leaned forward, her suddenly sallow complexion a testament to her sorrow. “Is it Henderson? I know he’s sorry, and I know he cares about what happened and about you, or he wouldn’t have called that press conference and tried to make amends.”

Veronica’s heart fluttered wildly. Then, something sprang to life within her, like a jonquil popping through the earth in spring or a song leaping to life in her mind, but she controlled her response to it. “That was gracious of him. Maybe he cares, and maybe guilt drove him to do it. I don’t know, and if I change my plan of action because of him, then what? I wish him well, but today is my last day in this office. I have three months of leave stored up, and I’m taking it. If I decide not to continue working here, I’ll give notice.” She called a staff meeting, locked her desk and left.

On her way home, she stopped by Jenny’s corner and handed the woman an envelope of bills.

Jenny peered into the large brown envelope, closed it and looked at Veronica. “You hit the lottery, Ronnie, or is this the last time I ever gon’ see you?”

A tinge of guilt struggled with the wave of sadness that overtook her. She hadn’t thought of Jenny as a dependent but as someone she helped, a friend, even. Now she understood that the woman depended on her. She looked at Jenny’s shopping cart of things that only she valued and fought back tears. She couldn’t even invite her to a nearby restaurant for a cup of coffee because she wouldn’t be allowed in with her “things.”

Resigned, she forced a smile. “I’m taking a three-month leave, Jenny. If I get back before that, I’ll drop by to see you. That little change in that envelope ought to keep you until I get back. I’d…I’d better run for my train.”

Jenny put the envelope in her coat pocket and secured the pocket with two safety pins. “You know I thank you. You know it. I…I hope you finds what you lookin’ for, Ronnie. Somethin’s wrong sure as my name’s Jenny, but you needn’t worry none. Anybody with a heart big as yours is always gonna be blessed. I ain’t even gonna worry ’bout you. Go on now, and get your train.”