Chapter Twenty-Two
Eliza dropped a tea bag into her mug and filled it with hot water from the red tap on the office cooler, hoping that the boost of caffeine would wake her up a little. She’d slept even worse than what had become her usual, tossing and turning as snippets of her conversations with Vicky, Mo, and Josh swirled in her brain. She gave up before her alarm went off and flipped through the channels on TV, finding another episode of Monk .
It was so nice, but so unrealistic, that Adrian Monk’s late wife visited him in his dreams, sitting on the edge of his bed as a beautiful, ghostly apparition. For months, if not years, after Laura died, whenever Eliza dreamed of her, she was deathly ill, as she’d been during those last months. Skeletally thin and weak, her hair wispy on her scalp. So far, she hadn’t dreamed of Jack at all.
Tea in hand, she returned to her desk and the spreadsheet she’d been putting together. When it came to work systems, her modus operandi was to consider what her disorganized predecessor would have done, and then do the opposite. As a result, RSVPs for the gala immediately went into this document, which would later generate name tags, a check-in list, and seating charts. Scrambling the day before to put those things together was an experience she did not want to replicate.
Vanessa stepped into her office. “Eliza. Just thought I’d check on you,” she said, lowering herself into one of the chairs. “How are you doing?”
Eliza turned away from her screen. “Fine,” she said cautiously, surprised that her boss would visit purely out of compassion.
Vanessa crossed one leg over the other and pushed her dark hair behind her ear before clasping her hands around her knee. “I know you have a lot on your plate, with your father’s death. I want to make sure you’re okay.”
“I’m okay, Vanessa.” Whatever okay means.
“I’m glad to hear it. I think the best thing to do is to throw yourself into other things. Distract yourself.”
Had Vanessa ever lost anyone close to her? If she had, she’d surely know that distraction simply wasn’t always possible, but Eliza nodded all the same.
“I know you’ve missed a couple of days and had to leave early yesterday. Totally understandable. But you know we’re heading into crunch time.” Vanessa raised her eyebrows as if to say, So I hope you won’t need to take any other time off.
There we go. Now this little visit is making a lot more sense.
“Don’t worry, Vanessa. I don’t anticipate any other issues. And, of course, if I need to take any time off, I’ll make up the work. I’m on top of it all.”
“Excellent.”
The intercom buzzed on Eliza’s desk phone, and she pressed the button to answer.
Amber’s voice responded. “Eliza? You have Professor Sawyer from NYU on the line.”
Eliza’s body heard this news before her brain, and her heart began to pound.
“NYU?” Vanessa asked. “I thought Patrice was handling NYU.”
Eliza pressed her lips together as she tried to gather herself. “Oh. Um. I went to a talk the other night just out of personal interest, and I met Professor Sawyer.” A moment ago, she’d been counting the seconds until Vanessa would leave her office. But now she wanted nothing more than for her to stay and continue to question her dedication to the job. “I’ll have Amber take a message so we can keep talking.”
“Oh no, no. You take this. I don’t think Patrice has had much luck connecting there.”
Eliza nodded numbly. “Okay, I’ll be right there, Amber.” She waited, expecting Vanessa to leave the room, but apparently that was not her boss’s plan. When she couldn’t put it off any longer, she picked up the receiver, feeling it slip in her sweaty hand.
How had he found her? Why had he found her? For one insane moment, she thought he’d learned the truth. That he knew he was her father. She took a deep breath. Eliza Sharon Levinger. He has no way of knowing you’re his daughter. Of course, that also meant she was about to have a second conversation with him under false pretenses. Great way to build a relationship. She desperately tried to produce enough saliva to swallow.
“This is Eliza,” she said, acutely aware of Vanessa’s eyes on her.
“Eliza. So glad I found you.”
How in the world was she meant to respond to that ? Fortunately, he spared her overstretched brain cells from figuring it out as he continued to speak.
“I looked for you the other night after I was pulled away, but you must have gone. Can’t say I blame you. But you did mention your organization’s grant-making, and as I’m sure you know, that makes any perennially underfunded professor’s ears perk up. And I have to commend you on your use of the acronym. I’m quite sure I would have completely forgotten the name of your foundation, but NOY stuck in my head, so with the help of one of my grad students I found you.”
“Great,” she said weakly.
“I spent a few minutes on your website. I can definitely see alignment between my department’s current work and NOY’s mission.” He emphasized NOY in such a way that she could tell he still found the acronym oddly amusing, despite acknowledging that it had served him well. “Bottom line, of course, I’m interested in seeing how we might benefit each other. Which, of course, comes down to those grants you mentioned. So what can you tell me about that?”
Eliza hated being on the spot in front of Vanessa, especially when her words were at risk of being short-circuited by her knowledge of who Ross really was. “Well, historically we’ve invested in educational programs in local and regional communities. But we’re working on launching an award for education policy research. We’re looking for guidance on how to do that, who to partner with, and what it will look like. Some possibilities are grants to the winners, and/or partnering with faculty?—who will receive stipends in return for peer review.” Vanessa was nodding, so Eliza concluded that, although she could barely hear herself speak over the buzzing in her brain, she was at least making sense. “I understand that my colleague Patrice Foster has reached out to some of your colleagues. I’m not sure of the status on that, but I can easily connect you...” Vanessa had begun frantically waving at her. “I’m sorry. Can you hold for just one moment?”
She covered the mouthpiece of the phone as she clicked the hold button. Nonetheless, Vanessa whispered as if she might be overheard.
“You’ve already made this connection. Stick with this. Set up a meeting with him.”
Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.
She took a deep breath as surreptitiously as possible and took Ross off hold. “Sorry about that,” she began.
Ross interrupted before she could continue. “Maybe what makes sense is for me to gather a couple of my colleagues to talk with you about their current research?—we’ve got some great data sets we’ve pulled together over the past few years, especially in the early grades, that we’ve been mining. And we can take it from there.”
“That sounds great.” Just slightly better than falling down an elevator shaft.
“Why don’t you give me your email address and I’ll loop back with you.”
“Perfect.” She rattled off the information as Vanessa smiled widely.