Chapter Seven
CHAPTER SEVEN
D ressed in my favorite Marc Jacobs suit, I’m sipping a latte at The Bourgeois Pig when Megan arrives midmorning. “Not another crossword puzzle!” She plops her purple Dolce the other hangs limply at his side. An uncertain smile hovers at his lips, but his eyes are flat and empty.
“What was it about me, Dad? Why couldn’t I make you smile? Why was it so hard to put your arms around me?”
My eyes sting and I lift my head to the sky, hoping for that rush of peace my mother must have envisioned when she left this item on my list. But all I feel is the warm sun on my face and an open wound in my chest. I stare down at the picture. A teardrop lands on my pixie face, magnifying my injured eyes. I blot it with my shirtsleeve, leaving a warped ripple in its wake.
“Do you know what hurts most, Dad? It’s feeling that I was never good enough for you. I was just a little girl. Why couldn’t you tell me, even once, that I was good, or smart, or pretty?” I bite my lip until I taste blood. “I tried so hard to make you love me. I really did.”
Tears stream down my cheeks. Pulling myself from the slab, I stare at the headstone as if it were my father’s face. “This was Mother’s idea, you know. She’s the one who wants me to establish a relationship with you. I’d given up on that dream years ago.” I run my fingertips over the engraved CHARLES JACOB BOHLINGER . “I wish you peace, Dad.”
I turn and walk away, then break into a run.
I t’s five o’clock by time I reach Argyle Station, and I’m still shaken. But I’ll be damned if I’ll let that bastard get to me. The El is packed and I’m sandwiched between a teenage girl whose iPod blares so loudly I can hear the lyrical obscenities through her earbuds, and a man wearing a baseball cap that says godhearsu.com. I want to ask him whether God uses a Mac or a PC, but something tells me he wouldn’t find it amusing. I lock eyes with a tall, dark-haired man in a khaki Burberry trench coat. His eyes are laughing, too, and there’s something familiar about him. He leans in, both of us towering over the two young girls between us. “Technology’s amazing, huh?”
I laugh. “No kidding. Confessional booths may soon be a thing of the past.”
He grins, and I can’t decide whether to focus on the golden flecks in his brown eyes or his soft, sensuous mouth. I spy a black thread on his tan coat and it hits me. Could this be the Burberry man I used to watch from the window of the loft, coming into the building every evening at seven? I dubbed him the Burberry man because he always wore a Burberry trench coat—just like the one he’s wearing now. Though I never actually met him, I harbored a secret crush on him for a month or two—before he disappeared as quickly as he came.
I’m about to introduce myself when my phone rings. I see Brad’s office number and pick up.
“Hello, Brett. It’s Claire Cole. I got your message. Mr. Midar could see you October twenty-seventh at—”
“The twenty-seventh? That’s three weeks away. I need…” My voice trails off. I need to see him sounds too impassioned, too desperate. But after today’s cemetery visit, I’m on an emotional ledge, and I know Brad would talk me down. “I’d like to see him sooner, like tomorrow.”
“I’m sorry. He’s completely booked for the next week, and then he’s going on vacation. He could see you on the twenty-seventh,” she repeats. “He’s got an eight o’clock opening.”
I sigh. “If that’s the first he’s got, I’ll take it. But if anyone cancels before then, call me. Please.”
My stop is announced. I tuck my phone into my coat pocket and make my way toward the door.
“Have a good one,” Burberry says to me as I squeeze past him.
“You, too.”
I dash from the train, but not before a wave of melancholy catches me. Brad Midar is going away, and I don’t like it one bit. I wonder where he’s going. Is he traveling alone, or with a girlfriend? So far, the time has never felt quite right to ask him about his relationship status, and he’s never offered. And why should he? I’m his client, for God’s sake! But he’s also my only link to my mother. I fear I’ve developed an unnaturally strong bond with him, as her messenger. Like a motherless baby duckling, I’ve imprinted on the first kind face I’ve found.