Finding Me (2 page)

“I know you didn’t. Now tell me what I can do to help.” The sooner they got busy, the sooner this awkwardness would be over.

“Would you mind helping me with these bills? I’ve got everything printed, just have to get them all out with today’s mail.”

“Of course.” Kelli picked up the stack from Tammy’s desk and placed it on her own. The phone rang before she sat down. “Good morning, Dalton Construction, how may I help you?” Kelli transferred the caller to Reed’s office, then went about her task.

Fold. Stuff. Seal. Fold. Stuff. Seal. It was a mindless duty, one easily accomplished while answering calls and directing clients and salesmen in the appropriate direction. She liked being busy—the more she had to keep her occupied, the less time she had to think.

Jimmy Dalton came sauntering down the hallway. “My, my, look who’s here.” He grabbed some M&Ms from the jar on Kelli’s desk and tossed them into his mouth. His sleeves were starched and pressed, his pants perfectly creased. He looked more like a big-city lawyer than the owner of a smallish construction company. “Kelli, may I see you in my office please?”

“Sure.” She followed him down the hall. One of the side effects of grief was that it numbed her to almost every other emotion. She supposed in this case it was a blessing, because other than a vague sense of dread, she felt nothing.

“Have a seat, please.” He gestured toward one of the padded chairs opposite his desk. He didn’t sit himself, he simply leaned back against his desk, arms folded. “How’s your morning been so far?”

Kelli tried to keep her face neutral. “Fine.”

“Well, that’s good for you. Unfortunately for me, mine’s been very upsetting.” The office phones were ringing down the hall. “Would you care to guess why my morning was so bad?”

Kelli looked up at him and saw him glaring back. She tried to affect a confused expression. “I have no idea.”

“Don’t you?” He paused. “What have you been up to?”

“What do you mean?” Kelli’s mouth had gone dry. Jimmy remained silent and simply stared at her. The
beep-beep-beep
of the forklift backing up came from just outside the office window, a phone rang somewhere down the hall, and Kelli began to hear her own heart racing in her ears.

“I got a call from Kevin Layton today. He’s an old high-school friend of mine, did I tell you that? Anyway, it seems his mother heard some bad things about me and about the remodel work we’re doing on her bathroom. You know anything about that?”

“I . . . uh . . . well . . . two weeks ago, you billed her for six hours of design and drafting time.”

“Yeah, so? We’re remodeling her bathroom—design and drafting is what I do.” He put his hands in his trouser pockets, his suntanned face showing not a hint of comprehension.

“You were in Hawaii two weeks ago.”

He sat on the corner of his desk and smiled up toward the ceiling. “Mm-hmm, yes, I was. Wish I still was.” He shook his head and looked down at Kelli. “Sorry, lost in memories there.”

“How could you have worked six hours on Mrs. Layton’s project if you were on vacation in Hawaii?”

He made his way over to his leather executive chair and sat. “It’s quite simple, Kelli. I’m surprised I have to explain this to you. I was . . . thinking about her project on my trip. The sound of waves crashing nearby always heightens my creativity.” He propped his feet on his desk. “And of course, the girls in bikinis and three daiquiris didn’t hurt either. Yep, I got a lot accomplished while lying on that beach.”

Yeah.
Lying is right, just not on the beach.
“Jimmy, that’s—”

“Listen, Kelli”—he leaned forward—“this company has come upon some hard times financially, and I’ve realized quite unexpectedly that I’m going to have to lay off an employee. Of course, I hate to have to do it. I always strive to be as loyal to my employees as they are to me.” He paused and looked at her for the space of several heartbeats, which were coming faster and faster with each passing second. “But sometimes these things can’t be helped.” He steepled his hands atop his desk. “Since you were the last one hired, you are the obvious choice of who must be let go. So, I’m—” he coughed into his hands—“sorry—” another cough— “to inform you that we can no longer offer you employment here.”

Kelli knew her mouth was hanging open, but she couldn’t help it. Jimmy continued to look at her, waiting for her to leave, she supposed. Finally she found her voice. “Is this . . . effective immediately?”

He nodded, and as he did so, he actually grinned. “I’m sorry to say it is. You are still on probation until June, so there is no requirement for longer notice. I’d appreciate it if you’d clean out your desk immediately.”

Kelli somehow managed to stumble from his office and back to her desk, where she took her purse out of the drawer, slamming it shut with every bit of her strength. How dare he do
this? She gathered the few personal items she kept here—a glass paperweight with an ocean scene inside and the carved wooden pencil box her father had made for her in celebration of her new job. Had he known what a lout Jimmy Dalton was, maybe he wouldn’t have bothered. She kicked her desk chair hard enough that it fell over backward. She took a deep breath. “’Bye, Tammy. I’ll miss you.”

Tammy had already come to her feet during the spectacle. She stood shaking her head. “Tell me he didn’t.”

“He did.”

“Oh, girl.” Tammy walked over and threw her arms around Kelli. “I was afraid something like this was going to happen, but I’m so sorry it did. You take care, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Kelli?”

“Yeah.”

“Be glad you’re in a place in your life where you can choose to do the right thing.”

That wasn’t quite as true as Tammy believed. Everyone seemed to assume that the death of Kelli’s parents had left her with some kind of large inheritance. After all, their upscale house had already been in escrow when they died. From the outside, it probably appeared that a large cash payoff was days away. No one knew about the mountains of debt, the long list of creditors that had taken every last dime from the estate. Everything was gone, a complete loss brought on by many years of overspending. Kelli had her own debts, too—college loans, car payments, and rent. Still, she mumbled, “I guess so.”

“Be even more grateful for your courage and integrity. Hold tight to them. Once you start to let them go, they’re almost impossible to get back. Stay just the way you are, and you’ll be fine.”

Kelli nodded. “Thanks, Tammy.” And with that, she shuffled
out to her car, wondering how all this could possibly ever be fine. She knew the answer. It couldn’t.

Oh, Daddy, I wish you were here so I could talk to you.

But Daddy wasn’t there, and Kelli was going to have to find her own way. Time to buck up and get on with it. Whatever
it
was.

2

K
elli went to her friends’ house, determined not to tell them she’d been fired. The longer she kept it a secret, the less time they would worry.

She turned over the three-hundred-page book Denice had given her, then laid it on the table in front of her. “So . . . what did you say this was for again?” Across the front,
Kelli
was written in perfect calligraphy with gold metallic ink.

“It’s a grief journal.” Denice walked over to open the book, gesturing toward the lined pages waiting to be filled. “You’ve got to work through all that’s happened, and you need to do it now or else it will come back to haunt you for the rest of your life. I want you to write at least a little in here every day—about your emotions, what you’re going through, fond memories, anything at all that’s bothering you. It will help speed the healing process.”

Denice had been Kelli’s best friend since childhood, and for as long as Kelli could remember, she’d been the touchy-feely balance to Kelli’s non-emotional self. “And who says this is the way to heal?”

“Everybody who knows anything.”

“In other words, says my wife.” Jones put his arm around Denice’s shoulders and grinned down at her. “Kelli, you know that when it comes to psycho-babble, Denice knows it all.”

“It’s not babble.” Denice elbowed Jones with a bit more force than necessary. “To you people who grew up in a
Leave It to Beaver
kind of family, maybe you can afford to laugh at the rest of us as we try our best to work our way through our stuff, but—”

Jones leaned forward and kissed his wife square on the lips to stop the flow of words. Then, keeping his face less than an inch from hers, he said, “Sorry. I’m sorry.” He continued to simply look into her eyes, one hand on the side of her face. Jones might look like an Italian mobster with his mop of dark hair and bearded face, but he had the biggest heart of anyone Kelli knew, and at times like these, he understood what was at stake. Kelli was glad Denice had found him.

“You should be sorry, you big lug.” Denice shoved at him again, but there was a grin lurking at the corners of her lips when she turned back to Kelli. “Seriously, this is important. First your breakup with Rick, then your parents’ death. That’s a lot of bad stuff to deal with.”

Kelli had never been able to convince Denice that the breakup with Rick had not been that big of a deal. Yes, she had caught him cheating, but it wasn’t like she was in love with the guy. Still, Denice worried about it, because that’s who Denice was. Kelli opened the journal and thumbed through the empty pages. “Well, I’ve got something new to add to my list of woes. I got fired today.” She could have kicked herself the moment the words slipped out.

“You’re kidding!” Denice walked over to sit beside her. “What happened?”

“Kevin Layton called the office this morning. Obviously he told Jimmy I’d been to see his mother about her remodel bill.”

“You did that, really? Like, went to her house and told her she
was being cheated?” Jones leaned his head forward, eyes wide with shock.

“Well, yeah. How could I not? She was my parents’ neighbor,
my
neighbor for all my growing-up years. She’s elderly, and she’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. I just couldn’t remain silent about what was happening.”

“I, for one, am glad you are out of that place. I know that’s been hard on you, having to work for that slimeball.” Denice took her hand. “I say you’re better off.”

“I won’t miss the job itself, that much is for sure.”

Jones smiled. “I sometimes forget how fortunate I am in my wife’s choice of BFF and my own brilliant choice in business partner. Good for you for doing the right thing.” He stopped then, mouth open, and smacked himself on the forehead. “Business partner! You’re going to need part of your money back now, aren’t you?”

Just last week, Kelli had taken the entirety of her life insurance money—the one thing her parents’ debt wasn’t able to take from her—and used every bit of it as a down payment in a business partnership with Denice and Jones.

The three of them had shared a dream for years about starting their own restaurant, ever since Jones had gone to culinary school. He specialized in Southern-style comfort food combined with a healthier, farm-to-table, California sensitivity. Kelli had her degree in business, and Denice had been a waitress all her life—in her mid-teens to help pay the bills for her highly dysfunctional family, at eighteen when she’d moved out on her own, and then to support Jones while he attended culinary school. When the owner of Sam’s, a mediocre restaurant in an old Victorian home in downtown Santa Barbara, had announced he was retiring at the end of the summer, the three of them had gone crazy trying to pool together enough money to buy the place. They had talked to
loan officers all over town and were not going to be able to swing it until Kelli received the life insurance check after her parents’ wreck. It had taken every cent to make it work.

“Will you have enough to hold you over until we get Farmstead up and running?” Denice pulled a twenty-dollar bill out of her wallet and set it on the table between them. “You’re being buried under an avalanche of bad stuff right now, there’s no doubt about it. But you know you can count on us for anything you need, right?”

Kelli slid the money back toward her. “I’m not desperate yet.” She knew the two of them were even more cash-strapped than she was.

Jones reached for Kelli’s hand, put the money in her palm, and then balled up her fingers. “Truly, Kelli, please know that anything we have is yours.” Somehow, coming from Jones, it was all the more special. She leaned her head against his shoulder and patted him on the arm. “Thank you. But really, I’ll be okay.”

“Yes, you will, because the three musketeers look out for each other, and right now, I’m planning to do my part.” He walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door, calling out, “It’s time I whipped us up something delicious.”

“There’s something really great about a man who cooks and looks good doing it.” Denice grinned at her husband, who wiggled his eyebrows in response.

“And don’t you forget it, either.”

Kelli looked back and forth between them. “I don’t know what I’d do without the two of you.”

“Well, that’s one thing you won’t ever have to find out.” Denice followed her husband to the kitchen and pulled some plates out of the cupboard. “Do you need any help cleaning out the rest of your parents’ place?”