Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 94106 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 471(@200wpm)___ 376(@250wpm)___ 314(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94106 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 471(@200wpm)___ 376(@250wpm)___ 314(@300wpm)
I didn’t know my dad had brought an interior designer in. “Marie? Would you happen to have her contact info? I hadn’t realized he’d started working with an interior designer already. We’d only done the layout of the conversion together, not any decorating.”
Andi laughed. “Your mom, Marie…not an outside designer.”
“My mom’s name was Athena.” It wasn’t a name people heard too often outside of Greek History class.
“Really?” Her brows drew down. “I could swear we had a whole conversation about how we had the same name in reverse. I’m Louise Marie, and she said she was Marie Louise.”
The real estate agent looked confused, and then abruptly seemed almost flustered. She shook her head and turned to walk to the other side of the room.
“Umm… That’s right. I’m…confusing her with another client. I’m so sorry about that…Athena...right.”
People made mistakes with names all the time. Hell, I didn’t remember most people’s names thirty seconds after I met them. But something about Andi told me she hadn’t made any mistake. Though, that made no sense.
My head was definitely screwing with me here—all the memories of the time Dad and I had spent together working on this building. I let the funny feeling I had pass in favor of finishing the tour. Outside, I gulped fresh air into my lungs.
“So the seller is looking to get out clean—pay what he paid and walk away. But I have a feeling there might be some wiggle room. Between us, it’s not a very amicable divorce, and I think a fast sale and not dragging out separating assets might make them willing to take it at a small loss.”
I nodded, but felt wiped out for some reason. I was glad I’d decided to stay in town tonight to walk through with a building engineer tomorrow because I had a feeling half of what I saw today might be a blur by morning. My emotions were really screwing with me.
“Would you like any suggestions for dinner or anything?” Andi asked after she locked the front door. She still seemed slightly off—almost standoffish or nervous.
“No, thank you. The hotel has a restaurant in it, and I’ll probably just eat there.”
“Okay…so…I’ll see you at nine tomorrow?”
I nodded. “Nine o’clock. Thanks for the tour today.”
I got into my rental car and watched as Andi pulled away. Rather than start the car, I rested my head on the headrest for a few minutes with my eyes closed. I took a few deep breaths, but couldn’t shake the screwed-up feeling in my gut.
So I picked up the phone and called the accounting manager at my office. “Hey, Dan. It’s Ford. Do we still have my parents’ expense reports from years ago?”
“We keep six years of records in one of the storage units. IRS can generally go back and audit you for the last three years, but if they find a substantial error, they can go back six. Your dad liked to stay on the safe side, especially since he certainly had the storage space. Do you need something?”
“Think you can pull both my dad and my mom’s expense reports and see if my mom ever came on any of my dad’s trips to Chicago?”
“Yeah. Sure. Give me a few hours.”
“Thanks, Dan.”
***
Some thoughts are like a loose thread in a sweater. You can either pull it and chance unraveling the entire thing, or cut it off and move on. When Andi said my mom had come to Chicago with my dad on more than one occasion, it was a loose thread. But I cut it off and moved on, able to chalk it up to my mom not wanting me to feel badly that she got to come see the project I had worked on for years.
But then another thread came loose when Andi said my mother’s name was Marie Louise—she’d sounded so certain. And the second time, I couldn’t just cut the thread and move on. I’d pulled, and now it felt like I was waiting for my entire world to unravel.
After I’d checked into my hotel, I’d gone to the gym to work off some of my unsettled energy and then showered. Now I was sitting at the bar of the restaurant. My phone finally rang just as I got my burger.
“Hey, Dan.”
“Hey, Ford.”
“Did you find anything?”
“I checked all the expense reports we had, and we have no record of your mom ever taking a trip to Chicago. Their assistant made all their reservations and did their expense reports for the company—not likely she’d miss something, but I suppose it’s possible.”
My chest started to hurt, and I rubbed at it. “Any chance you remember if we had hired an interior designer in Chicago? I’m up here looking at the building we used to own—it came back on the market.”
Dan had been with the company as long as I’d been alive and remembered everything.