Dear Mystery Guy (Magnolia Sisters Book 1) (2 page)

She signed sorry to him because he was not looking at her lips. She doubted that he understood sign language but she did it anyway. At least she hoped signing would engender some sympathy and wipe that terrible sneer from his face.

He looked at the movements of her hands suspiciously and then scoffed. "You are only here because of the grace of Patricia Benedict, or else I would fire you this minute. You do not know the meaning of punctuality. You believe that because you have connections with the owners, you can waltz in here at any time."

Della felt like screaming at Ted that she was super sorry, but of course no sound would come from her dead voice box.

It would cost her thousands of dollars to work on her damaged larynx, and even then there was no guarantee that she would be able to talk again. She had long ago resigned herself to being voiceless.

Ted's dislike of her stemmed from the fact that she couldn't explain herself. He was not comfortable around any disability. He usually avoided anybody who was not 'normal' and now he was forced to work with her.
It must be a great hardship for him,
she thought sourly.

She had heard him refer to her as the dumb girl, and her scar offended him. He thought she looked like a criminal with it. His reasoning was ridiculous and over the top. She overheard him telling the store manager, Mr. Gentles, that she did not have the right appearance for a cashier; that somehow her scar sent the wrong message.

As if somehow the fading scar that ran from her left ear to her throat would in some way impede her from cashing people's groceries.

On her first day he had asked her if she would consider wearing a scarf or a turtleneck blouse to hide it. "It would make customers more comfortable" had been his explanation.

She figured that it would make him more comfortable, not the customers, but she had started wearing her white turtleneck blouse to appease him and herself as well. She didn't want to draw any undue attention to her scar, though it was fading and not as obvious as it used to be.

Sometimes people were curious and would ask her what happened. And of course she didn't answer. She couldn't answer, at least not verbally.

She reached for her timecard from Ted's tight clutches.

"You listen to me," he growled, "not another late day or you are gone."

She nodded meekly, but she was feeling anything else but meek. She cursed him in her head while she punched in the time card, and she cursed him as she relieved the cashier at the Express line; apparently they didn't trust her to handle more than ten items at a time. Ridiculous.

She had always been exceptionally gifted with numbers. She spent her evenings at home playing Sudoku on her phone. She used to help her sisters at Magnolia House with their Math homework and charged the other girls at the home for the same. She saw the mystery guy again and all thoughts of Ted and Mathematics vanished.

He was in the fresh produce aisle. He was examining the kale. He looked at it for the longest while. He always spent some time at that exact spot, where she could see him clearly.

If he moved down to where the tomatoes were she wouldn't be able to see him until he came back to where the whole grain breads were. No doubt about it, he was a healthy eater.

"Miss?"

She looked up to see a customer standing in front of her.

She smiled at the customer and rang up the few items. As usual, seeing the mystery guy lightened her day.

He was her fifteen minutes of eye candy. She watched him from the corner of her eyes, almost sighing with disappointment when he went to Cashier 3. He had more things than he could pay for at the express line anyway, but today she wished that she could see him close up.

She wanted to see his eyes close up. She had heard the girls in the break room last week mentioning that his eyes were gray. Two of the girls, Sally and Olivia, who were on the same evening shift as she was had made a bet. Sally said they were real and Olivia said they were contacts.

She'd bet anything that they were real gray. Somehow she didn't peg him as someone to wear colored contacts. He looked more like a serious corporate type of guy, not a fashion-conscious person who would want to draw attention to himself.

Sally was now cashing his items and talking to him. He laughed at whatever she said and his shoulders shook. It made the tiredness that she had seen earlier disappear. It slid off him like a second unwanted skin. He looked even better than before with the mantle of weariness gone from him.

Della wished that she could hear his voice. What was he saying? Had Sally asked him about his eyes? She was forced to turn back to her customers and when she looked up again he was gone.

She pressed her hand to her head and hurriedly lowered it when she saw Ted passing by. Her frequent headaches were coming back. She had not gotten them for years but ever since she started working at the supermarket they had been coming back.

The dreams were also coming back and she was reluctant to go to sleep these days. She dreamt the same thing over and over, and when she woke up she couldn't shake the feeling that she was missing something.

First thing Monday when she went to school she would visit the school counselor and discuss her plight.

*****

"Hello." The counselor was young; she barely looked older than Della. She had also peppily introduced herself as Saffron McGuire and had a nameplate on her desk that had a string of letters after it, including PhD.

Della frowned. This girl has a doctorate?

"Don't mind the name," she grinned, showing Della her braces. "My father is a chef; my sisters' names are Sage and Pepper."

Della reluctantly sat down in the chair opposite her and mouthed. "I have never been in here before."

"That's okay." Saffron leaned forward. "I'll tell you a secret: not coming here is a good thing but you are here now. What can I help you with?"

"I am having dreams," Della mouthed to her.

Saffron watched her lips intently and then asked, "You are having twins?"

"No. Dreams." Della mouthed the words deliberately and carefully.

Saffron shook her head and then opened her drawer and took out a pair of glasses. "Sorry Della. I am farsighted. So I can't really read your lips without the help of my glasses. Say it again."

Della sighed. Maybe she was wasting her time; Saffron seemed a bit too ditzy to be taken seriously. "I am having dreams."

"Dreams! Oh thank goodness. That's much less expensive than twins," Saffron said. "Good. Go on."

"I have had these dreams since I was young. They disappeared for a while and now they are back."

"What type of dreams?" Saffron asked.

"It's the same dream every time. I am under water drowning and then I struggle to get free and when I wake up I have a headache. I used to have them when I was nine or ten and when I was sixteen or so but they disappeared. Now they are back."

"Mmmm." Saffron frowned. "Your subconscious is trying to tell you something."

Della resisted the urge to roll her eyes. She had heard the same thing so many times, from so many doctors, that she was beginning to believe that they were all working from the same script. She was happy that the university offered student counseling for free.

Saffron opened her drawer and pulled out a thick notebook and pushed it toward her. It looked like one of those ledgers that she had to buy for the Principles of Accounting course that she took in her first year.

"What's this for?" Della asked, opening the book and staring at the blank pages.

"It's for you to write," Saffron said, "put down your thoughts. Write what you see in your dream. You are stressing out over something; eventually you will get it all down and off your chest and you will be back to normal in no time. Have you ever kept a diary?"

Della shook her head. "No."

"Well, consider this your dear diary book." Saffron pushed the book closer to her. "Don't look so doubtful. It is a very useful therapy tool."

"But I don't have anything that's bothering me lately," Della responded, "apart from the fact that I started a part-time job at the supermarket and my boss is a turd and I have a teeny weeny crush on a guy who doesn't even know that I exist. My life is not that eventful."

Saffron smiled. "I am guessing that in the last three months something has triggered your dreams. You say you last had them when you were nine or ten and then sixteen and that they are back since three months ago."

Della nodded doubtfully. "The psychiatrists that I used to see when I was little said that my dreams were a result of my trauma. I was almost murdered when I was little and I can't remember my life before I was nine."

Saffron gasped. "Really?"

"Yes," Della shrugged, "the doctors said I have hysterical amnesia but I stopped having the dreams when I started living at Magnolia House and felt secure. When I was around sixteen one of my sisters ran away from the home and the dreams came back. I have no trauma now. I am a little confused about what to do with my life next but...I just don't get why they are back."

Saffron took off her glasses and wiped them. "But something is triggering your dreams. You may not be able to pinpoint exactly what it is, so I am going to suggest that you write."

"Write what?" Della asked when Saffron put on her glasses again.

"Write down what is on your heart, what is happening to you. Just write and then in a couple of weeks you can get back to me and tell me what you have discovered."

Saffron looked at her watch and then gasped. "Della, I have a department meeting in a few minutes but I have to tell you that writing down your thoughts is a very good way to sort out what it is that is triggering the dreams."

Della got up with a sigh. She took up the heavy journal reluctantly. All she had to do was write?

Sounded like her young counselor didn't know what she was talking about. Her life was humdrum and boring; what was there to write about?

She hadn't said it to Saffron but she already knew what or who was the trigger of her dreams. She had started having her dreams again the day after she saw the mystery guy, which only meant one thing: her problem was heart-based, not head-based.

She was yearning for someone who was so far out of reach; she was fooling herself.

Yes, that was it. Her body was telling her to stop the insane crush she had developed on this unsuspecting guy. If only she could. Three months of Thursdays had whetted her appetite for more of this elusive stranger. Her crush was not diminishing; it was growing, and so were her dreams and headaches.

She left the counselor's building and headed to the Student Lounge. Her phone beeped and she checked it. It was a group text; her sisters Brigid, Caitlin and Hazel were reminding her about dinner. They always tried to meet up on Mondays at Hazel's place.

Patricia Benedict had gotten Hazel a plum job as companion to an elderly rich guy a few months before. All Hazel had to do was read the newspaper to him in the mornings and give a listening ear as he debated various topics that he found important or interesting. He loved when Hazel argued with him. In return Hazel lived rent free in his gorgeous townhouse.

The old man frowned on people visiting often but he had no problems with them dropping by once per week.

That was when Hazel did a major throw-down in the kitchen and demonstrated her skills that she had picked up at culinary school. Hazel liked to refer to them as her culinary guinea pigs. They had no problem with that. They would eat and talk until way into the night when Hazel would drop them home in the little car that also came with the job.

Della texted that she would come by after doing a mock exam that evening and was texted back a smiley face with the message, 'Knock it out of the park, Sis.'

She grinned. It was just a mock exam but she would need to knock the real exams out of the park. This was her last semester. After this she would have earned her bachelor's degree in accounting. Maybe that's why she was getting the dreams again. She was once more at a crossroads in her life.

Chapter Two

"How was exam?" Hazel asked, pulling her into the luxurious townhouse as soon as she was let in by the security guard at the gate. The security guard acted like it was the first time he was seeing her and he asked her the same question every time: "Who are you going to see?"

As usual she had to text Hazel to come and get her at the gate because the security guard refused to read her lips. He thought she was refusing to answer him and like a petulant beast refused to open the gate for her.

"Not bad." Della signed. "It could have gone better."

Hazel nodded absently and headed toward the kitchen.

Della could see that she was worrying her bottom lip and that her mind wasn't all there. Probably she hadn't even heard what her response was.

"Brigid and Caitlin are already here," Hazel said. "Bickering as usual."

Della walked behind her, glancing around the townhouse again and as usual admiring the sheer luxury of the place.

Hazel had lived there now for close to a year and she had confessed that she had to pinch herself every time she got up in the morning. Della would pinch herself too. This place was a palace compared to their old accommodations at Bungalow Seven, Magnolia House. The poky little apartment that she shared with Keisha could not compare to this, either.

Della stopped looking around the living room and watched Hazel as she walked in front of her. Hazel was petite and delicate, with light caramel skin. She had thick corkscrew curls that reached to her mid-back. Tonight she had it in a messy ponytail.

People always assumed that Hazel was innocent and needed protecting, but she was tougher than she looked. She was the first one of the four of them to run away from their home at Magnolia House. She was also the one who used to get into the most fights at high school. Hazel had a temper that was fascinating to watch when stoked.

Hazel was the sister that she sometimes felt closest to. They had shared a room at Magnolia House and they both had no idea who were their real family.

Della was found in the middle of the downtown area with a slashed throat, and Hazel was found in a box on the steps of a shopping mall. They had both been Jane Does.

When she reached the spacious kitchen Caitlin looked up from her phone and gave her a grin. "Hey Sis. Aced the mock test?"

Della shook her head. "No. Good thing that it was a mock test."

Caitlin shaped her mouth in a sympathetic moue. Caitlin was the most sophisticated of the four sisters. She was dressed in a basic black skirt and white shirt but still managed to look sophisticated. Her medium brown skin was smooth and spotless and almost glowing. Her hair was pulled back in a neat ponytail, with not a strand out of place.

She had on plain glasses which were supposed to lend her a more mature look but which instead highlighted her high cheekbones and small, straight nose. Caitlin could have been a model. She had always appeared effortlessly modelesque, but what she really wanted to do was write.

She was finishing up her communications degree at University of the West Indies and had also landed a part time job at Lux Caribbean Magazine as their latest girl Friday. Patricia had gotten the job for her, and Caitlin was determined to prove herself there. She wanted a full-time job at the magazine when she graduated from school next year.

Brigid grinned. "You had better pass your final tests with flying colors. You are the first one of us to finish university. Congrats, girl. Next year after my biology degree, I am heading to med school. I already applied. All I want now is tuition money. That's it. That's all I want. Med school is not cheap."

Brigid paused to take a breath and then went on with a familiar diatribe.

"My mother owes me. She had me living at Magnolia House for my whole life, offloading her responsibility onto strangers while she lived the high life. She is not poor. You should see the place where she is living now, and she keeps on buying more expensive stuff. She bought a Mercedes last, week--cash! I could pay for med school with that money."

"Did you ask her?" Caitlin asked. "Ask her nicely. Don't demand it, even though we know she owes you. You can catch more flies with honey than vinegar."

"I did ask her, and nicely too," Brigid sighed, "and she said she would pay for med school as long as I join the family business."

Everybody froze.

Della looked at Brigid in the silence, while they absorbed the shocking announcement. The news was not shocking because it was unexpected; they had all expected that sooner or later Brigid's mother would ask her to join the business. Why else would she have gone out of her way to get in touch with Brigid and start a relationship out of the blue?

The news was shocking because Brigid seemed like she was contemplating it.

Brigid would be a big hit in the business, Della thought fatalistically. She had the purest, prettiest features of any woman she had ever seen. Brigid looked like a model in a painting titled Nubian Queen that Matron used to have in her office. Except she was prettier. She had smooth, dark, flawless skin that looked like a dark swatch of velvet. Her eyes had a slight catlike curve and her hair... her hair had been a constant source of fascination for them when they were younger.

It was kinky, coarse black hair but it was long—almost to her waist. Matron had forbidden her to cut it or process it back in the days when they were at Magnolia House. Brigid usually wore it in twists and people usually assumed that she had in braids but it was all her hair.

"No!" Hazel and Caitlin said at the same time as they unfroze from their tableau.

Della would have joined in if she had a voice but she just shook her head vehemently from side to side.

"Seriously guys," Brigid looked at each of them, a plea for understanding in her eyes. "Sonia is no longer a prostitute; she cleaned up her life ages ago. She runs an escort and party services business. It's all legit. All I'd have to do is go out on dates with men who want arm candy. I could be one of her girls. It is easy work for a lot of money. The pay is good. If I did it for eight months plus tips I could pay for my tuition for two years. And get this, her customers are mostly business tourists."

"No!" Caitlin stressed. "Just no. That is not God's way."

Brigid pursed her lips, Caitlin had drawn the God card. All four had been baptized when they were fifteen after an evangelistic meeting at Magnolia House. So far, Caitlin was the most dedicated Christian.

Caitlin had started getting dreams when she was thirteen, God would show her things. At first everybody thought she was joking and dismissed her, but every last one of her dreams came true, and people realized that she was not a dreamer to be taken lightly. God and Caitlin had a special relationship.

"So have you gotten a dream for me as to how I can go about paying my school fee, then?" Brigid asked grumpily.

Caitlin shook her head. Her dreams were not done to order, and she hadn't had a significant dream in years.

Brigid sighed and then looked at Hazel. "You are awfully quiet."

Hazel drew closer to them. "Mr. Baron asked me to marry him."

Once again everybody froze. Tonight was the night for revelations, it seemed. Della sat down on a bar stool where she could see her sisters. She couldn't tell them about her thing now. It was mild compared to their bombshells.

"The old man. Who lives here?" Brigid squeaked. "Isn't he like 90, going on 500? Can he even get it up?"

"Wait," Hazel hissed. "It's not going to be a marriage like that, where he needs to get it up. Thank you for being so crude, Brigid, and bringing that absolutely abhorrent picture to mind.

"Mr. Baron just wants his children to stop fighting over his carcass--his word, not mine. He said that he'll marry me and leave me everything. They have really pissed him off. So it's either me or somebody else; he really doesn't care who but I am here and I am really considering it."

Della put her hand on her head dramatically. "You guys are killing me," she mouthed. "Brigid is going to be a call girl and Hazel is marrying an old man."

"Madness!" Caitlin said loudly, standing up and shaking her head. "Utter madness!"

"It's not madness on my part," Hazel said earnestly. "Just think. I could fight the adoption of Sebastian. I'd have the means to do it. The adoption was illegal. He's my son. The home had no right to give him up for adoption without my consent."

"They had the right," Caitlin said on a sigh. "You were sixteen and under their care when you had Sebastian, and for a man that you can't even remember."

"I was seventeen, not sixteen, and he's my baby," Hazel growled. "Mine. My family threw me away when I was a baby. I never wanted Sebastian to go through the same thing."

"And he didn't. For heaven's sake, Hazel!" Brigid said, exasperation heavy in her voice. "You ran away from the home, met a guy, who you can't even remember, got pregnant. Sebastian could belong to anyone."

"He belongs to me. Not anyone else, not to the rich Deckers who stole him," Hazel said, a pained expression crossing her face. "I want my baby back. He is growing up without me. That's unfair!"

"You know what?" Brigid said flippantly. "It's a good idea for you to marry the old man and get back Sebastian. It's perfect, actually. In the process you can pay my school fees through med school."

She widened her eyes dramatically. "You can pay to have Della's throat fixed, so that she can talk again, and you can get Caitlin a better job with Lux magazine when she graduates next year. No, not get her a job. Buy Lux magazine and have Caitlin run it."

"No!" Caitlin chimed in. "I am quite fine working for my own success, thank you."

"But why not?" Brigid whined, "It is putting the old man's money to good use and taking care of your sisters. What's the use in marrying a rich old dude and having the money sitting in the bank gathering dust?"

"It's not right," Caitlin insisted. "I know we always joked about one of us marrying a rich old man back in the day. But that was just youthful fantasy. There is no need for you to be dragging the fantasy into real life, Hazel. Suppose Mr. Baron lives to be a hundred and twenty or something? You would be stuck with him, for a long time… forty years of your youth." She shuddered.

Hazel grinned. "I don't have any plans for the next forty years."

Della shook her head as Caitlin prepared to rebut again. They would be at this all night. "I am starved." She sniffed the air. "What did you cook?"

"I made sea bass ceviche," Hazel headed for the stove, "and for dessert I made Baked Alaska but with Greek yogurt instead of cream…makes it healthier, and you won't taste the difference."