Retreat (34 page)

    
“Elizabeth
is asleep,” Meg said. She was sitting in the large armchair reading a
paperback.

    
“Why don’t you come out and join us?” Clara
asked.

    
“You took your break this afternoon; I’m
taking mine now,” Meg said without looking up from her book. “I’ve had about
enough teambuilding for one day. And tomorrow is the big hike which means I’ll
be with them again all day anyway. I’m going to take this little break.”

    
“I don’t blame you,” Clara said, taking a
seat across from her on the couch. “Thank you for watching Elizabeth. I’m not sure when Rebecca will be
back.”

    
“I don’t think she’s coming back,” Meg
said. She stopped reading and caught Clara’s eye.

    
“Why not?” Clara asked, her hunger
instantly replaced by a pit in her stomach.

    
“Because she was royally pissed that you
took off today,” Meg said. “She seemed to really want to spend time with you and
you basically bailed on her, or at least that was her view of it anyway. And,
because I noticed when I put Elizabeth
to bed that all of Rebecca’s things are gone. Her bag is still there but if you
look inside it the only things in it belong to Elizabeth. She even took her toothbrush.”

    
Clara closed her eyes and took a deep
breath. She been so focused on finding a clean outfit for Elizabeth that she hadn’t even noticed that
Rebecca’s things were gone. “Are you sure?” she asked.

    
“Very,” Meg said.

    
“Shit,” Clara said, slamming her fists down
on the couch. She didn’t want to have to tell Josie that Rebecca had bailed on
them. “Damn her. I knew she was going to pull this crap. How do I tell Josie?”

    
“Better you than me,” Meg said, returning
to her book. “This is going to throw your mother into a tailspin.”

    
Clara waited a few minutes to gather her
strength before she stepped out into the cool night and surveyed the group
illuminated in the darkness.
 
Her mother
and father had finished off their meals and the champagne and were snuggled in
together next to the now raging fire. Jon and Marcy had returned, and they
appeared to be deeply involved in some kind of conversation with Joe and
Patrick. She looked around for Mark and Karen but didn’t see either of them. She
knew Karen well enough to know that she’d probably already retreated back to
her own cabin to meditate and recover from the day. Being perpetually positive
seemed to leech a lot of energy from her.

    
Clara wished she could have joined Jon and
Marcy, helping them make nice with the boys before they went for the jugular.
She recognized the tactic. It was one she’d used so often in the merger deals.
They’d get the workers comfortable and talking freely and then dig in deep for
all the information they could after they’d gained their trust.

    
“Mom? Dad?” she asked, walking over to them
and kneeling beside them on the cool ground.

    
“What is it Clara?” her father said,
obviously preoccupied with nuzzling Josie.

    
Clara took a deep breath. “Meg thinks
Rebecca is gone for good.”

    
“Why would she say that?” Josie asked,
pulling away from Bill momentarily and studying Clara. “Are you sure it’s not
just sour grapes? Meg seemed a little put off that Rebecca was coming with us
in the first place.”

    
“I’m sure,” Clara said. “All of her stuff
is gone.”

    
“What about Elizabeth?” her father asked.

    
“She’s here, sleeping. Meg’s watching her.”

    
“Christ,” he said, sitting up straighter in
his chair. Josie had already pulled away from him and stood, pacing back and
forth in front of the fire.

    
“Alright Clara, go over and hang out with
the rest of the team over there,” her father said, pointing to the other side
of the fire but keeping his worried eyes on Josie. “Your mother and I will deal
with this.”

    
“What are you going to do?” Clara asked
gently.

    
“We’ll let you know when we figure it out,”
Josie said, looking worried.

    
Clara nodded, then walked over to the rest
of the group. Sure enough Patrick was detailing their customer interface and
future internet plans for Jon and Marcy.

    
“Hey,” she said, tapping Marcy on the
shoulder.

    
Her friend jumped up and gave her a hug.
“Hey yourself!” Marcy said. “Does this mean I finally get a full minute with
you?”

    
“Yes,” Clara said. “I’m so glad you’re
here. Thanks for coming.”

    
Jon stood up and draped an arm around
Clara’s shoulder. He leaned down and gently kissed her lips.

    
“What are you doing?” she whispered,
motioning toward Patrick and Joe who were exchanging amused glances.

    
“Not hiding anymore,” he said, releasing
her and sitting back down.

    
“We’ll be back in a little bit,” Marcy
said, rescuing her from trying to respond. She wrapped her arm in Clara’s like
two schoolgirls and they walked off down the trail toward Slippery Falls.

    
“So spill,” Marcy said when they got to the
cabin. “I want to hear everything.”

    
Clara picked up a starter log and some
kindling to light a small fire. The temperature felt like it was dropping fast
compared to the warmth of the raging campfire at Firelight Falls.

    
“Like you don’t already know everything from
Jon,” Clara said, clicking on the long lighter.

    
“He tells me nothing,” Marcy said, throwing
her hands in the air. “I need details.”

    
Clara glanced up at her friend. They might
as well have been holed up in the dorm at Penn State
painting their toenails. It felt like they’d never been apart.

    
Clara told her the whole story, from the
time she left Fort Worth
until now. It didn’t take long, even though Marcy pressed her for every detail.
Clara had trouble helping her understand that most of the excitement had taken
place in the past week.

    
“And what about Jon?” Marcy asked. “Does
that kiss mean you two are officially back together now?”

    
Clara smiled. Marcy sounded so
hopeful.
 
“We’re working on it.”

    
“Dish.”

    
“I am not dishing to you about your boss,”
Clara said, pushing Marcy over in her camp chair. She caught herself with her
arm before she tipped completely.

    
“Okay, I get it. And I can tell everything
I need to know by the fact that Jon is beginning to act like a human being
again instead of a raving maniac. You should have seen him down in Texas Clara.
I thought he was going to go off the deep end.”
   

    
“Something woke him up, that’s for sure,”
Clara admitted. “And I think it was you telling him about David proposing.”

    
“I’m not apologizing for that,” Marcy said,
dragging the edge of her flip flop across the dirt in the shape of an M. “That
guy’s a total freak show. What are you going to do about him?”

    
“Ignore him,” Clara said. “Pretend he
doesn’t exist. He’ll get bored and go away eventually.”

    
“I did the research on him, Clara,” Marcy
said, stilling her foot and making sure Clara was listening. “He’s one weird
dude. I can’t believe you hooked up with him at all.”

    
“Well, it’s over now,” Clara said. It’d
only been a little over a week but it felt as if years had passed since she
left Tulsa.

    
“No, I don’t think it is,” Marcy said,
shaking her head.

    
“Why do you say that?” Clara asked.

    
“Just a feeling I have. I hope you’re
right, Clara, but man!”

    
“All the cards are on the table now,” Clara
said. “He’s been exposed for what he is so there’s not a whole lot else he can
do. We’d see him coming a mile away.”

    
“I hope you’re right,” Marcy said. “But
Clara, I need to tell you something that I found out about David. I didn’t tell
Jon because I knew it would totally freak him out.”

    
“What is it?” she asked.

    
“David has a private pilot’s license,”
Marcy said, her chest heaving as if she were revealing a national security
secret.

    
“That’s not that big of a deal, Marcy.
Really. Lots of people down in Tulsa
have them,” Clara said. “There’s a flight school there.”

    
“And he’s current on his hours,” Marcy
continued. “I couldn’t bring myself to tell Jon about it.”

    
“Why would that freak Jon out? He’s
certified, too,” Clara said, although she had to admit she was surprised to
hear he was current on his hours. Another thing she should have picked up but
was completely oblivious to.

    
“Because Jon is convinced this guy wants to
do something awful to you,” Marcy said. “That’s why he has him tied up with the
strip club stuff. If he knew he could fly out here to see you whenever he
wanted? Jon would flip.”

    
“I think you’re both overreacting to the
extent that David has the energy to do much of anything,” Clara said, shaking
her head. “I lived with him. He’s a total couch potato.”

    
“Are you sure that wasn’t part of his act?”
Marcy challenged. “I mean, did you know he had a pilot’s license? This guy kept
an awful lot of secrets from you, Clara. You have to admit that you may not
know him as well as you thought you did.”

    
“I don’t know. Can you fake sleeping all
the time?” Clara asked, only somewhat sarcastically. “Besides, even if he does
fly I’m sure it’s in small planes like Jon. They’re too inefficient to fly 1200
miles, halfway across the country. He’d have to stop to refuel too many times
to make it worthwhile. If he wanted to find me it’d be a hell of a lot faster
and cheaper to book a flight on a regular airline. And you don’t need a private
pilot’s license for that.”

    
Marcy considered what she said. “I don’t
know. But he’s got Jon pissed. He was barking orders at me so bad I almost
walked out. But then I knew it was for you, so I stayed. He’s got it bad for
you Clara.”

    
She smiled in the darkness. “So what about
you? What have you been doing besides tracking down dirt on my old boyfriend?”

    
“Working, working, working. I don’t have
time for anything else,” Marcy said, rubbing out the perfect M she’d made and
starting over. “Since you left Jon’s had twice as much to do and he refuses to
hire anyone else to help him. So I’ve been doing the best I can but I don’t
have the same negotiation skills that you do. And now Freedman has me working
on his deals, too. Right now I’m trying to manage a merger between two food
processing companies. They’re both old, family run, and stuck in their ways.
They are so much alike but they can’t see it themselves.”

    
“Did you try getting them together in the
same room?” Clara asked.

    
“No,” Marcy said. “I figured that would
just blow everything up.”

    
“Give it a try,” Clara said. “You’d be
amazed at how civil people really are when they’re forced to interact with one
another. Right now each of them probably has so many misconceptions about the
other one that they can’t get past them. Have the two of them go out to dinner.
You arrange it but don’t go. Then, the next day you call them both and see how
it went. I bet you a hundred bucks that their opinions will have changed.”

    
“And if they haven’t?” Marcy asked.

    
“Then you’re no worse off than you are
now.”

    
“You’re really good at this shit, you know.
You need to get back into it.”

    
“I’m going to work for my mom and dad for a
while, help them through their expansion.”

    
“Do you think that will be enough for you?”
Marcy asked. “Their company’s so small.”

    
“It’s growing. It’s a good way to get my
feet wet again.”

    
“Well, if you change your mind let me know.
I bet I could sweet talk Freedman into giving you your job back,” Marcy said.

    
“I don’t want it,” Clara said flatly. “In
fact, when I thought I was meeting you for dinner down in Tulsa I was going to ask you if you wanted to
come work with me.”