Waiting for Daybreak (13 page)

Dawn walked over and shook his hand. “Nice to meet you.”

He nodded. “You too, young lady.” He looked at Clarissa. “Where can I sit so I won’t be in your way?”

Clarissa led him to the desk along the back wall. “Right here. Make yourself comfortable. Anything in particular you want to see?”

He paused for a second and scratched his chin. “Why don’t I start with what you’ve done today.”

“Sure.” She lifted the stack of papers from the black plastic tray. “Here are today’s offerings. We’ve not been terribly busy, as I’m sure you saw, but there’s enough here to give you a good idea of how we do things.”

He started flipping through the prescriptions. “Thanks.”

Clarissa nodded toward the front. “I’m going to work on some refills. Call me if you need anything.” She walked up to the counter beside Dawn and motioned her behind a shelf. She leaned over to whisper, “Listen, you’ve
never
been left to work alone, got it?”

“Duh. I’m not stupid.”

At that moment, Paige rushed into the store, pulling on her lab coat and finger brushing her hair at the same time. “Sorry I’m late. I lost track of time.”

Clarissa froze, wishing she could send Paige away again right now. “Paige. Glad you’re here. I want to introduce you to somebody.”

Paige looked puzzled and then caught a glimpse of the man sifting through their records. Clarissa thought she saw almost a hint of panic in Paige’s eyes for a second.

“This is Gary Powell. He is a state board inspector, here just on a routine visit.” Clarissa strolled toward the back desk, in no hurry at all to reach the destination.

He looked up from the stack of paper, saw them approaching, and stood to introduce himself.

Paige shook his hand, and this time the color truly drained from her face. “Nice to meet you.”

“You as well. So, have you worked here from the beginning?”

“No. I just started a few weeks ago.”

“Where did you work before?”

“In Nashville. At the Nashville Free Clinic.”

“I was sorry to hear they shut that place down. It did some good work.” His whole face relaxed into an expression of downright affection. He had met Paige barely a minute ago, and she’d already won him over. How did she do it?

“I was sorry about it, too. But then again”—she gestured around the pharmacy—“it brought me here.”

“Clarissa, Dr. Janke’s office on the phone for you,” said Dawn from the counter.

“Take a message.”

Gary Powell smiled affably. “No, please. Take it. I don’t want my presence here to interrupt your work.”

Clarissa walked to the counter, her ears trained toward anything that might be said behind her. Just before she picked up the receiver, she heard Gary Powell ask, “So, Paige, how do you like it here?”

Paige looked toward the counter and waited until she was certain that Clarissa had answered the phone. “I like it just fine.”

He shifted in his seat and spoke in a lower tone. “The problem we have in a lot of these small-town pharmacies is that they tend to bend the rules a little. I guess the theory is that it won’t matter much, because no one will notice. Is there anything here that you’ve seen that the board should know about?” He looked directly at her—not a threatening look, but an expression that wanted answers.

“I . . . uh . . .” Paige wondered if he knew something or if he was just throwing out questions, hoping to snag something he might have missed. The bitter taste from the unfairness in Atlanta might have faded, but it was far from gone. She didn’t want to ever get another dose. So, she took a deep breath and tried her best to smile. “No, I think Clarissa is very conscious of doing things the right way.”

He nodded and jotted something in the notebook on the desk. “That’s what I like to hear.”

Paige exhaled slowly and returned to the dispensing counter. Clarissa emerged from the back shelves, and Paige realized at once that she had been eavesdropping on the whole conversation.

She mouthed the words
good job
, then went back to the work at the counter as if nothing significant had happened at all.

Not ten minutes later, Gary Powell returned the stack of prescriptions to the front counter. “Everything looks to be in order. Nice job, young ladies.”

Clarissa smiled up at him, and Paige had the distinct impression she was considering batting her eyes. “That wasn’t painful at all. Honestly, inspectors get a bad rap.”

They watched him walk out the front door, then Clarissa went to the stool and collapsed. “Whew. That was more stress than I needed for one day. I’m glad that’s over.”

“So am I.” But the turmoil that had kicked up in Paige’s mind was far from over. She had just lied. To a board inspector.

“I think I’ll take my lunch now.” Clarissa needed to get out of the pharmacy for a few minutes and de-stress. She stepped out into the bright sunshine and felt the unseasonable warmth of an early spring day. What a nice day, a good day for a walk around the square. She started to hum, until she turned the first corner and saw her grandfather’s truck parked along the side street.

How long had he been in Shoal Creek? And why hadn’t he come to see her yet?

She went back into the building and started up the stairs, almost running headlong into Cory, who was on his way down. “Is my grandfather upstairs?”

“Yep.”

“Did he just arrive? I missed him somehow.”

“He ate lunch with me and Paige. Far as I know, he’d just gotten here then.”

“Ate lunch? With Paige?”

“Yeah, and me. The two of them sure do seem to get along well.”

“You have no idea.” She ran the rest of the way up the stairs, still not believing what was happening. How could Paige possibly have wormed her way into the respect she seemed to get from Granddad? And Tony for that matter. When she reached the top of the stairs, she saw her grandfather in the middle of the room, a set of plans rolled out on a small table before him.

She walked over to him. “Granddad, you didn’t tell me you were coming today.”

He looked up and smiled. “Didn’t want to spoil the surprise.”

“Well, you surprised me all right.”
More than you know.
“I’m on lunch break, you want to come grab a bite with me?” She kept her eyes locked on his face, waiting for the tiniest of reactions. Would she see a twitch of guilt in his cheek? A flicker of regret in his eyes?

She saw nothing.

“No thanks, I’ve already eaten. I’ll be down to check on progress in a couple of hours, okay?”

There was no escaping the fact that she’d been dismissed. She squared her shoulders and smiled brightly. “Well, all right. I guess I’ll talk to you later.”

When her grandfather came in that evening, he went straight to the weekly reports. “Hmm, looks like last week was your best yet.” His eyes gleamed as he looked up. “See, I told you having Paige here would help, but even I didn’t expect it to work this quickly.”

“Granddad, last week was a good week because half of Shoal Creek got flattened by the flu. It had nothing to do with Paige.” Even though she was whispering, Clarissa turned to confirm that Paige was not nearby. Satisfied that they were not being overheard, she continued, “In fact, I find her work, if you call it work, is both slow and even a little careless. She’s going to hold me back from getting that franchise next spring, and I really need to get it before the lease is up on the Lancaster Building.”

He looked at her, anger in his eyes. “You’re taking a lot for granted. I haven’t promised you that spot in the Lancaster Building.”

“Tell me you’re not going to give it to Becky.”

“I’ll give it to the person who is most deserving. The other yoga studio that Becky opened has been very profitable. She’s shown she can do it.” He nodded toward Paige, who was down at the counter talking to a patient. “Look at her. She makes sure no one leaves feeling like they haven’t had complete service. That’s what I like to see.”

What was it going to take to prove to everyone that Paige was all an illusion? Did no one see the truth for what it was? Clarissa was the hardworking brains behind the operation, but Paige somehow managed to stumble into the right place to be caught in a good light. Time to make certain that everyone got a good look at the dark side.

chapter
nineteen

Paige was driving down a busy four-lane road, horns blaring from somewhere behind her. Faster cars
whooshed
past, leaving a blast of cold air in their wake. She knew she needed to accelerate to keep up with the flow of traffic, but her foot didn’t seem to cooperate with her decision. “Come on, we’ve got to move a little faster.” She tried again, and this time the car jerked forward.

But now her hands felt shaky. They trembled despite themselves. She looked at the steering wheel and did not recognize the hands that were grasping it. Papery, translucent skin hung in veined wrinkles all over the back of her hands, and the shaking had crept through her body, her arms and legs quivering in rapid jerks.

A car horn blared directly behind her, and she knew she was about to crash. She swerved to the side of the road but turned too hard. She saw a tree trunk directly before her and whipped the wheel back around, and directly toward a green SUV. She saw the huge blue eyes of the toddler in the back seat before she heard the crunch of metal. Suddenly her whole body catapulted toward the broken windshield, and it was the last thing she saw before the world went black.

Paige splashed cold water on her face. “Get a grip, Paige, it was just a dream.” The same dream she had lived through dozens of times. Still, the wrenching of the seizure seemed so real, the smell of hot metal so pungent, how could she just forget it?

She walked back into the living room and sank onto the sofa. The same reality show that she’d been watching before she fell asleep played on the television. Just more women and men scheming against one another. Paige pushed the power button and dropped the remote onto the side table.

A quick glance at the bronze hands of the grandfather clock told her it was only eight p.m. It was time to change the focus back to the here and now, the only thing that really mattered. Her mother. She picked up the phone.

Her father answered on the second ring. “Hello.”

“How are things going?”

He paused a moment before answering. “Best I can tell, things are going according to plan. Your mother’s sicker than all get-out, but I guess that’s what’s supposed to happen, hmm? They pumped her full of some sort of chemo today, and she got her first radiation treatment yesterday.” A mumbling sound came from the background. “Your mother would like to speak to you.”

“Don’t listen to your father’s exaggerations. I’m not too sick.”

She paused a minute and Paige could hear her take a shaky breath. Across the miles, Paige could feel her frailty. Her eyes teared without warning. It was so hard being apart. “You should see me, though. They’ve got me all marked up for my radiation treatments. . . . There are dots and lines all over the place. . . . Looks like a two-year-old got hold of me with a set of markers and tried to play connect the dots.”

Paige choked out a laugh. “Now there’s an idea. Dot to dot on your mother. I never thought of that.” “It’s about the only thing you didn’t think of when you were a kid.” The pauses were agonizing, but Paige knew her mother wanted to talk. She waited. “I never did get the marker stain out of my best tablecloth.”

“Maybe not, but wasn’t I a cute little thing?”

Her mother started a laugh, but it turned into a cough. “Sorry about that.” She coughed again. “I can’t seem to shake this annoying little cough.”

Paige’s fingers tightened around the phone. There was no such thing as an annoying little cough to someone undergoing the kind of treatment her mother was undergoing. Any bacteria, the tiniest of viruses, had the potential to wreak tremendous havoc on a body whose defenses were being decimated by chemo. “Mom, I’m going to let you go rest. Is Dad staying with you at the hospital tonight, or is he going back to the apartment?”

“I think he’s planning to stay here, but I keep telling him to go get a good night’s sleep. Nobody listens to me anymore.”

Paige’s father came on the line. “I told her, for the first time in our lives, you and I have a choice in the matter. Personally, I plan to take the chance while I’ve got it. Soon as she feels better, she’ll be bossing us all around again.”

Paige could hear her mother saying something in the background. She was glad to know that cancer had not taken the good-natured teasing from her parents.

Not yet at least.

“Morning, young ’un. How are ya?”

Paige smiled at Ora as they walked into the lobby together. “Fine.” She fumbled through her purse for the keys and thought of the upbeat tone in her mother’s voice the night before. She was determined to let that memory overtake the return of the recurrent nightmare. “Quite good, actually.”

“That sounds promising.” Ora’s boots clacked against the floor as they walked. “And
that
looks promising. Hello there, young man.

You look like you’ve got something on your mind.”

Paige looked up to see Cory standing at the pharmacy door, looking from Paige to Ora then back again. “I . . . uh . . .” He shifted on his feet but didn’t continue.

“Does your mom need a refill?”

“Not exactly.”

Ora pulled gently on his arm. “You need to scoot, she can’t open the door while you’re standing there.”

“Oh yeah. Sorry.” He moved two steps to the right.

Although Cory was not particularly a quiet person, in Ora’s presence, he seemed downright tongue-tied.

Paige opened the door, killed the alarm, then wondered what she should do. He obviously needed something.

Ora glanced toward him. “Well, young man, you coming in or not? Paige needs to lock the door behind us. Too early for customers, you know.”

Cory followed obediently, looking suspiciously at Ora. “Aren’t you a customer?”

She plopped into her seat in the waiting area. “Of course not. The pharmacy doesn’t open for another hour. How rude do you think I am?”

Paige would have given money to read Cory’s thoughts at that question. His face had gone bright red. “Well, I . . . I . . . probably need to get going.”