Waiting for Daybreak (5 page)
“Don’t worry, I’ve got it covered. And yes, I’ll keep an eye on the roses if they need watering. Now, get in that car and go to Houston. I don’t want to see you around here again until you are all better. Understand me?”
Her mother sank into the passenger seat, too weak to continue the pretense of resistance anymore. “I’ll do my best.”
Paige gave her father an extra-long hug. “Take good care of her.”
“Course I will.” He kissed Paige on the top of her head. “See you in July.”
July. How could four months sound like such a long time?
Her mother rolled down her window. “Keep praying.”
“I will.” Paige wondered how her mother never seemed to lose faith. She hoped she would possess that kind of strength someday. In fact, she hoped for some of it before she started her new job. She had no idea what she would be facing when she got there.
She watched her parents pull out of the driveway and suddenly felt very alone.
Paige spent the rest of the weekend packing up her closet for her move. She’d still have the apartment for a month, so the rest could wait, but she needed her wardrobe. She talked with her parents daily as they drove across the country, and then before she knew it Monday arrived. Driving into Shoal Creek that first morning, Paige couldn’t help but remember all the times she’d driven the same road as a teenager. High school friends crammed in a car, singing some terrible pop song at the top of their lungs. Those days didn’t seem that long ago, but times had changed so much.
Arriving at the pharmacy, she sat in her car for an extra few moments, praying for the courage to open the door. A new job, a new location, a chance for a fresh start. She couldn’t afford to blow this. “God, help me make a good impression.”
What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.
The verse popped into Paige’s mind. She laughed aloud. “Mom, I know what you mean. I assume it’s from Psalms somewhere, but I can’t remember the reference, either.” Somehow, between the verse and the connection with her mother, she felt bolder, stronger.
She took a deep breath and climbed out into the morning and a new life. “I will make a good impression. I will get back into life. I will make new friends.” She found herself almost afraid to hope that this time would be different.
At the square, the former grand movie theater dwarfed the surrounding buildings. The weathered brown brick stretched skyward, the sign above the glass doors looked like the original movie marquee.
Theater Center Shops
, it said. The sounds of hammering and electric saws came from the tiny windows upstairs.
Lee Richardson stood waiting at the front of the store, the same smile creasing his face, the same jeans and flannel shirt. As before, his shoulders were back, his head held high—more like a brave general than the retirement-age contractor that he was. “Hello there, young lady. Glad you’re here.”
“I’m glad, too.” And terrified. And thrilled. And nauseous.
“Clarissa will learn a lot from working with you.”
“I’m sure I’ll learn even more from her.” Time to stop this line of conversation before it went any further. “What made you think of turning a theater into a pharmacy?”
He opened the set of double glass doors, which led into what still looked like the lobby of a movie theater. “For the last couple of years, my company has really been working to give back to communities. Refurbishing the Nashville Clinic was one way, revitalizing the downtowns of more rural areas is another.”
A small coffee counter stood against the wall where the snack bar had obviously once been. Cozy tables and chairs filled most of the area, and the air was thick with the smell of roasted coffee beans. Across the lobby there were two sets of double doors, which Paige supposed had once led down the two main aisles of the theater.
She could almost feel the presence of moviegoers of years past. What dreams had walked through these same doors? How many hearts had broken inside these very walls? How many lives changed by something they saw on the screen? She shook off the thought, but the faintest aroma of buttered popcorn salted the air and prolonged the nostalgia.
Lee pulled open one of the doors to the far left. A blue sign above them announced
Richardson Apothecary
in scripted white letters.
Once inside, she was amazed at the beauty of it all. They had managed to incorporate the giant round wall lights into the back of the pharmacy, so it looked almost like an old cathedral. The woodwork gleamed; the craftsmanship was amazing. A small shop of over-the-counter items and medical supplies stood neat and tidy before the dispensing area.
“This is lovely.”
“Thought you’d like it.” He ran a wrinkled hand across the doorframe, and then nodded toward the back. “Here comes Clarissa now.”
A young woman floated down from behind the pharmacy counter. Her exotic beauty could easily have graced the screen that once stood in this building. The glossiness of her black hair would surely have sent Elizabeth Taylor screeching for the hairdresser, and the flawlessness of her complexion would have compelled even Ava Gardner to race for the makeup chair. Paige couldn’t help comparing her own thin blond hair and freckled face. Perfection versus plain. Glamour versus ordinary.
When Clarissa shook her grandfather’s hand, her whole face seemed to glow with happiness. “Granddad. Good morning.” She nodded toward Paige, still smiling. “Who’s your friend?”
Who’s your friend?
Paige took an involuntary step backward. Surely Clarissa knew . . . surely Lee would have told her.
Clarissa had hummed all morning as she moved about the pharmacy. Obviously, her grandfather had finally come to his senses and realized what a good job she was doing. A great job, even. She knew him well enough to know that he would never apologize for doubting her, but today was the equivalent.
She could still hear the excitement in his voice when he called yesterday. “I’ll be there in the morning. I’ve got a surprise for you. Just you wait, it’s exactly what you need.”
Of course, she didn’t know exactly what he was bringing, but she knew what it had to do with. He would be bringing something that declared he was about to begin work on the Lancaster Building for her. Would it be a blueprint of the building so that she could have design input like she did for this place? Or maybe even a set of keys to the building? Or a contract from Parrish Apothecary?
She allowed herself to savor one of her most vivid memories from childhood. It was after her mother had already left to find herself, her father had started drinking heavily to lose himself, and Clarissa spent most of her time by herself. Until she’d gone to live with her grandparents.
Her grandma made every day an adventure. The very best adventure of all was the day they climbed into Grandma’s car, drove into the city of Nashville, and parked on a street in front of a tired-looking brown-brick building. Trash gathered in the gutters and a couple of rather scary-looking adults loitered against a far building. And Grandma had led her inside to what was a small ice cream shop.
“Darling, this used to be a pharmacy. Not just any pharmacy mind you, it was Regency Pharmacy. All the fashionable people from Nashville used to come in here, they’d get an ice cream at the soda fountain, just where you see the ice cream shop today.”
“Ice cream in a pharmacy?” To a five-year-old, it sounded like heaven.
“Oh, things were different in those days in a lot of ways. Mr. Bannister hired me to work here, and lots of people thought he was crazy for doing it.”
“Why would they think that?”
“Because in those days, women didn’t become pharmacists so much. I guess no one thought we were smart enough. Anyway, it was quite the big news when I started here.”
“I bet Grandpa was proud of you.”
“That was before I knew your grandfather, when I first started anyway. He came in not long after I started work and asked me where the aspirin were. Before he left the store, he had a bottle of Bayer and we had a date for dinner.” She smiled in a dreamy way and nodded toward the back wall. “That was all open then. What was the pharmacy counter is now just a storage room, I suppose. Oh, I’d give anything if you could see this place the way it once was.”
And starting today, Clarissa would begin making that dream come true. She could almost feel her grandmother smiling at her.
Oh, and just the thought of Becky’s face after the announcement was enough to cause the sun to shine today. According to rumor, Becky was so sure that she would be setting up her yoga studio in the Lancaster Building that she was already privately interviewing instructors. Personally, Clarissa would burn the place to the ground before she saw that bimbo owning anything near there. After today, she wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore.
That’s when she saw her grandfather coming through the door, wearing the broadest smile she could ever remember. The time had finally come. Everyone’s dreams were about to come true. She stepped out of the dispensing area and walked with the slow rhythm she’d learned for graduation:
one, and, two, and, three
. It was the only way she could keep herself from running.
Only when she met him halfway down the aisle did she notice he wasn’t alone. Accompanying him was a young woman who looked to be about Clarissa’s age. She had stick-straight blond hair—the kind of pale blond that could only be natural. Her nose was covered with a smattering of freckles, her blue eyes were huge and looked a bit frightened.
Clarissa forced herself to smile like this person was the greatest thing to enter her pharmacy. After all, she apparently somehow played a role in the delivery of this morning’s good news. “Granddad. Good morning.” She shook his hand as always, then nodded toward the girl. “Who’s your friend?”
“Clarissa, I’d like you to meet Paige Woodward. Paige, my granddaughter, Clarissa Richardson.” He turned to Clarissa. “I’ve hired Paige to help you get this place really up and running.”
Clarissa coughed. “Excuse me?”
Paige fought the urge to turn and flee. He hadn’t told her?! Anything?! And now Paige stood beside her about-to-be boss, who had no idea she was even coming.
Lee put his arm around Clarissa’s shoulders. “I know it’s been hard on you, trying to do all this alone. We’ve talked about the difficulties in projecting great customer service. Well, I’ve been watching Paige at work at the Nashville Free Clinic, and she’s fabulous at customer service—and everything else, as far as that goes. She’ll be a huge asset for this place.”
The happy twinkle that had been present in Clarissa’s eyes only seconds ago disappeared behind the blazing fury of what could only be rage. She looked from her grandfather to Paige, then back again. She opened her mouth to say something to him, then stopped, exhaled slowly, and turned to Paige. “Well, welcome.” She mumbled something under her breath, which might have been “I guess,” but Paige couldn’t say for sure.
“I’m glad to be here.” Paige tried to keep her tone perky, but somehow she knew she failed.
“What I want to know is, how’d Granddad persuade someone so ‘fabulous’ to come to Shoal Creek? I’d give anything to be back in Nashville. Even working at a homeless clinic there has to be better than being in the middle of nowhere.”
So much for making a good first impression. Paige looked toward Lee and remained silent.
The corner of his mouth twitched as if he was amused. “Paige grew up not too far from here. In fact, her family still lives in Sledge. Right, Paige?”
“Yes, they sure do.” She forced her mouth into what had to be the fakest smile ever, but what else could she do? A customer rustled down a distant aisle, a baby cried in the background, and the trio stood looking at each other.
Clarissa flinched. “Maybe Shoal Creek feels like the big city to you then, huh?” She rubbed the fingernails on her left hand with her right thumb, then held the hand up to the light as if to check the polish. “Personally, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it. But Granddad said I needed to get my start away from my friends and have absolutely no fun. You know, you’ve got to be miserable if you want to succeed in business, that kind of stuff.”
“I said no such thing.”
“What did you say then?” She folded her arms and skewered him with a look.
“I said, if I was going to invest the money it took to get you started, I wouldn’t do it somewhere that you could spend all your time running around with your friends and not focused on your work. You need to start small, prove you can do it, then work into something bigger.”
“Which is basically what I just said you said, isn’t it?” She flipped her hair over her shoulder and smiled in victory.
Lee laughed. He turned to Paige. “I’ll leave my granddaughter to show you around. I’m going to inspect the renovations upstairs. I’ll stop back in to check on you ladies later.”
“Well, come on back.” Clarissa walked away without turning to see if Paige followed. She pushed through the door to the dispensing area and let it swing shut behind her.
Paige watched the barrier close between them. It felt more than a little symbolic, and she suddenly longed for the smell of sweat and liquor, the poor lighting, and the dingy work space of the clinic. Things made more sense there—or at least followed a predictable pattern. She squared her shoulders and pushed through the door.
Clarissa stood at the counter, staring at Paige. She opened her mouth as if to say something, shook her head, and then shut it. She continued to shake her head slowly, as if having a silent argument with an unseen opponent. Finally, she took a step forward. “Wait here just a second.” She pushed through the door, ran down the aisle, and disappeared out the front. Even from the back of the pharmacy, Paige could hear Clarissa call, “Granddad, hold on a minute.”
Clarissa hurried out of the store, her adrenaline pumping so fast she was surprised she didn’t levitate above the floor. Did her grandfather really think so little of her that he would do this?
She caught him at the bottom of the stairs. “Granddad, can I talk to you for just a minute?”