face set her back a step, her ready smile fading.
'Pretty flowers.' It was the woman from the mailboxes
stopping to pick up her own package. 'From your
boyfriend?'
'I don't have a boyfriend,' I said shortly for her benefit and Alice's. 'I don't know who these are from.'
If they shared a look it was behind my back, because I
turned away to pul the card from between the stems. It
was a printed card, not handwritten. Three words.
Austin had given me flowers once or twice, sad and
scraggly bouquets picked up from the grocery store. He'd
picked me flowers, too, from his mother's garden and put
them in a beer mug for me to find on our kitchen table
when I got home from school. These were my first roses.
I didn't have time to put them in my apartment before I
headed off to work, so I took them with me. I didn't have
to worry about getting them into water right away because
each stem was capped in a smal plastic tube, but I
arranged them where I could see them from my chair.
One minute I smiled to look at them. The next, I frowned.
One minute I smiled to look at them. The next, I frowned.
Eric shouldn't be apologizing to me, but it was sweet he
had. And he'd done it without prompting.
'Paige, I—' Paul stopped in his doorway. 'Pretty flowers.'
'Thanks.' A mouse click saved my document, and I
looked up at him. He had a paper in his hand. A list, for
which I held out my hand.
He didn't hand it over. Paul held it in both his hands and
rubbed the paper back and forth in his fingers. He looked
again at my flowers.
'Is there something you need, Paul?'
Paul cleared his throat and folded the list in half, then half
again. 'Vivian has asked for a meeting with us today to
talk about the possibilities of your promotion. We're
getting lunch ordered in. At eleven.'
He said it like I had a choice, as though he weren't my
boss. He folded the paper again and tucked it into the
pocket of his gray suit pants. Today he wore a pale pink
shirt with a maroon tie and looked very puled together.
'I'm not sure I realy want to talk about a promotion with
'I'm not sure I realy want to talk about a promotion with
Vivian.'
Paul nodded and gave me a smal smile. 'It can't hurt to
listen to what she has to say, Paige.'
He was right, so I nodded and turned my attention back to
the computer. Paul waited a couple seconds, then left me.
I stared for a while at my computer but couldn't make
much sense of the words on the screen.
At ten-fifty, Vivian click-clacked into the office on her
