Waiting for Daybreak (24 page)
Clarissa didn’t look at her. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I think you do.”
“Well, if you understand me so much better than I understand myself, maybe you also understand what it is I supposedly don’t like about the way you work. As for me, I’ve got nothing to say about it.”
Paige couldn’t let it go. “Then why has the sticker on Ms. Feldhouse’s prescription been changed so that it now has my initials on it?”
“If your initials are on it now, then they always have been. I don’t have your code, I couldn’t change something like that if I wanted to.”
“Well, someone did.”
“Like I said, obviously you
are
the one who filled the prescription if your initials are on it.”
“Then how are my initials on a prescription for March 29—a day I wasn’t even here? A day I was at a retirement luncheon with fifty other people in the city of Sledge?” The lie slipped out before she had a chance to think about it. But she wanted Clarissa to know that she was certain who had done this.
Clarissa did look at her this time, but did not hold her gaze for long. “You sure about that?”
“Quite sure.”
“Then I don’t know what to tell you. It must have been some sort of glitch with the computer.”
“Are you girls going to keep talking all day? I’ve been waiting for half an hour.” A tired-looking woman leaned across the counter. “Sorry if me getting my medicine is taking away from you ladies’ social hour, but fact is, I’m sick and I want to go home. Now, will you please stop your talking and get me my stuff?”
Clarissa drove toward Nashville, wondering how Paige had found the changed computer initials. She never should have seen it.
The plan had always been to settle the lawsuit, make it look—to Milton Parrish, at least—like it was Paige’s fault, and get on with life. No one the wiser. No one hurt. Once again, her plans had failed.
She punched voice dial on her phone. “Call Tony.”
The two of them hadn’t spoken since he’d called about Paige and the investigator. Clarissa had planned to wait for him to be the one to cave. But . . . tonight she needed his company enough that she would forgo pride.
“Hello.”
“I’ve had a really bad day. You want to meet for dinner somewhere?”
“I’m kind of in the middle of something right now.” Was he really, or was he just angry? “How about I pick you up in a couple of hours and we go for ice cream?”
Clarissa smiled. Tony knew her so well. All she needed after a hard day was a chance to remember her goals and refocus on her dreams. “Ice cream it is.”
“I expect you to eat something along the lines of health food before we do this. Got it?”
She laughed. “Broccoli, spinach, and carrots.”
“That’s what I like to hear.”
Later, as they drove across town, he smiled and laughed perhaps a bit too much. Big personality or not, Tony was putting on.
It was the same act she’d seen after Laurie left him and moved in with her senior law partner. It could only mean one thing. His heart was broken. Clarissa knew it was her fault. All she had to do was talk to Paige, tell her the investigator was her idea, and she and Tony could work it out.
And Tony would love Paige more again.
“Here we are. Oh look, they saved a spot for us.” Tony slid his car into an empty spot right out front.
At nine o’clock at night, the street was busy with up-and-coming twenty- and thirty-somethings dressed in trendy clothes, driving trendier cars. Several new “it” dinner spots had opened in the area, as well as a couple of dance clubs and a gym. Clarissa looked at the door to what was now a warehouse and smiled at the thought of having her own store here, soon.
Tony held the door open to the ice cream shop. She curtsied as she walked past. “Thank you, kind sir.”
“Hi, Clarissa.” The girl working behind the counter of the ice cream shop smiled and waved to her. She had braces on her teeth and a long blond ponytail running down her back.
“Hi.” Clarissa tried not to show her complete ignorance, but who was this kid? “How have you been?”
“Oh, great. I graduate this year. I’m heading to University of Tennessee in the fall. Gram is so excited.”
Gram? Clarissa felt her jaw drop. “Are you Brenna? Brenna James?”
The girl smiled. “Of course. Who did you think I was?”
“Tell you the truth, I was trying to figure it out. You’ve grown up a lot since I saw you last.”
“Huh, huh.” Tony nudged Clarissa with his arm. “Are we forgetting our manners?”
“Oh, Brenna, did you ever know my uncle Tony? He’s my dad’s brother.”
She shook her head. “Don’t think we’ve ever met. Nice to meet you.”
Clarissa turned to him. “Brenna’s grandmother Judy was Grandma’s morning walking buddy. Brenna and I used to tag along.”
“Tag along is not quite the word I’d use—get dragged along is more like it.”
“There’s definitely some truth to that. So how is your gram Judy these days?”
“Good. She’s still walking five days a week, playing bridge, the usual.” Another customer walked into the store, and her expression sobered. “So, what would you like?”
“A scoop of chocolate on a sugar cone, please.”
Tony coughed the word
boring
into his hand. “After you’re done scooping that mundane order, I’d like a scoop of razzle dazzle fruit frazzle.”
Clarissa looked at him. “Razzle dazzle fruit frazzle?”
He shrugged. “I’m in touch with my youthful side tonight.”
Brenna handed the cone to Clarissa and started scooping Tony’s order. “So, I see your dad around here a lot. I guess he and his wife are planning to put a yoga studio next door or something?”
Clarissa almost dropped her cone. “What?”
“They had someone over there taking measurements last week, and Carrie, that’s the lady I work for, she got all excited. She said they’re going to put in a gigantic yoga studio, with a spa and the works.”
Clarissa took a bite out of her cone. “I . . . hadn’t heard that.”
Later, Clarissa sat alone in her condo, thinking over the events of the night. She could still see the sadness on Tony’s face. She could picture Becky measuring for a yoga studio. And there was one person to blame for all of it.
Paige.
She thought about the painstaking way she’d gone about changing the initials on Ms. Feldhouse’s prescription. What if Paige decided to go to Clarissa’s grandfather and tell him about that, that the lawsuit wasn’t her fault? It would ruin everything. The only reason that Milton Parrish would even consider not counting this as a mark against Clarissa would be if he didn’t consider it her fault at all. If Paige started talking, she could ruin that.
Maybe she should call her grandfather, just lay a little groundwork that Paige was in denial or something. It would help if things got out of hand. She picked up the phone, and as soon as her grandfather answered, she started weaving her defense.
“So, you’re telling me that she made the mistake, but you feel that she might try to blame it on you?”
“I don’t know. Her initials are in the computer and everything, but she just seems to be in denial. I’m afraid she might try to stir up something.”
“Somehow, this doesn’t seem like the Paige I know. She is very careful. Are you quite sure there’s no truth to her idea that you somehow were involved in the mistake?”
Why did he never believe her? “Yes, I’m sure.”
“Maybe I’ll come down there and take a look at what’s going on.” He paused for a moment. “You know, maybe you’re just not ready for a store in Nashville yet. It seems to me there are a lot of problems in your small-town pharmacy.”
Something flashed inside of Clarissa. She was not going to take this, not for one more second. “Okay, there are some other things that you ought to know. Some things that I’ve known for a while, but I haven’t told you because I knew it would hurt you. But I think it’s time you knew the whole truth about Paige. Starting with her job in Atlanta.”
Paige went in to work the next morning ready to talk to Ora. She wanted to hear her thoughts on what was happening here, and what Paige should be doing about it.
Not there.
Oh yeah, it seemed like she’d said something about a doctor’s appointment this morning. Well, she’d just have to wait until tomorrow to tell her about it. What verse would Ora pull out of her repertoire for this one? Paige smiled at the thought, certain there would be something.
She heard a rap at the door and looked toward the front. Lee Richardson stood silhouetted in the doorframe. “Hello there, Lee. Haven’t seen you in a while.”
He followed her inside but did not return the greeting—in fact, he didn’t even smile. “We need to talk.” His voice was as gruff as Paige had ever heard it.
“Okay. Let’s go back to the waiting area, where we can sit.”
He nodded and followed her, his boots clacking on the tile floor the only sound.
Paige perched in one of the padded chairs and motioned to the one beside her. She sat straight and did her best impersonation of a Miss America contestant smiling inanely when there was absolutely no reason to be smiling. “So, what did you want to talk about?”
“A few things have been brought to my attention.” He looked her straight in the eye, a steely hardness to his gaze she’d never seen before. This was Lee Richardson the businessman, the one who’d built and run one of the largest contractors in the South. “I had no idea about the incidents in Atlanta when I hired you, or I would never have hired you in the first place.”
“Lee, I—”
He held up his hand. “I’m not blaming you. I never asked, there are obviously reasons that you wouldn’t want to volunteer that information. It was my own fault and I accept that.” His face began to harden again. “What I cannot accept, however, is the apparent continuation of your carelessness that has carried over here.”
Paige heard herself gasp before she’d realized that she’d done it. “It’s not true.”
“I really thought I saw something in you, something different. You seemed to take so much time with your patients at the clinic, seemed to be so careful. I guess my instincts are dulling a bit with my increasing age, but I never would have believed it of you.”
“I’ve done nothing. Clarissa is setting me up.”
Lee stood then. “I can abide a lot of things, but a liar is not one of them. I know all about the mistakes you’ve made here. I know you lied directly to a patient about another mistake. My wife died because of negligence. I will not turn a blind eye to what you’re doing here and risk allowing someone else to face that same kind of agony. You may consider yourself terminated as of this very minute. Pack up anything from here that’s a personal item and clear out.”
Paige stood up and pointed a shaky finger toward the dispensing counter. “Every mistake that’s been made in this pharmacy since I’ve been here has been Clarissa’s. Wait, that’s not completely true. A couple have been Dawn’s when Clarissa was supposed to be supervising her, but was out at the coffee shop or in the back room on the phone instead. Not one thing that I’ve dispensed has come back wrong. I triple-check everything because of what happened to me in Atlanta.”
“What is it with you people that you always have to cast the blame on someone else, even when it obviously rests on you? I won’t listen to any more. Get your things and get out.”
“Lee, I
need
this job. My family needs me to have this job.”
“We need someone to work here without a track record of negligence like you have—someone who won’t come in here and lie to me about my own granddaughter. I’ve got half a mind to take you to court and get the first half of that signing bonus back, since you signed under less than honest conditions. If you say one more word, so help me, I will.”
Paige opened her mouth and took a breath. She stared at the hard anger in his eyes and knew he meant every word. She couldn’t say anything. It was over.
She nodded, reached down for her purse, and walked back into the dispensing area to retrieve her coffee maker, then walked to the door with as much dignity as she could muster. She remembered the keys in her pocket, turned and handed them to Lee without a word, and walked out.
Once outside the store, she ran through the coffee shop, currently full of customers, then down the sidewalk toward her car. She saw Clarissa’s red convertible pulling into the lot—a couple of hours earlier than usual. Obviously she’d known that her grandfather was going to do this today. Obviously she was the one who had told him about the mistakes.
But why?
Time to find out. She took purposeful steps toward the car, each one jarring her as it hit the pavement with such force.
“Why? Why did you do it?”
Clarissa bent down to pull her purse and lab coat from the car. “Do what?”
“Come on, Clarissa, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Why would you lie to your grandfather like that about me? What have I ever done to you that would make you do that?”
“You’ve got some nerve calling me a liar. What you need to do is look in the mirror. You lied to my grandfather to get this job, and you hadn’t been here a week before you lied to a patient.”
“I lied to a patient to cover for you, because I wanted to protect you. And when have I ever lied to your grandfather?”
“Whether or not you stated a lie, the fact that you did not tell my grandfather the whole truth was a lie in and of itself and you know it. As for me, I’m sure if you think about it, you’ll figure that one out.” She threw her purse over her shoulder. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get to work. I’ve got a pharmacy to run.” She sashayed toward the square as if she didn’t have a care in the world.
Paige watched her go, saw the extra spring in Clarissa’s step. The way her hair bounced with each movement. How could anyone be so apparently happy about wrecking another person’s life? It just didn’t make sense. None of it made sense. Where was God in all this?
She somehow managed to cover the distance to her car, open the door, and put the key in the ignition. How was it that in spite of incredible, mind-numbing pain, the body could continue to move in a way that looked perfectly normal from the outside, while inside everything was falling apart? She drove away from the lot, having no idea where she was going.
