Any Minute (32 page)

S
arah wasn’t sure how everyone in the offices of Roscoe Futures Group would react to her return. After all, she had never been presumed dead before and then come back to life. Would they take great pains to avoid her? Would they be thrilled to see her?

Joe dropped her off at the curb on LaSalle Street.

Sarah jumped out of the car and immediately noticed someone on the sidewalk turn and dart the other way. Sarah pushed her way through the gleaming glass revolving door, and before she had a chance to greet the guys at security, one man dropped something and had to bend down to pick it up. On the way up the elevator, a woman she didn’t know very well from bookkeeping began an immediate, deep conversation about the latest diet fad with a woman leaning in the opposite corner.

When the door slid open on the ninth floor, three separate colleagues pivoted at the same moment, each murmuring about forgetting something. People seemed to be acting funny. When Sarah disembarked on her own floor, she expected the entire human resources department to ignore her like she thought everyone had done so far. But maybe it was just a wrong perception. Maybe she was just afraid. And as the elevator doors opened again, she knew she’d been wrong. Everyone was welcoming her. Sarah lost count of all the people who rose from their desks and came to greet her.

“We’re so glad to have you back, Sarah!”

“Oh my goodness, that’s quite the bandage on your arm. But you look
great
for what you’ve been through.”

“We thought we’d lost you. So glad you’re still with us.”

Rona came prancing along in search of a printout from someone’s overloaded flash drive only to see Sarah and embrace her with a squeal. “You should have seen Tom that day,” she whispered in Sarah’s ear. “Making phone calls. Trying to get things done around this place. He was beside himself without you here.”

Sarah straightened and surveyed Rona’s face, searching for some clue.

Rona nodded. “You know Tom. He went a little crazy.”

“Did he?” she asked with a spark of interest.

“His wife had to come in and calm him down. Even then, she didn’t do a very good job of it.”

“Maribeth came in?” Sarah asked, her throat tightening.

“I know. She never does that. But you really shook everybody up. And Tom wouldn’t come out of his office for a while.”

“So sorry I shook everyone up.” Sarah wanted to believe that things had been in an uproar without her. But she kept having foggy flashbacks to things she had seen while she was gone. She kept telling herself it was all nonsense, just a silly dream. Or perhaps a nightmare. That might have been a more accurate description.

Sarah kept trying to get back to business as usual in her life, but something didn’t seem quite the same and she couldn’t figure it out.

“You
should
be sorry.” Leo bolted from their joint office and, with a broad grin, offered her an energetic handshake. “Mrs. Harper. I’ll bet your family is glad you’re okay. And I know I usually ride the ‘L,’ but I sure wouldn’t have minded coming to pick you up today. I could have saved your husband the trip.”

“I know you didn’t mind, Leo.” Sarah looked at the faces around her and, for the first time, saw how they wanted to help her. “I tell you, just knowing you were willing made me feel good.” She started toward her office, then stopped, turned back to him. “Leo. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” His eyes narrowed. He looked like he might be thinking,
What? Was that Mrs. Harper paying me a compliment?

As he scurried off to his next duty, Sarah watched his retreating spine. Ordinarily, his eagerness to please drove her a little nuts. But she wanted to do something nice for Leo. Something that would make him understand how much he was worth. Something he wouldn’t know had come from her.

Sarah stood in the hallway, watching him go and couldn’t describe what was happening in her heart. A gentle welling up of love for these people. How grateful she felt that they were still here.

She turned to see Tom Roscoe stepping out of the elevator. His eyes slid toward Rona, who gave him a slight smile, and then toward Sarah. At first it didn’t register that he’d left the confines of his gilded office and descended from his thronelike perch just to have a word with her. He stood in front of Sarah, assessing her with a critical eye.
Why aren’t you out there on the trading floor?
she expected him to ask.
We don’t build this company by standing around, do we?

But Tom surprised her. He smiled. “It’s good to have you back in your rightful place, Sarah.”

“Thank you, Mr. Roscoe.”

“I expect the Cornishes will want to schedule another meeting to discuss trading strategy as soon as possible.”

“I expect they will too.”

“And you’re up for that?”

“Of course I am.”

“Very good. I’ll have Rona check with you about your schedule.”

“Thank you,” Sarah repeated as she turned toward Rose from accounting and shot her a disbelieving glance. “I’ll let you know when I can fit it in.”

“Very good.” Tom started across the room. But he turned back. “And Sarah?”

“Yes?”

“I guess it would have been pretty tough on us if you’d really been gone.”

Well, yes,
Sarah thought.
I guess it would have been tough all right.

It was one of those comments you don’t know exactly how to answer. She shrugged, feeling awkward. “Luckily, you didn’t have to find out.”

“No.” He’d been carrying a pen in his fist. He pitched it in the air and caught it again. “Luckily. Now things can go on just as they were.”

After Tom left, Sarah noticed one of the ninth-floor guys headed her way. He nodded in her direction, opened his mouth as if he intended to make some snide comment about her driving prowess. But then he snapped his mouth shut again as if he’d thought better of it.

“You know what?” she asked, suddenly thinking of something. “The weirdest thing happened. I dreamed you guys got together and flipped a coin for my parking space. Isn’t that crazy?”

Ninth-Floor Guy froze in his tracks. He glanced in both directions like he was checking to see if anybody would overhear.

“Yeah,” he said, “that’s crazy all right,” his face turning quite red.

“What?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” he retorted. Before she could ask him anything else, he bolted away.

One particularly endearing trait of Chicagoans is that they think nothing of making noises together. Big noises. Loud, strident noises.

Their collective moan every time the “L” train stops for nightly construction.

Their shared sigh when a bridge opens and they have to wait before crossing over.

Their joint oohs and ahs as lightning scribbles the Cook County sky or their collective
ewww
each time the ump calls a strike a ball.

Now, at the Starbucks on North State Street, a whole chorus moaned as one because everyone had somewhere else to go and some woman was holding up the line.

While the woman dug in her pocket to pay for her double latte and discovered she didn’t have her wallet with her, Sarah smoothly took out her billfold. Since she was next in line, it was easy for her to wink at the cashier and slip the dollar bills onto the counter beside the cash register.

The girl smiled, punched the button, and discreetly slipped the money into the register. She even managed to hand Sarah her change. By the time the woman looked up, still trying to sort through the few coins she had found, the girl said, “No need to worry. Someone already paid for your coffee.” She motioned to the end of the row where the barista slid the tall cup toward her. The woman just stood there, stunned, and the girl repeated, “It’s been taken care of.”

“It has?”

The girl nodded.

“By who?”

Because of the winks, the cashier understood this was a secretive deal. She shrugged, but tilted her head toward Sarah.

The woman turned to see who had helped her. She raised her eyebrow gratefully at Sarah, although Sarah never confessed to her good deed. The woman smiled self-consciously at the impatient crowd before she walked away, clutching her cup to keep her hands warm, her eyes alight with happiness.

Sarah couldn’t say exactly why she’d done it. Some who’d known her well through the years would tell you she did it just to get the line moving again. She’d stood in that line every morning for the past five years, watching people fumble through their purses or filing through their wallets, and she’d been perfectly willing to complain right alongside everyone else.

The days passed quickly once she returned to work. As she stood in the trading pit one morning that week, as the price of precious metals had begun to rise and she stood on tiptoe to make the hand signal and shouted, “Taking! Leo, we’re taking all the way! Taking! Taking!” a gentle, certain voice whispered into her heart:
Is that what you want, Sarah? To take? When you can’t be really happy, not the way I intend you to be, without giving?

And so she did something about it. She realized Leo wasn’t able to leave the office until she left first. She glanced at the clock that afternoon, making a mental note to head home at a decent hour so Leo could go home too. Another day, after they’d enjoyed a particularly successful trading session, Sarah said to him, “I’ve taken you for granted, Leo, and I apologize for that. Your help means so much to me. I’m proud of all we’re able to accomplish together.”

She watched him straighten his shoulders. “Really?” His voice sounded doubtful. “You are?”

“Absolutely,” she said. And Leo stood even taller.

The more Sarah saw how kindness affected people in such a positive way, the more she wanted to be kind. She was beginning to realize that it not only affected the recipient, but it affected her too. She felt different. She had an excitement about ordinary, everyday life that she had never had before, as if in searching for opportunities to give, she was searching for treasure.

On a cold day at the grocery store, she returned her shopping cart to the boy who happened to be stooped into the wind, pushing a snakelike row of carts toward the door.

“I thought I’d bring this to you.” Normally she left it propped against someone’s car, not caring at all that they would have to deal with it before they could leave.

He stared at her like she was nuts. “I could have just come to get it. It’s my job.”

“I didn’t mind pushing it over here. Thanks for all you do.”

Sarah left a pack of gum on Ninth-Floor Guy’s chair. She secretly notified the waiter and paid the lunch tab for a young couple who looked like they might not be able to afford to go out very often. She left a potted plant on Rona’s desk and didn’t sign her name.

She watched a little boy on the sidewalk who’d been left to take care of his little sister and told him she thought he was a very good big brother. She poked her head into a bridal boutique and spent a few minutes admiring the prospective brides. “Oh, how beautiful!” she said, grinning as one of them surveyed herself in the three-way mirror.

In the gift shop that opened off the lobby of her office building, Sarah told the cashier that she should always remember how loved she was by God. She took an extra half hour one afternoon and helped a friend in human resources organize some of her shelves. Rose commented how she liked Sarah’s purse, and Sarah emptied it on the spot and gave it to her.

“What
happened
to you?” asked one of her colleagues.

If people at Roscoe had made a wide circle around Sarah Harper before, it was worse than ever now. No one had any idea quite what to expect from her. What had happened to the old Sarah Harper? Who was this new woman?

“She must have taken quite a bump on the head,” Rona decided. “She’s not acting like herself.”

“Watch your back around her,” suggested one of the ninth-floor guys. “Today she offered me the parking space by the elevator. The one she always used to race for. She said everyone was leaving it open, and she didn’t want it anymore.”

They figured the “new Sarah” had come up with some creative scheme to get everyone to help her so she could get another promotion. They couldn’t believe she was just being nice. Even if she was, it wouldn’t last more than a week or two. Once she got over the trauma of her experience, everyone whispered, everything would go back to normal and she would be the same selfish woman she’d always been.