Like Jazz (13 page)

Before practice got underway, I found Coach and asked for a minute alone. I told her my situation and begged for her confidence, saying I wasn’t quite ready to say good-bye to my teammates. She said she understood and told me how much she appreciated having me on her team. I asked to be excused from playing in the match.

“Are you sure?”

I nodded.

“Will you talk to Kristin, so she knows what’s going on with you?”

I considered the request, unsure. I owed it to Kristin to tell her the truth, but I owed the same and more to Sarah, whom I couldn’t face. I nodded. I would tell Kristin during practice.

*

I was a basket case that week. I couldn’t function. I couldn’t make sense of this turn of events. After Monday’s practice, I didn’t return to Claiborne. My teachers agreed to give my mother my upcoming assignments and midterm exams, which I’d aced. I asked my mom to take messages if anyone called for me. Part of me wondered what happened at Wednesday’s tennis match, and whether we won. Another part knew that world was irrevocably closed to me now.

Thursday afternoon, I heard pounding at the front door of my parent’s rental, followed by Sarah’s voice.

“Cazz!” She knocked hard. “Cassidy Warner, I know you’re in there!” She knocked harder. “God damn it, Cazz, open the God damn door and come out here!” After several more minutes of pounding and shouting, she left.

I wanted so badly to go to the door and talk to her. See her. Touch her. Hold her. But that was all in the past now.

First thing Saturday morning, the moving truck backed into the driveway. By late afternoon, everything was packed into it, and the familiar sight of an empty house completely devoid of furniture or warmth surrounded me. Nothing left to prove we’d ever lived here. Moments after the truck pulled away, my mother and I gathered our remaining belongings and headed out to her car. After she got in, I surveyed my street one last time.

Two houses down, on the side street leading away from ours, a black Jetta was parked. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from it. Seconds later, Sarah opened the driver’s side door. She stood on the pavement, regarding me, hand atop the doorframe, forearm on the roof.

To the untrained eye, we were separated by yards, but to me, the distance measured in light-years. I was now as close to Sarah as I would ever be—the chasm that would grow with each passing minute, my future.

We stared at each other. I took a deep breath and finally climbed into the passenger seat of my mom’s car. I didn’t look up as we passed Sarah’s Jetta, and I left the sanctuary of Claiborne High forever.

Present Day

I was pumped, and not just because I was already on my third cup of coffee. Commander Ashby had personally selected me for this assignment.
Bring it on
.

Monday morning at nine o’clock sharp, dressed in a beige skirt suit with a sleeveless, button-front, point-collared blouse, I arrived at the address given to me and found myself outside the offices of something called the Kindle Hope Foundation. I recognized the name, but couldn’t place how I’d heard of it. As instructed via e-mail, I asked for Gregory Morrison, the associate director of the organization. Carol, the receptionist, asked me to wait in the comfortable, well-appointed lobby.

Although I spotted a stack of available magazines titled
Philanthropy
and another titled
Need
that I could have fanned through, I opted to spend my time silently rehearsing my background—my purported professional experience as dictated to me by Ashby’s team. As I walked myself through my fake job experiences for the hundredth time, a captionless photograph hanging in the reception area caught my attention. It was a post-weight-loss picture of former President Clinton shaking hands with a handsome, dark-haired man who looked vaguely familiar. Both men beamed toward the unseen photographer.

Curious, I was considering asking Carol about the man in the picture when I heard a door open somewhere down the hallway. A smartly dressed man with salt-and-pepper hair and a ready smile approached and extended his hand toward me as if we were old friends.

“Cassidy Warner? I’m Greg Morrison. Good to meet you.”

I took his hand and gave him my best confident smile, hoping it exuded “hire me” vibes, though Ashby had made it sound as though my job was a done deal.

“Nice to meet you, too.”

The positions weren’t assured to the first investigator assigned since we often had to go through appropriate HR channels to get hired, but things were stacked heavily in our favor given that a board member was typically either the whistleblower or involved by one.

Behind the scenes, the pilot program partnered with Maddox Staffing International, a well-known staffing firm specializing in accounting and finance. The firm gave permission to the LAPD to use its name solely for investigative purposes but was otherwise uninvolved. The board member who contacted us would be provided with MSI business cards, which he or she would then pass along to HR as part of a strong recommendation to work with the staffing firm. The phone numbers and e-mail addresses purportedly of MSI personnel were actually those of LAPD personnel who would send over a trumped-up résumé of a pilot-program investigator.

Given that our backgrounds were written to coincide with exactly what the company supposedly needed from a candidate and the fact that it was usually a board member applying pressure, it was fairly common for the initial investigator to get a same-day offer. We offered our services as a temp-to-perm solution, which gave our prospective employers time to “try before you buy,” reducing their perceived risk and expediting their hiring decisions. Plus, since the city paid us, the wages we received as “employees” were city property, which obviated the need for us to properly negotiate our salaries.

Morrison led me to his office and closed the door. “Please, have a seat, Cassidy.” He gestured to the two plush chairs facing his desk, and he took the seat behind it. “I’m afraid we’ve had a bit of a misunderstanding where you’re concerned,” he said apologetically. “Our managing director opened this job requisition without fully consulting me, and we simply don’t have a position available.” Morrison immediately stood in front of his chair and offered a regretful frown, unwittingly winning some sort of Guinness Book record for the fastest job interview never to take place. “I’m sorry to have wasted your time.”

I was stunned. This kind of thing didn’t happen. The managing director or board member or whoever had contacted Commander Ashby would never have taken things this far and then simply changed his or her mind. Our investigators got in the door because someone of authority concluded that an institution they cared about was being so criminally compromised that inaction was no longer viable. People don’t like to be duped.

I tried to sound even-keeled but felt a rising panic. “There must be some mistake.” I gave him a halfhearted smile.

Morrison nodded. “Indeed, the mistake is ours—we should have been proactive enough to call and cancel. Things were a bit hectic around here last week, and unfortunately it fell through the cracks, I’m afraid. I hope you can accept my apology.”

I was so astonished by the sudden turn of events it took me a moment to process that I was coming out 0-for-2: no accounting job and no way to save face with Commander Ashby. I hadn’t been informed who Ashby’s friend was, so I didn’t even have a way to name-drop in an effort to delay or ideally avoid my imminent departure. As I stood, trying to come up with some sort of rebuttal, a knock on Morrison’s door prompted him to call out.

“Come in!”

I turned my head toward the door and heard the click of the handle. The door opened. It took me a millisecond to recognize the striking woman who walked into Morrison’s office: Sarah Perkins.

Holy Christ.

Sarah. My Sarah.

She entered with the fluidity and grace of a gazelle, her self-assured gait instantly recognizable. She’d lost the slight roundness of face she’d had as a teenager—which, as a teen myself, surrounded by other teens, I hadn’t noticed at the time—and, as impossible as it seemed, was even more beautiful now. Her auburn hair maintained that slight wave that gave it body, and, a little shorter now, it still fell loose past her shoulders. She was wearing a black, single-button, boot-cut pantsuit, black heels, and a traditional blue button-down long-sleeve blouse that accentuated the light blue of her eyes. She looked sharp and svelte, poised and together.
Tremendous.

With sickening clarity, I suddenly realized exactly who the other man in the lobby photograph was: Luke Perkins, Sarah’s father. I wondered if Luke was Ashby’s “personal friend.”

I fought to maintain my quickly unraveling composure. It was difficult to breathe normally. I couldn’t believe any of the things I was confronting at that moment: losing out on a job that was essentially a sure thing, facing the disappointment of Commander Ashby—who could decide to use this as a sort of demerit against me when it came time to evaluate my performance for the directorship promotion—and realizing I’d failed to perform a simple step that would have better prepared me for this morning. In an unforgivably amateur move, I hadn’t taken the time to check online to ascertain the name of the Foundation that would match the address Ashby had given me. I’d have discovered its managing director and placed him and this organization immediately.

But most of all I couldn’t fathom running into the one person who had once meant more to me than sunlight. The one person to whom I had never said,
couldn’t
ever say, good-bye. Not with my heart.

Sarah stared at me for several moments. She narrowed her eyes for an instant before tilting her head as if trying to assess what manner of life form I was. She turned to Morrison, who beat her to the punch.

“Sarah, what are you doing here? I didn’t expect you in the office so soon after…I mean, I thought you planned to take as much time as you needed.”

“I did. I was off last week and now I’m back.”

“Sarah—”

“Carol mentioned you had a guest. I was hoping to be next in line to meet our newcomer.” Her eyes stayed on Morrison.

“No need. I was just apologizing to our interviewee that we’ve had a bit of a miscommunication relating to the position she’s here for. She was just leaving.” Morrison stepped around his desk and motioned that I was to depart. “Again, I’m so sorry for this,” he said as he reached me.

“Greg. Wait a sec. What miscommunication?” Sarah asked.

Morrison stopped and regarded her. “Sarah, please. I’ll only be a moment and we can discuss it.” He indicated to me to once again move toward the door. I was a human yo-yo.

“Assuming her references check out, we do, in fact, have a position for her. Daddy was clear on that.”

Morrison stopped once more. “Sarah.” He said her name in a tone that implied she was a simple creature who had trouble understanding basic concepts.

“Greg.” Her voice was low, defiant, challenging. They assessed each other for an uncomfortable amount of time before he finally smiled and turned to me.

“Come, Miss Warner, please.” Morrison took my elbow and steered me back toward the guest chair I’d vacated moments earlier.

Sarah’s voice stopped me a few feet later. “I apologize for the strange welcome you’ve received.” I turned around. “Hi. Sarah Perkins.”
Maiden name?
She stepped toward me and stuck out her hand to greet me.

“Cassidy Warner,” I said, taking her offered hand. It was as strong and warm and soft as I remembered. Unsure as to whether we were going to acknowledge having once known each other, and frankly unsure whether she had any recollection of me whatsoever, I decided to follow her lead. I didn’t want to say “nice to meet you,” because it felt like a lie, and noticed she hadn’t said it.

“You have a résumé and references?” she asked, releasing my hand.

Morrison spoke up. “I have them here.”

Sarah walked over to his desk and took the proffered papers. She scanned the résumé and separate reference list. “You don’t mind if I follow up on these, do you, Greg?”

“Be my guest.”

“Great. I’ll leave you to your orientation. Unless you hear otherwise, assume these will pass muster.” She departed without a glance in my direction. Her casual yet authoritative use of “orientation” instead of “interview” wasn’t lost on Morrison.

After the awkwardness of his initial greeting faded, Morrison was accommodating and kind. He gave me an overview of the organization, showed me where the accounting records were kept, assigned me log-in credentials for the accounting and donor-tracking software programs, provided me with read-only access to the foundation’s bank accounts, and gave me some basic tasks to occupy my first day. I was happy for the work, happy for any distraction that would help keep my mind off the fact that Sarah—
my
Sarah—was quite possibly mere yards down the hall from me, though I hadn’t seen her since our brief introduction.

At six o’clock, Morrison knocked on the doorframe. “Time to pack up, Cassidy. We don’t want to overwork you on your first day.” He smiled, took a couple steps forward, and waited for me as I shut down my computer and grabbed my belongings. “I trust you’ve found everything in order?”

“Very much so.”

At that moment, Sarah stopped in front of my office door, her attention on me. “Sorry I wasn’t able to join you for lunch.” She shifted her eyes to Morrison. “Where did you and the team end up taking Cassidy today?”

Morrison’s eyes grew wide as he realized his oversight. “Oh, isn’t that embarrassing? I completely forgot to take you out for a welcome lunch, Cassidy! We’ll make up for it tomorrow, I promise. Please forgive my horrid manners.” He smiled apologetically.

“What about drinks?” Sarah asked from the doorway.

Morrison shook his head. “Can’t tonight. Honestly, we’ll make good tomorrow.”

Sarah gave me a curious smile. “Cassidy? Any interest in an adult beverage to commemorate your first day? My treat.”