Any Minute (7 page)

“You’re not going to come home again tonight? Even after this discussion?”

“This hasn’t been a discussion,” she said. “It’s been you flinging accusations.”

He stood there helpless and staring while Kate stuck out her tongue and blew, making noise and spit bubbles, daring either one of them to ignore her presence. The baby pitched forward and sinuously launched herself into her father’s arms. He balanced her inside the crook of one elbow and straightened her tiny pink playsuit.

“We have to do this,” Sarah said. “We have to work together and get through this. I promise things will change soon.” She read it in his eyes.
That’s what you said last time, Sarah.

Why can’t you ever stop taking on new things and just for once put your family first?

“You can’t back out on me now.”

The baby nestled against her father’s chest, her little blue eyes troubled, as if even a child this young could sense the stress between them.

“I’ve got meetings with my new clients tonight,” Sarah said, her voice flat. “I don’t have any idea when they’ll let me come home.”

Chapter Five

T
om Roscoe stepped from the downtown health-club shower and reached for the pristine towel hanging beside him. He dried his face with one swipe of his big hand and shook the loose water from his hair with a vigorous, satisfying shake. Droplets splattered on the mirror.

“Ah.” Tom’s exclamation of pleasure came from way down in his gut. Nothing like a strenuous lunchtime workout to clear the head for the rigors of the afternoon.

The dull thud of music sounded through the wall, the repetitive chorus that the trainer kept playing to motivate his clients to keep their pulses pounding and their feet moving. The beat of the music hammered the walls as Tom yanked up his trousers, unzipped his athletic bag, and rummaged through his shaving kit for his razor. He angled his chin toward the mirror and surveyed it on both the port and starboard sides, searching for renegade whiskers. Even though he didn’t find any haphazard hairs, he pumped a giant dollop of lather into his palm, gave his jaw a bracing slap, and shaved anyway.

Tom, now smooth-skinned and smelling of Kiehl’s Ultimate Man scrub bar, pictured his sweaty colleagues still laboring over barbells and bench presses on the other side of the wall. This gave him much pleasure as he fastened cuff links at his wrists and wrestled his feet into his loafers. He liked the feeling of everyone else running behind him. Never mind how disappointed he’d been when he’d found out his son Jonas wasn’t interested in the internship he kept offering and that his other son had just dropped out of college for the third time.

He flung his suit coat over one elbow and hit the door, already late for his one o’clock. The street overflowed with people wearing computer backpacks or carrying briefcases, everyone scrambling back to their desks or frantically running errands or inhaling street-vendor pizza before they returned to the pits. Tom narrowly dodged a lady with a Nathan’s hot dog that, should he have sidestepped two seconds later, would have ended up as ketchup, pickle relish, and onions plastered against his lapel.

Far ahead up the street he glimpsed a flash of red in the crowd. He thought he recognized the clothing. Tom hesitated for a moment, wanting to make sure. In only seconds, he was rewarded. She stepped off the curb to get around someone, and he caught the full view.

He could pick Sarah out anywhere.

Tom shouldered his way past a woman who’d stepped from her shop with a bucketful of bundled chrysanthemums. He shoved past a man who’d halted midstream to sort through his change and buy a
Tribune
. He wove his way between two cops arguing about the time left on a parking meter.

“Hey!” he shouted. “Sarah.” And suddenly Tom wasn’t quite sure what he’d say when he caught up with his employee. It was just that the past two nights had been extraordinary, both dinner at the Everest Room with their new clients and the strategy meeting at The Drake. In these days of financial insecurity, his firm had just roped in a large account. A moment of subtle appreciation surged through him. He couldn’t have done it without Sarah Harper.

His one o’clock would have to wait.

Adrenaline surged through his veins; Tom still hadn’t come down from his exercise high. He could see Sarah up ahead, the rear of her red jacket slightly rumpled, her skirt seams swaying to her steps. He quickened his pace to catch up with her, surprised to see her off the trading floor so early.

The sun glinted off Sarah’s hair in squiggles of light. He’d long been thinking he’d like to get her alone and let her know how much he appreciated all she’d been doing for him. Tom didn’t stop to consider, as he chased his associate along the street, that this pursuit might be of some concern to his wife. He and Maribeth had been far too busy lately, he with the pursuit of new clients and she with all her volunteer fund-raising at the club. Tom liked spending time with the people who shared his victories, and Maribeth hadn’t been doing much of that.

He rehearsed the conversation in his mind as he followed her.
Tell me the truth. Have you ever had a meal like the other night? Quite the strategy Nathan Cornish was presenting last night at The Drake. What do you think, Sarah? Do you agree with his stance on metal futures?

Just as he was about to call out to her again, she winced, grabbed onto a light post, lifted her foot, and ran her finger along the inside of her left heel. She never should have walked this far in those shoes. Why did women insist on wearing such ineffectual footwear? She could blame herself for getting a blister.

He saw her glance toward the shop window. Just as he expected her to start walking again, just as he was about to catch up with her and engage her in a conversation that would both exalt his company and remind her how much she owed him, he saw her lean from the waist and whisper something to a child. A boy. One with a shock of straw-colored hair.

From this distance, the kid could have been Jonas.

She spoke with a slight grin, her eyes probing the kid’s face, the boy nodding and gesturing toward the sky. Tom realized then. For the entire length of the city block, the boy had been trotting at her side.

Tom stopped so fast that someone bumped him from behind. The lady apologized, and he answered without looking, “Oh yeah. Right. How about watching where you’re going?”

Tom shouldered his athletic bag as people darted around and jostled to fill the empty space on the sidewalk. One man struck him with a computer case. Still, Tom didn’t move. His feet might as well have been embedded in the concrete.

Seeing these two together left him feeling deeply angered and betrayed. What was Sarah doing with Mitchell in the middle of a workday? Didn’t she know this was no time to be distracted from her work? The kid galloped ahead, with Sarah smiling after him as if she’d never before noticed a kid’s legs pumping as he ran or a boy’s way of hitching up the seat of his pants. He didn’t want his employee thinking about her family during these dire times; he wanted her thinking about what she could do for his company. And Tom wasn’t watching Sarah anymore; he was watching himself with his own two sons, Jonas first and then Richard, seeing the days he’d missed bringing them along to show them the city or the days he’d missed their baseball games or missed watching them leaping along the lakeshore ahead of him, back when they’d been delighted to be in his presence, back when they’d both wanted something to do with him.

In Tom’s experience, boys never did anything except turn against you when it mattered.

“Why should you care what happens to me?” Jonas had snarled when Tom reminded him for the hundredth time how much he stood to gain by working for Tom’s company. “You never want me around any other time, so why now?”

And Richard, listless and without direction, whose hangdog expression seemed to imply,
Yeah, you’re right. I’m good for nothing.
Richard, with his head buried so deep in video games that he’d forgotten how to formulate a sentence. Richard, who had gotten picked up twice for shoplifting cigarettes and Pepsi. The shoplifting made no sense at all to Tom because he gave Richard money anytime he wanted it. Tom didn’t realize that Richard’s stealing was a rebellious act, a desperate attempt to get some kind of genuine attention from him.

Tom saw Sarah glance behind her as if she sensed she was being followed. He didn’t want to talk to her anymore. Tom stared at a black spot of discarded chewing gum imbedded in the sidewalk. He held his breath, as if that would make him invisible to her.

She must not have noticed him. Otherwise, why had she kept going without even speaking to him?

What did Sarah Harper think this was? Take-Your-Kid-to-Work Day or something?

He detoured at the next corner, cut through an alley with its stench of garbage, and beat her to the office while his agitation gnawed on him like a dog gnaws on a particularly knotty bone.

Tom always got unreasonably upset when he didn’t get exactly what he wanted. He had imagined an afternoon stroll with Sarah telling him how grateful she was for all he had done for her. Instead, she was so busy entertaining her son that she could not even find the time to speak to him!

She would have to answer to him for this, Tom decided. He wasn’t paying her to bond with her kid on company time.

The line began beside the brilliantly lit case of croissants and cupcakes, stretched the length of the counter, and jutted past the shelves of mugs and CDs and fancy coffeemakers. Behind the counter, the girl released bursts of steam from spouts in a rhythm that, to Mitchell’s ears, sounded like something in a hip-hop song. Mitchell pressed his nose to the glass and surveyed the many rows of baked goods, the lemon-knot cookies, the chocolate-covered granola bars, the pumpkin muffins made in the shape of tiny Bundt cakes.

“We don’t have all day, Mitchell,” said his mother. “I’ve got to get to the office. People behind us are waiting their turn.”

The clerk stood with her finger over the cash register button, waiting for him to make a selection. Wouldn’t you know? There wasn’t anything with sprinkles and icing here. He glanced up at his mom and pointed toward the first thing on the tray. “I’ll have that one.”

“Macadamia nut, cranberry, or white chocolate?” the clerk asked.

He nodded without really caring. He’d had his heart set on Dunkin’ Donuts instead, and then they’d gotten here and there hadn’t been much to choose from. Add to that, his mom never gave him enough time to think. She was always in a hurry no matter what she was doing.

Beside him, she dug into her purse, paid the bill, and loaded their to-go cups in the cardboard carrier. She was already headed for the door when the lady at the counter reminded her she hadn’t taken her bag.