Woodlands (12 page)

“Is he okay?”

“He seems okay to me. He said he wanted to talk with you about something that couldn’t wait until May Day when you came by with your annual bouquet.”

“Did he say what it was about?”

“No. I didn’t ask.”

“Thanks for relaying the message,” Leah said. “I’ll check in on him this week.” She went back to inventorying the candy bars, which is what she had been doing when Seth walked up.

“I guess you’re not going to need help with the crowd after the game this week.”

“No. Thanks anyway.” Leah knew she sounded curt. Mild indifference was the only safe route for her. She refused to let her feelings rise to the surface.

“I guess I’ll be on my way,” Seth said. “I’ll see you around.”

“See you around.”

As soon as Seth was gone, she felt depressed.

What did you think he was going to do? Ask you out to dinner? Invite you to sail off into the sunset on his private yacht? See what happens when you let your emotions get all gushy, and you start wishing on planets and opening yourself up? You set yourself up for failure, Leah. You set your course on a road that eventually will become a dead end. Why do that to yourself?

Leah suddenly realized the words playing in her head weren’t her words. The phrases about setting herself up for failure and setting a course on a dead-end road were her father’s words. He had used them in a lecture to her years ago when she first announced she wanted to go to college.

But look
, Leah prompted herself,
I did go to college. And I finished! It wasn’t a dead-end road for me. I didn’t set myself up for failure
.

If she had a place to sit in the tiny Snack Shack, Leah would have let herself down with a thud. This was earth-shaking news. Not all of her father’s predictions about her life were necessarily true. Perhaps the predictions her sister had made of her weren’t true either. Could it be she wasn’t destined to fulfill everyone else’s expectations of her?

Leah stood still and whispered, “Could that be true?” Her question was directed at God, the heavenly Father with whom she had maintained a cordial distance.

L
eah didn’t receive any thundering answers from the heavens about whether her family’s prophecies regarding her destiny were all true. She didn’t expect any thunder. But Glenbrooke did receive a sudden downpour of rain that caused the game to be called. She closed up the Snack Shack and ran to her car.

The rain continued through the night and was still coming down when she left for work the next morning. She didn’t know if it was the darkness of the skies or the overpowering revelation she had discovered last night, but she felt sapped of energy. The week had been emotionally draining.

Leah sat at the front admissions desk, forcing herself to catch up on phone calls to fill out insurance forms. She dialed the number listed for a patient and was checking her notes on what missing information she needed, when a robust male voice on the other end of the line said, “WPZQ, where the hits just keep on coming. And your name?”

“Ah, this is Leah Hudson from Glenbrooke General Hos—”

Before she could explain for whom she was calling, the booming voice said, “Well, congratulations, Leah Hudson! You are caller number nine, and you have just won the WPZQ bonus jackpot!”

A chorus of chipmunk voices sang into her ear, “You won! You won! You really, really won!”

“That’s right!” The enthusiastic radio announcer said. “Leah Hudson, you have just won an exciting cruise for yourself and a friend to—are you ready for this?—Alaska!”

The chipmunk voices sang out again. “You won! You won! You really, really won!”

“What do you have to say, Leah Hudson?”

Leah was speechless.

The announcer jumped in. “You’re on the air, so go ahead and tell all the listeners what you think of the hottest station in the nation playing all the hits all the time.”

“Um, I, ah, the number I dialed … it’s …”

The announcer broke in with deep laughter. “I think our winner is in shock, folks. Winning the WPZQ jackpot can have that effect on a person. Nevertheless …”

The chorus chirped in with, “You won! You won! You really, really won!”

“But, you see—” Leah tried to explain.

“Now you just stay on the line,” the announcer said, “and Tina will tell you all about the fabulous cruise you’ve won.”

After two clicks, a female voice said, “May I have your name and phone number, please?”

“Actually … Tina, is it?”

“Yes.”

“Tina, I was trying to call a patient from our hospital who left this as his phone number. But I think I misdialed the number.”

After a pause Tina said, “What number did you think you dialed?”

Leah repeated the number she was trying to reach, and Tina verified that was the number for the radio station.

“What area code did you dial?” Tina asked. “This is 203.”

Leah began to laugh. “Well, that explains it. I meant to dial 503 for Portland, Oregon. Sorry to have troubled you.”

“No, wait!” Tina said. “Don’t hang up. You won the cruise.”

“But how could I? I don’t even live … where is your station located, anyhow?”

“New Haven.”

“New Haven what?” Leah asked.

“Connecticut,” Tina said.

Mary, who had just returned from lunch, slid her purse in the bottom drawer of the desk, giving Leah a curious look as Leah echoed, “Connecticut?”

“Look, you won the cruise,” Tina said. “We just announced you live on the air. We can’t go back and say the last winner was a hoax. Nothing in our rules says you have to know you’re entering the contest to win. Or that you have to be in Connecticut when you call. You were caller number nine. You won the cruise, whether you want it or not.”

“I can’t believe this,” Leah said.

“Would you be so kind as to give me your name, phone number, and a fax number for your travel agent? We deal directly with travel agents for all our arrangements.”

Leah figured she might as well give Tina the information. Reaching for the telephone book, Leah looked up the number for A Wing and a Prayer, the only travel agency in Glenbrooke.

Mary stepped closer to Leah’s desk and mouthed the word “What?”

“Thank you,” Tina said. Then sounding as if she was reading
from a card, Tina continued, “Congratulations, Leah Hudson, on winning the WPZQ jackpot. All prizes are for promotional consideration only and cannot be exchanged for cash value. We hope you will keep on listening to the hottest station in the nation, playing all the hits all the time. Enjoy your cruise.”

Leah hung up the phone and turned to Mary, who asked, “What was all that?”

“I just won a cruise to Alaska. Via Connecticut.”

Word of Leah’s trip spread quickly at work, and everyone agreed Leah “deserved” the cruise. She didn’t know how she “deserved” anything. She had dialed a wrong number. It was all pretty crazy in her opinion.

One of the ER nurses had been to Alaska, and she was eager to tell Leah all about it. The woman even went home on her lunch break and brought back four travel books on Alaska, a large photo album, and two home videos of her trip, which she told Leah to watch that night at home.

Leah left work at 4:30, as usual, and drove directly to the travel agency for her 4:45 appointment.

Alissa, the owner and only travel agent at A Wing and a Prayer, was on the phone when Leah entered. In Leah’s opinion, Alissa was beautiful enough to be a model. She carried herself with a bit of a swish when she walked and always looked fresh, as if she had been born with naturally gorgeous hair, skin, and nails. Alissa and Brad had moved up from Southern California, and whenever the weather warmed, Alissa wore the classiest outfits in town. Today, however, Alissa was wearing gray, just like the sky.

Taking a seat on the couch by the window, Leah flipped through a travel magazine and gazed at pictures of the Bahamas.

Is it wrong for me to wish I’d won a cruise to the Bahamas instead of Alaska? I mean, I should be happy to go anywhere. But
after seeing all those pictures of that frozen land, this picture of warm blue water sure looks appealing
.

Alissa hung up the phone and turned to greet Leah. “Sorry to keep you waiting. I received the fax from the radio station this afternoon. This is pretty exciting, Leah!”

Leah rose and went to one of the chairs in front of Alissa’s desk. “I have a question. Do you know if this cruise is transferable?”

Alissa looked down, carefully reading the fax paper in her hand. “The only conditions they list are that you can’t work for the radio station or be related to anyone who does.”

“No problem there. I don’t even know anyone in Connecticut!”

Alissa smiled. “And you’re limited on when you can go. It looks like you have to take the cruise offered from May 15 through 19.”

“This year?” Leah asked.

Alissa nodded. “These limited promotional packages often tie into the lowest priced season, which I’d guess is the case here. But, no, it doesn’t say anything about transferring to another person. I can call them to make sure. Did you want to try to sell the ticket?”

“No. No, I didn’t mean transferring it to another person. I meant transferring the destination.” She pointed to a poster behind Alissa of the Grand Canal in Venice. It showed a man and a woman lounging on a mound of pillows in a gondola. Behind them stood a dashing gondolier, who was doing all the work while they cuddled. “Now that’s my idea of a real vacation. If I had my choice, I’d like to go someplace warm.”

Alissa shook her head. “No, sorry. It’s valid only for the Alaskan cruise.”

Leah kept staring at the poster. The way the gondolier was positioned, he seemed to be singing. For some reason the
thought of being sung to made her feel like crying. She tried hard to hold back the tears, but they welled up in her eyes and tumbled down her cheeks before she could stop them.

“I’m sorry,” she said to Alissa, who was offering Leah a tissue and looking startled. “I’ve been like this a lot lately.” Leah continued to stare at the poster.

Alissa turned around to see what Leah was fixated on.

“Jessica says my emotions are being released after being pent up for too long, or something like that. I think I’m slowly going crazy.”

Alissa reached across her desk and gave Leah’s hand a squeeze. “Maybe this cruise is exactly what you need. You’ve had an intense year, Leah. I’ve heard Brad say that sometimes people don’t start to grieve until months or years after a shocking loss. It might do you a world of good to get away and completely relax.”

Leah nodded.

“And you do know, don’t you, that if you ever feel like talking to someone, my husband has a way of helping make sense of all the pieces. Brad would be happy to talk with you.”

“Thanks,” Leah said quietly. She took another tissue and wiped the last tear. “I appreciate it, but I’m okay. Really.”

Leah rose to leave when Alissa said, “By the way, do you know anyone who needs a couch? It’s in good shape. Brad had it in his duplex in Pasadena, and I’ve never liked it. We finally found a new one we could both agree on, but now I have to haul the old one to a donation center—unless you know someone who wants it.”

Leah immediately thought of Seth. “I know someone who just moved into the area, but I don’t know what his furniture situation is.”

“If you talk to him, could you tell him it’s available? And it’s free,” Alissa said.

“Thanks,” Leah said. “And thanks for the Kleenex.”

“Remember what I said about talking with Brad.”

Leah nodded. “I will. Thanks again.”

Leah left the travel agency and sat in her car a few minutes, trying to decide what to do. She was planning to visit Franklin next. She could ask him for Seth’s phone number, and then she could call Seth, the way she would call any one of her friends and tell him about the couch. It didn’t have to be awkward. Just because she had let her feelings get the better of her the first few days she was around him, that didn’t mean they couldn’t settle into a nice, everyday relationship like she had with so many other men in Glenbrooke.

Leah wondered what Brad, who had provided wise counsel for her in the past, would say about that. Was she repressing her true emotions? Maybe. But that had to be better than dreaming up some one-sided romance in which she was the only one doing the dreaming.

She closed her eyes, but all she could see was the poster of the gondola and the singing gondolier. She wished she was nestled in those cushions right now, floating down a canal instead of sitting in the middle of Main Street, hugging the steering wheel, alone in her car.

It’s just so hard to admit to anyone that I have a problem. How could I tell Brad I’m confused by my feelings for Seth? Or that I’ve realized for the first time that my father’s predictions of me weren’t true? Or that I’m wondering if maybe I do have the right frame and frame of mind to attract someone stable after all? Would Brad tell me to grow up and start to act my age?

Leah drew in a deep breath.

No, Brad wouldn’t do that. Brad would listen carefully, and he would have sound, caring advice. But then he would know the deep thoughts of my heart. I’d have to trust him to keep my thoughts and feelings private. It was hard enough opening my heart to Seth and
telling him my secrets without any guarantee that he was trustworthy
.