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“I’d better get to work,” Rosa said.
“Okay. Nice catching up with you,” Abby said. She unpaused the television, right in time to catch a handbag sale kicking off on the shopping channel.
Rosa nodded. “You too, Miss Abby,” she said, before heading off to clean the bathrooms.
Chapter 14
The following Tuesday when Danielle went to lunch and Abby settled into her chair, she discovered a cardboard box beneath Danielle’s desk filled with rubber bands. At first she was thrilled over the prospect of all the work ahead of her. She went searching for the ball, but she couldn’t find it. It was not until she noticed an unusual but familiar orange rubber band in the box that it occurred to her that she was actually looking at the ball, in its dissected form.
Abby set the box in a prominent location on Danielle’s desk and put a Post-it note reading Did you do this to be mean to me? on the top of the pile of rubber bands. She decided that she was going to talk to Randall again about quitting. She couldn’t do this any longer.
The front door swung open.
“Abby! Nice to see you up here today,” said Charlie.
“You’re back from your hunting trip,” she said, casually crumpling up her message to Danielle and tossing it in the trashcan.
“Have you been checking up on me?” he teased. He looked pleased that she had been keeping tabs on him.
“The other mailman mentioned it,” she said. Just then Clark Lorbmeer walked through the front door. “Hello,” she said to him.
“Abby! How are you liking it here? Settling in?” asked Clark. He was in the office so little that he didn’t seem to realize she’d been working at his firm for over two months.
“Great,” she said.
“Getting the hang of things around here?”
“I sure am!”
“I see you’re giving Danielle a chance to go out and get some lunch now and then. That’s good of you.”
“It’s no trouble. I don’t mind it.”
Charlie pretended to be enthralled by a picture on the wall.
“Well,” said Clark, “glad you’re fitting in. If you have any questions or you need anything, you come see me. Got that?”
“Sure, Clark. Thank you.”
“And tell Randall I’m going to redeem myself Sunday morning. The last time we were on the course together he got the better of me.”
Abby tried not to cringe. She felt like saying, Who’s this Randall you speak of? But she smiled and nodded. Clark winked and closed himself in his office.
“Sorry. I know you have a schedule to keep,” she told Charlie. She pretended to be looking for some outgoing mail, when in fact there was none. She lifted up a stack of file folders, some empty manila envelopes, the Victoria’s Secret catalogs and Cosmopolitan magazines Danielle had been looking at.
“I’m not in a hurry,” said Charlie.
“I don’t know where she put the stuff that has to get mailed. I guess it’ll have to go out tomorrow.” Abby looked up at him and he smirked a little. She blushed.
“So…” he said. He looked back at Clark’s closed door and then continued, his voice very low, “I guess you’re involved with someone already?”
“Yeah.”
“Married?”
She nodded.
“Too bad for me. Lucky for someone else.”
