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“And what place is that?”
“For now, your place. Then eventually, our place. I hope.”
CHAPTER20
Catherine
One year later
“Happy anniversary.” Eric hands me my special egg, as he has each month on the anniversary of our walk through the Twenty-one Paths Reboot.
He’s promised me a lifetime of special notes, if that’s what I want. And so far, I can’t imagine starting my day without a simple, randomly chosen phrase from the man I love to guide my creative spirit.
I place the egg on the bed between us and open it. The papers are many shades of blue. “So pretty. Pick one with me today?”
He answers by pressing his left palm against my right, so together we’ve made prayer hands.
“Have a question?” he asks.
“I do. You?”
Eric nods and kisses me.
We both close our eyes, reach our joined hands toward the egg, and drop them inside. Keeping our hands connected, the trick is to pick up just one message. It requires being fully present and working together.
I like to try to touch as many papers as possible before choosing one. Eric knows this and lets me guide the exploration. When I stop the wavelike motion, Eric moves his index finger away from mine, keeping the rest of our hands fully touching.
“Ready?”
I wiggle our hands to the left and press my index finger against his. If all goes well, we’ll have one message in our grip.
We open our eyes and pull our hands out of the egg.
“Success!” I say.
Eric lets me open the message. I read aloud, “Sometimes the naked truth stings. And sometimes it feeds the soul. Fantastic,” I whisper.
“Resonate?”
“You tell me. The only question I could think of this morning was, Should I make an omelet for breakfast or should we have sex and pick up muffins on the way to our meeting?”
Eric laughs. “My soul is starving for your naked truth, woman.”
* * *
Two hours later, I’m sitting at the end of the polished maple, boardroom table, in the same seat I sat in when I made my Nestrogen pitch to the directors of Will Power & Bros, now called Power Family Industries, a strategic nod to making the company more female-friendly.
A smaller group is meeting today—just the family, Eric, and myself. Eric sits at my side. His hand rests on my thigh and my hand sits atop his. Will, Colt, Brian, and Aiden have either forgotten we’re here or feel comfortable enough to share their concerns about their mother’s state of mind while we wait for her to arrive.
“She’s liquidated another one of her personal investments and is being close-lipped about why. I worry she may have fallen prey to an Arabian Sheik email scam,” says Aiden.
“I think it’s worse than that,” Brian says. “Her checkbook was open this morning, and I took a peek inside. Seems she’s just given half-a-million dollars to some outfit called The Catheric Partnership.”
My breath catches and Eric squeezes my leg. He and I had pitched Maureen an idea to build a small retreat center in Lily Valley. She left us in an ‘I’ll think about it’ limbo for so long we’d given up thinking about it.
I guess she made a decision.
It’s not how I expected to find out, and I’m suddenly anxious about how the brothers will react to what they probably will see as yet another transfer of their inheritance to a virtual unknown. “Stranger danger” is real and I’m certain I will always fall into that bucket with these men. Eric, thankfully, is known and trusted.
