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I pulled out my mantra. Control what I can. Control what I can.
And no way could I control that he was married.
I had no idea what my face looked like, but Amy had been with me from the beginning and I caught her staring at me more than once, starting a couple of days after what I came to call “The Sighting”.
It was over a week before she finally said something to me.
“Samantha, something is wrong. What's wrong? Are we having trouble in the bakery? What's going on?”
I can't believe it, but I got a little tear in my eye.
Amy came in to hug me. She patted me on the back.
“Just a passing thing,” I lied.
She looked me in the eye and said, “You are a wonderful woman. Whatever’s going on has a solution. You’ll see. Hang in there.”
Oh, sure. Right. I'm a wonderful woman all right.
I wasn't feeling wonderful at all. Paint me desperate.
Leighton
Well, maybe Dad and I were just engineering nerds. Give us a physical machine and we’d improve it to the max.
But this? This was something else. My chest ached. I couldn’t focus on anything. I had so little energy that I slept more than I ever did. But not well. I tossed and turned.
My projects collected dust. It’d been over a week when McManus—my smart, loyal, assistant technical engineer—finally said something.
“Boss? You feeling okay? Need a doctor or somethin’?”
I waved a hand.
“Leighton, really. If you need a doc …”
I mumbled.
“Boss, is something wrong with one of our projects?”
Sort of registering that McManus was talking to me, I gazed over at him.
Shaking myself, I made excuses, “Just resting the left-brain-right-brain machine, McManus. No worries. Rest for the weary is a good thing every once in a while.”
When did I get so philosophical?
Since my heart started aching, that’s when.
Samantha
Several days after Amy’s valiant attempts to cheer me up, I arrived at work as usual at 3:00 a.m. on the back of Davie’s scooter.
Also, as usual, we came up to the front shop door since that's where Davie always dropped me off.
Before he left me, however, we both saw the same thing.
“Oh no! Davie! Look!”
As we pulled up on his scooter, we both saw the glass entry door drenched in red … oh, my God, let it be paint … but on closer look, the showcase window was also covered. This, though, looked like dark blue or dark purple paint.
