Passages is a collection of short stories loosely based on the theme: When one door closes, another opens. What door opens for which person makes all the difference.
I write the Mackenzie Wilder/Classic Boat mystery series. The protagonist is Dr. Mackenzie Wilder, a widowed small-town physician with a passion for old boats and a knack for fixing both boats and her patients.
The following story (presented in eight installments) is about Mackenzie’s cousin, Lara, who feels she has been unfairly compared to Mackenzie (Mackie) her whole life.
Installment 6
Love’s Door
Sri Lanka. Not hugely in love with the Internet, but there was almost nowhere on the planet that was entirely off the grid. At least, not in urban centers. And Rodger’s workplace would be in one of those. And they had a web presence, of course. She focused her eyes on the details of the site map. Aha! Back doors were so aptly named.
Fingers tapping lightly, then more and more rapidly. HR. Position. Location. Salary—Oh! Hmm. Responsibilities…. She clicked on it and scanned the list quickly. New accounts, recruitment, social gatherings. Bingo! Print-out, lines and circles of red ink and lime highlight. She put the sheaf of papers into a folder and switched to the search engines.
Camille was going to be more difficult to find. Retreats in Sri Lanka were far less likely to have much in the way of on-line access. After twenty minutes, she leaned back in her chair. All she could find was a static page in mustard gold and red and vibrant green and blue announcing the current retreat at Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte’s famous retreat center, the only retreat center in the entire southern region.. No address appeared on the page, just a notice admonishing all attendees to leave electronics at home.
Lara scribbled herself a note and added it to the folder with a sigh. I suppose I can’t have everything at once.
Why not?
Oh, shut up.
Hmph. The inner voice morphed into a slow burn in Lara’s belly.
I will get to Camille later. Right now it’s about Rodger. Now let me think.
The belly burn was assuaged, and a sweet, sweet smile crossed the imaginary lips and was matched by the one crossing Lara’s as she typed furiously, windows open to various social sites under multiple names; folders on her screen ready to upload pre-selected photos. She paused to figure out the time difference and the dates she wanted these to appear.
Next, she pulled up spreadsheets and database – what Rodger liked to call his ‘WIPE’ files, his Work-In-Progress Excel files: private worksheets he used for his actuarial calculations on his clients’ investments. All the information he needed to work on them was contained in the file folders, sensitive material such as encoded identification and passwords, exploratory plans color-coded as to which investment scenario might play out best – or worst.
Lara was no expert, but she was no slouch, either. She settled in with a tall glass of bourbon, fuzzy slippers and a prized, dragon-shaped pen sent to her by one of her blog-followers and started going over numbers.
Ninety minutes later she closed the folder and the program, and set her computer to sleep, numbers in red and black still sliding around in her head, some of the longer numbers wearing dollar signs. She poured herself a last drink of bourbon, whistling snippets of tunes between swallows of the smooth fiery liquid, tapping fingers occasionally on the arm of the chair. At last Lara slammed the empty glass down on the table before her and laid out a red-covered book, a blue file folder, and a green notebook.
“Eenie meenie miney moe,” she began, touching one colored rectangle after another. At the end of the rhyme her finger rested on the pocket-sized green notebook. She grinned. How fortuitous. Green for cash. Green for money. Green for go.
Lara slapped the table and pulled book, folder, and notebook together into a stack neatly centered on the table. Then she turned to unpacking and laundry and washing-up, culminating in a feet-up, glass-of-wine moment. She sniffed the wine and swirled the glass, taking a frisson of pleasure that the legs of the wine were so distinct as they descended the sides of the glass. There was such physical pleasure in rewarding oneself for a job well done. Phase one was over. Phase two was set. She sipped her glass, and smiled.
By the third glass—a large one admittedly—her eyes drooped with the day’s fatigue. With each softening of muscular tension, her mood drooped as well. Rodger was such a good kisser. Is a good kisser. I want him to kiss me again.
That philandering sop?
His kisses are not soppy—sloppy—whatever.
Lara poured another glass, her gaze fixed on a final globule of red dropping into the glass. She thumped down the empty bottle, and felt an echoing tear squeeze from her eyes. She laid her head down on the table, and slept, completely unaware of the tears that slid down her cheeks for the next quarter hour.
***
It was five in the morning when she awoke. Groggy, she pushed herself up from the table and stumbled to her desk.
Blechh. Mouth tastes like sawdust.
She leaned on the desk and reached across the keyboard for her water bottle. Her hand brushed the return key. The screen flared for a second as the computer started to wake…and then it blanked.
“What? Shit! No!” Lara ran her fingers through her hair and threw herself in the chair, fingers flying across the keys. To no avail. The screen remained dark. Desperate, she clicked the power button on and off.
“Damn. I know better than that.” She flicked it on once more and sat back, hands in her lap to keep herself from touching it again. She felt like a novice, sitting there, but it was the best control method she had.
All her work was on that computer! All her plans, plans she ought to be able to reproduce but didn’t have time. Not if she wanted to set them to work. She didn’t even know if the images had uploaded correctly.
“There isn’t time to do this over! Come on, come on!” There isn’t time!
Abruptly the start-up chime sounded, and the hard drive whispered as it spun, pulling up the system and lighting the desktop. Lara released her pent-up breath. And it died again.
“Nooooooo!”
Lara pounded her fists on the desk. “Damn it! Why now?” She turned off all the switches and flopped back in her chair.
“I wish I’d backed it up. I wish I’d backed it up. I wish I’d backed it up.” Unlike Dorothy wishing for home, saying it three times didn’t make it so. Lara shoved her head into her hands, pressing her eyes tight. How could she let this happen? Losing all the work she’d done to get her revenge.
Revenge.
She snorted.
Revenge.
The word tasted somehow orange metallic, a foreign taste against her tongue. For all her posturing and fantasizing, she hadn’t really put the word to it.
She’d been mad. She’d be mad at him forever. The idea was to make Rodger pay, but that would be the end of it. Eventually she’d be able to consign him to her past of disappointments and betrayals, move on to the next phase of her life. Maybe she’d even get over him. Somehow, this had become bigger than simple payback.
It had become something more than just Rodger. It became about everything, every little thing that had gone wrong in her life. Every disappointment, every tiny cut and betrayal she’d ever endured.
Rachel and Cheftain.
Her father. Even Leonard, with his silly, peculiar ways.
Lara had grown past all that, she’d thought. Put it down to the disillusioning fact that life was just not Father Knows Best or the Brady Bunch or even Full House.
Mackie and Bev. The two people who could have been, should have been the closest of all to her over the years, had instead been the source of the constant pain in her gut, the voice in her head, and the ache in her heart. Even when they were trying to be on her side, they just never seemed to be able to succeed at it.
Bev was always so sure Mackie was doing the right thing. By idealistic superpower standards, maybe she was. Taking the high road, thinking of others, acing exams. Mackie could do no wrong and she and Bev knew it. Problem was, Bev was always making sure Lara knew it too. And knew how poorly she measured up. Despite acknowledging that Bev didn’t realize what she was doing, her treatment of her daughter rankled, festered, and tore at the fabric of Lara’s heart.
Then Rodger had come along and stolen that heart. Taken it away from all the problems of the past and made it all better, promising to love and cherish and protect. Rodger was going to make all the pain go away.
Well, he failed.
She grimaced at the irony.
Rodger’s love and enthusiasm for their wedding had been like Mackie’s eagerness to form a singing duo with Lara when they were teens.
At the time they lived near each other in upstate New York, a mere fifteen minutes away from a local, music-oriented theme park. Mackie got a friend to write a special song chorded around the girls’ combined vocal ranges. She found clothes that were cute on both of them, showcasing Lara’s slim build and blond hair while playing up her own curls and curves. Bev loved them. For days the three chattered on and on about how much money they could earn and put towards their futures. Bev thrilled at becoming a stage mom and told her sister she’d do the job for both of them. She set up a special bank account for the money they’d make.
Mackie was all in on the project and Lara basked in the reflected glow of hearing her mother wax energetic about the future her daughter and niece would share. Their fervor grew as the girls made it past all the preliminary auditions to secure a place at the park for the summer. The next audition determined who would headline, and who would fill the second cast.
It was a big deal—the show’s producer was known to have Disney connections and made no bones about being happy to pass along talent she found once they they’d completed their obligations to her. Life suddenly looked possible, maybe even exciting.