Dead Certain

Denise picked up on the first ring. From the noises in the background it sounded like she was at a restaurant. It must have been one nearby, because we agreed to meet at her office in ten minutes.
    I punched the END button and wondered what my mother had been thinking when she decided to go ahead and ruin my life. No doubt she’d claim that her only thought had been to do the right thing, but that was like saying that you’d invited the Ringling Bros, and Barnum & Bailey circus to your cocktail party because you knew they’d be entertaining. It was going to end up being a bigger circus than she could have possibly imagined.
    Elliott dropped me in front of Denise’s building, a glass-and-steel skyscraper nestled in the crook of the Chicago River, and gave me a decidedly unchaste kiss good night.
    “I’ll call you tomorrow from Springfield,” he said.
    I stood on the deserted sidewalk, the thin fabric of my wrap useless in the chill, and found myself blinking back tears of disappointment.
    “Get a grip on yourself, Millholland,” I told myself out loud and grimly made my way inside.
    Mother’s announcement led the eleven o’clock news on all three networks. We watched them simultaneously on the bank of television sets mounted on the wall of the conference room where Denise and I had set up our command center. With videotape unavailable, the networks settled for photos of my parents taken earlier that evening as they’d greeted arriving guests.
    However, there was live footage of Kyle Massius. The president of Prescott Memorial Hospital had apparently decided to give an impromptu press conference in front of the Palm Court fountain. Sweating under the klieg lights, he’d read a hastily prepared and overly shrill press release. In it he’d declared that Astrid Millholland had no authority to refund any of the money that had already been donated to the hospital. The fact that there was live footage of Kyle Massius versus the grainy still of my parents seemed to lend credence to his point of view.
    Mother’s initial reaction to all of this was a tirade of indignation delivered through the squawk box of Denise’s speakerphone. She honestly couldn’t believe why she was being blamed for all of the fuss. After all, it was HCC who was clearly at fault. Denise did her best to talk her around to a more realistic point of view, eventually getting her to commit to our battle plan. By then Elliott’s people had arrived at my parents’ house and, having chased a reporter from Channel Eight out of the garbage, had secured the property.
    I crossed the bridge of midnight not wrapped in Elliott’s passionate embrace, but at the office of the public relations firm. I didn’t know if Elliott had joined his security chief at my parents’ house, but wherever he was, I hoped he was thinking longingly of me. As the clock struck twelve it occurred to me that all my Cinderella premonitions had come true. The only difference was that instead of my coach turning back into a pumpkin and my dress reverting to rags, I was the one who underwent the transformation—changing from an aspiring princess yearning for romance back into a stressed-out corporate attorney fielding calls from reporters on a headset phone as I paced back and forth along the floor of the conference room, barefoot and in my evening gown.
     

CHAPTER 12
     
    I woke up to a quiet apartment with no sign that Claudia had come home during the night. A check of the answering machine yielded seventeen calls: three from reporters, thirteen hang-ups, and one message from Elliott. While the message from Elliott was worth listening to twice just to savor the longing in his voice, it was the hang-up calls that captured my attention. Not only were there more of them than we’d ever gotten before, but for the first time they’d come while Claudia was at the hospital. It made me wonder whether yesterday had been on her regular call schedule or if she’d agreed to cover for somebody at the last minute.
    In honor of it being Sunday I decided to dress casually— at least for me—blue jeans worn soft as a second skin, an old Ralph Lauren blazer bought back in the days when he still just designed clothes, and a plain white cotton shirt. I had a long day of work ahead of me, and I wanted to at least be comfortable. Besides, I’d already used up too much energy on my hair. After all of Christopher’s teasing and spraying I’d crawled from my bed looking like