Daughter of Light

  I turned to my small suitcase and unpacked my things. The very act of settling into another room in another house felt like another big step in my emancipation. I decided to take a shower and change into fresh clothes. While I was dressing, there was a knock on my door.

  “Yes?”

  “When you are ready to come down, let me know,” Mrs. Winston said through the closed door. “My nephew just called back. He would like to interview you this afternoon. He’ll send a car around for you.”

  “Really?” I opened the door, even though I was still in my bra and panties. I saw that wasn’t something Mrs. Winston easily accepted. Her eyes widened, and she looked away.

  “You have to be more discreet, dear. Anyone could have been in the hallway,” she said, still not looking directly at me.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I was just so excited with the news.” I grabbed a towel and wrapped it around myself quickly.

  “Yes, well, all young people today have trouble harnessing their horses,” she said.

  “It’s the first time I’ve been outside of my own home. It does take some getting used to, I imagine.”

  “Yes, it does,” she said, with a little more understanding and forgiveness in her tone. “Put on something nice but not something that’s . . . that’s . . . what’s the word they use today, obvious? I’m sure you know what I mean. Shall I call him and tell him you’ll be ready in ten minutes?”

  “Yes, thank you so much, Mrs. Winston.”

  “Amelia,” she said.

  “Amelia.” I smiled and closed the door.

  Could all of this happen for me so quickly? Was there some good angel looking out for me after all?

  I went into a small panic. This was no time to make any mistakes, but I had only two outfits from which to choose. One was a skirt and blouse, and the other was a pair of designer jeans and a blouse. Which was more conservative? The skirt’s hem was about two inches below my knees. Was that too “obvious”?

  I decided not to risk it and settled on the pants outfit. I pinned up my hair quickly. I rarely needed more makeup than a little brush of lipstick. Any more than that might ring some alarm bells. After one more look at myself, I hurried out and down the stairs, to where both Mrs. Winston and Mrs. McGruder waited to inspect me.

  “I don’t have very much with me,” I said, nearly moaning when I didn’t hear either offer some approval.

  “With her looks and figure, you can’t do much more to be subtle, anyway,” Mrs. McGruder said.

  Mrs. Winston nodded. “That’s fine. For now,” she added. “If you should get the job, you’ll need to buy some appropriate dresses, however. Ken has a number of young men working for him.” She made them sound like a disease.

  “Of course,” I said. “Thank you.”

  We heard a car horn. Actually, it was a pickup truck that had pulled into the driveway. Mrs. Winston opened the door so quickly and roughly I thought she might rip it off its hinges.

  “There’s no need to wake the dead!” she cried at the slightly balding man in a khaki shirt sitting behind the steering wheel.

  “Sorry, Mrs. Winston,” he called back.

  “That’s Michael Thomas. He’s been with Ken a long time,” Mrs. Winston said. “Married to a woman nearly fifteen years younger,” she added, with disapproval leaking out of the sides of her mouth. “They have four children now. She’s a practicing Catholic.”

  How small was this city? I wondered. How long would it be before they knew some of the real details of my life? I smiled at the women and headed for the truck.

  “Good luck,” Mrs. McGruder called after me.

  I turned, smiled, and waved.

  Before I got into the truck, I glanced down the street. Something had made me turn to look, even though it was very quiet and there was no other traffic.

  Maybe it was my imagination, but I thought I saw Thaddeus Bogosian, the elderly man on the plane, standing on the corner and looking my way.

  I blinked, and he was gone.

  But the image remained on my eyes like the blinding light of a flashbulb in the dark.

  4

  “Hello there,” Michael Thomas said when I got into the truck. “I’m Michael, Michael Thomas.”

  “Lorelei Patio,” I said.

  We didn’t shake hands as much as just graze palms. His were quite rough with calluses.

  He looked out at Mrs. Winston and Mrs. McGruder, who were still watching us with hawk eyes. “Those two can be real pissers,” he said, nodding at them before he began to back out of the driveway.

  They didn’t go back into the house until we pulled away. I glanced into the rearview mirror and saw that the street was still empty. My imagination was playing games with me, I guessed. Actually, I hoped.

  “How long have you been in Quincy?” Michael asked. He appeared to be well into his fifties, the hair along his temples more white than gray, but he also looked hard and muscular, like someone who had worked with his hands most of his life. His face was narrow, the skin on his cheeks as tight as the skin on a drum. I thought his best feature was his eyes, the color of rich, healthy grass.

  “Only a few hours,” I said.

  He nearly lost control of the truck. “A few hours?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you a friend of the family or something?”

  “No. I just met Mrs. Winston. I found her rooming house listed in a travel publication, called, and just settled in.”

  He shook his head. “And she recommended you to be her nephew’s private secretary? The quickest decision I understand that woman’s made was deciding to marry her husband after a five-year engagement. What’d ya do to win her over, recite the Articles of Confederation word for word?”

  I laughed. “I didn’t even know it was for the position of Mr. Dolan’s private secretary. Besides, I’m just going in for an interview,” I said.

  “Yeah, but you don’t know the influence that woman has with my boss. She had more to do with his bringing up than his own mother, her sister.”

  “Well, despite that, I’m sure he’ll decide for himself about something as serious as his private secretary. I think she was just being kind.”

  “Just being kind?” He laughed and looked at me. “What are you, all of eighteen?”

  “Every day of it and some more,” I said.

  He nodded and smiled. When he smiled, his tight face softened and brought out the bright green of his eyes even more. It helped him look younger. “Well, I’ll say this much. You hit town at the right time. Ken’s looking for a replacement for Michele. She’s like ten months pregnant. The joke is she’s in the right place to break her water, a plumbing supply company.”

  “What exactly is a plumbing supply company?” I asked.

  He laughed. “Sometimes I have to wonder myself. We sell mostly to builders and plumbers. There is a division for design, too, so we can contract to do the plumbing and plumbing fixtures in a newly built home, bathrooms, kitchens, and commercial buildings. Ordinary do-it-yourself guys come around for parts, tools, and supplies like filters. We’re the biggest plumbing supply outfit in Quincy, which brings in customers from Boston proper, too. It’s a multimillion-dollar enterprise with more than fifty employees.”

  “Sounds like Mr. Dolan’s secretary has a lot to do.”

  He nodded. “A lot, but there are five additional secretaries, bookkeepers, and receptionists. What’s your experience as a secretary? Not that someone as young as you would have much, I’m sure.”

  His question brought home how utterly ridiculous it would look to anyone else for me to be rushing to an interview for such an important position. And yet, although it would be impossible to explain to anyone outside of our special family, I wasn’t inordinately nervous, nor did I feel foolish.

  “I’ll save my answers for my actual interview,” I replied.

  Instead of being offended by the tone of my reply, Michael nodded, impressed. “Okay. Let me give you a little advice, though, if I might.??
?

  “That’s fine. Thank you.”

  “Ken Dolan’s picture is next to ‘workaholic’ in the dictionary. As Mrs. Winston might have told you, he suffers no fools. He can be abrupt and very impatient. He expects everyone who works for him to be fully prepared whenever he or she speaks to him. He built his father’s little business into what it is today. You’ll find him very competitive and”—he paused to lean toward me—“very anal about what he wants done. Michele Levy has been with him for nearly three years, which is a little more than two years longer than the last secretary he had. The one before that lasted a little less than two months.” He stared at me a moment to see the effect his description had on me.

  I shrugged. “If I don’t get this job, I’ll get another,” I said, so matter-of-factly that he dropped his jaw for a moment and then roared.

  “That’s just the sort of attitude Ken admires. Anyway, thar she blows,” he added, nodding at the very large fenced-in warehouse and office building just ahead of us. It had taken only a few minutes to get there. I realized it was walking distance from the Winston House.

  There were a half-dozen delivery trucks parked outside the warehouse, and on the opposite side was a parking lot for employees’ vehicles. Two spots had signs posted to reserve them, one for Ken Dolan and the other for Liam Dolan. That parking space was empty. Michael nodded at it when we parked.

  “Liam is Ken’s son. Ken would be the first to say in name only,” Michael said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Here’s a hint. The parking spot has been empty all day. He’s not exactly a chip off the old block. Ken gives him responsibilities, but more often than not, he comes up with some excuse for why he hasn’t done the job. I don’t know how much Mrs. Winston’s told you about her nephew’s family. Anyway,” he quickly added, as if he’d just realized how much he was saying, “it’s not my place to talk about it. I’ll show you to Ken’s office.” He got out of the truck.

  I glanced again at the empty parking spot reserved for Liam Dolan and then followed Michael into the building. We went directly into a showroom filled with all sorts of plumbing fixtures. There was a second showroom just to the right of it. Glancing through the door, I saw sinks and tubs, whirlpools and shower stalls. We continued down a hallway, passing an office where two women were working furiously on computers.

  “Accounting,” Michael said.

  We almost paused at the door of another office that had “Liam Dolan, Assistant Manager” printed on it. Michael just smirked, and we continued to a very nicely appointed outer office. There was no question that the woman standing behind the desk and filing something in the cabinet was Michele Levy. When she turned, I saw that she did indeed look like a woman hours away from the delivery room. She instinctively put her hands at the bottom of her stomach, as if to keep her baby from being born right in front of us, and gazed from Michael to me, her hazel eyes widening with surprise. I thought she had a pretty face, but because of some bloating, I didn’t think her very short haircut worked. She wore a plain light blue maternity dress.

  “This is Lorelei Patio,” Michael told her. I couldn’t see his face when he spoke, but I imagined he was telegraphing his surprise, too.

  Michele looked at me with disappointment. I had the sense that a few candidates, maybe more than a few, had come and gone, and she was hoping for a replacement as soon as possible.

  “Hello,” she said. “I’ll tell Mr. Dolan you’ve arrived,” she added before I could respond. She didn’t want to waste much of her time and energy on the likes of me, I thought.

  Oddly, none of this discouraged me. If anything, I felt up to the challenge. It was in our nature to be competitive. Daddy had always told me that. I recalled how pleased he was when I brought home very high grades or won a contest in school.

  “There are so many things about us that are false or exaggerated,” he had told me recently. “We don’t live forever and ever, but we don’t feel that we have to. We don’t have to feel and want most things they have to feel and want. What we must never do is feed any self-doubt. Our confidence is our special armor, Lorelei. Don’t be afraid of being accused of arrogance. Most of the time, it will be the envious who will accuse you, anyway.”

  I had fled from Daddy. I was afraid of him now, yes, but I would never forget his wisdom.

  “Good luck,” Michael said. “They’ll call me when it’s time to run you back.”

  “Don’t go too far,” Michele told him before she buzzed Mr. Dolan on his intercom.

  “I won’t need you to run me back, Michael,” I said. “Thank you, but I would like to walk and see some of Quincy.”

  “If you change your mind, I’ll be nearby,” he said. He glanced at Michele and left.

  “Mr. Dolan, Lorelei Patio is here to see you. Okay,” she said, and cradled the receiver before putting her hand against her lower back and coming around her desk to escort me to the inner office door.

  “It’s better if you walk more than sit and stand in one place,” I told her.

  She smiled quizzically and tilted her head to the right.

  “How would you know? Don’t tell me you’ve had a baby.”

  “I won’t. I just know,” I said.

  She raised her eyebrows and started to reach for the doorknob.

  “I have it from here, thank you,” I said, and opened the door, stepping in front of her and entering Ken Dolan’s office.

  He looked up from his desk, not so much with surprise as with confusion.

  “I guess I’ll be right outside as usual,” Michele said from behind me, and closed the door.

  Ken Dolan rose slowly. He was easily six feet two or three, with a compact, athletic build. He wore a light blue sports jacket, a white shirt with an opened collar, no tie, and dark blue slacks. His dark complexion highlighted his clear sea-blue eyes. There were strands of light gray in his stylishly cut light brown hair.

  Some men simply radiated authority, I thought. They look as if they should run companies or be U.S. senators. Maybe because I could see and feel it so easily in Daddy, I could recognize it when I saw it in ordinary men. Ken Dolan was one of those men, and yet there was nothing hard or unpleasant in the face he was showing me at the moment. If anything, he now looked somewhat amused.

  He came around his desk and, still smiling, offered me his hand. “Come, sit,” he said, indicating the dark brown leather settee on his right. “I hate sitting behind that desk when I interview someone for any position here. Makes me feel like a school principal or something.”

  I sat, and he sat beside me but leaned back.

  “Tell me about yourself,” he began. “My aunt filled me in on your unfortunate family situation.”

  “She’s very kind,” I said.

  “She’s got good instincts when it comes to people, especially strangers. What is it she saw so quickly in you?”

  “Determination to succeed,” I said without hesitation. His eyes told me he liked that reply. “Except for getting my father to realize he’s making a mistake, I’ve never failed at anything I’ve attempted to do.”

  “Does that include computer skills?”

  “It’s in our DNA these days,” I replied. “We had an excellent program at school.”

  “My current secretary, who you see is desperate to get relief, has developed an amazing sixth sense when it comes to what I want and need done. I’m looking for someone with initiative, someone I don’t have to tell when something has to be done and, after a short period, what else has to be done. She’s got her work, and I have mine.”

  I looked around his office. There were plaques on the walls from the Quincy Chamber of Commerce and plaques congratulating the Dolan Plumbing Supply Company for years of service and exceptional sales. I also saw plaques from organizations showing appreciation for charitable contributions. A variety of framed pictures with Ken Dolan and who I imagined to be state and maybe federal dignitaries were there, along with a picture of who I assumed to be
his son, Liam, and his daughter, Julia. There was a separate framed photograph of Julia in a graduation robe and another of her in what looked like a nurse’s uniform.

  “I don’t judge people on how young or old they are per se, but I do find that young people your age generally don’t know how to answer the phone properly,” Ken Dolan said. “Nor take a message correctly, when it comes to that. All of this texting and electronic media are damaging the basic but important communication we need, especially in a business that depends on customers feeling properly addressed.”

  “I suppose it’s how you’re brought up, too,” I said. “My mother set a good example for me when it came to people-to-people relations. I’m probably as frustrated by some of the careless and sloppy talk we get on the phone these days as you are. I’m not Miss Perfect, but I think I know when to put my own interest on hold and service the priorities of other people. It’s a matter of self-survival, anyway, isn’t it?”

  He stared at me a moment and then smiled. “Self-survival?”

  “I’ve had to fend for myself more than most lately, Mr. Dolan. You tend to grow up faster when that happens. My age and my appearance are somewhat deceptive, but then again, there will be women who come in here looking for this position who will be older and might even appear to be responsible and mature but who will be just as deceptive.”

  His mouth opened a little, and then he laughed, holding his smile. “I’m beginning to understand what my aunt saw.”

  I shrugged. “I won’t make any claims about myself. Your aunt would surely say the proof is in the pudding, anyway.”

  He nodded. “You read her right. I like it when I meet someone, young or old, who has some good perception.”

  “Survival,” I emphasized. “When you don’t have much of a safety net, you had better be right about people you meet the first time.”

  “You’re a very pretty girl, Lorelei. Do you see that as an advantage or a disadvantage?”