Page 9
Chapter Three
Ari was speechless. She didn’t know what to think. Her bright eyes gazed at the words while her mouth hung open in shock. There was no way. She wouldn’t do this. There had to be another option.
The words jotted down circled in her head, showing her a side of life she never imagined existed. He owned her body? He could take what he wanted – day or night?
Ari didn’t think so. She’d end up going to prison because she wouldn’t abide by the stupid rules he’d set forth, and then he’d prosecute her. Could he do that? If she chose not to satisfy him as much as he wanted, could he have her locked in jail?
She slowly read back through the contract, and felt a smidgeon better. No. That wasn’t what he was saying. He could only actually prosecute her if she broke his confidentiality clause.
What did he mean, though by unknowingly? If she didn’t know she’d done it, then how could she be responsible for her actions? As she gazed at the paper she realized what that meant. If she left papers laying around that someone got ahold of and it led to people finding out.
Well, she wasn’t going to become his employee, or mistress, or whatever he chose to call the position, so she wasn’t taking chances of someone getting ahold of the dang contract. She walked to her stove and turned on the burner, then placed the edge of the paper against it, consumed with overwhelming satisfaction when the contract began to go up in smoke.
She held onto it for several seconds, making sure it would burn every last word, then she tossed the remains in her empty sink where it finished burning and turned into nothing but ash.
Washing the ash down the garbage disposal gave her an increased relaxation in her shoulder muscles. She could close that door in life behind her, and step forward. It was a good thing she didn’t have smoke detectors in her place, or her little act of defiance would’ve set every one of them off.
Opening a window to let out the smoke before she choked, Ari then grabbed the newspapers she’d gathered all week and began fanning the smoke out the window with a wide up and down motion. As the smoke lifted to the sky, the realization of the opportunity to be making one hundred thousand dollars a year began to sink in and her hopes of taking care of her mother were now plummeting.
She stopped fanning and laid the newspaper out on the table, running her thumb along the fold creases to make it lay flat in another attempt to search through the ads again. She had to have missed something. There was a job out there for her. She just wasn’t trying hard enough to find it.
After a three hour search and twenty-five calls later, Ari flopped back on the couch and the tears started. At first, they were just a tender trickle, but it didn’t take long for them to flow down her cheeks and drip off of her chin.
It just seemed so hopeless.
What was she going to do?
After allowing herself a half hour of falling apart, Ari brushed away the last of her tears just as the phone rang. Her head spun around as she gazed at the contraption like it was a lifeline to save her in the middle of an ocean where the sharks were slowly circling closer.
“Hello. ” Her voice was full of hope. It had to be one of the hundreds of jobs she’d applied for calling her back, saying they needed her to start immediately.
“Is Ms. Harlow available?”
“This is her. ” It was a prospective employer, she thought positively.
“This is the Clover Care Facility. Your mother has been transported over to the San Francisco General Hospital. Can you meet the ambulance down there immediately?”
“Is everything okay with my mom?”
“Ms. Harlow, it would be better if you could leave now and arrive quickly. They will answer all your questions when you get there. ”
Ari sat silently for a moment as she forced herself to take a quick breath. Something was wrong with her mom. Selfishly, she didn’t want to know. After the day she’d had, she couldn’t take any further bad news.
“Yes, of course,” she automatically replied before hanging up.
With sagging shoulders, she gathered her purse and exited the apartment. Her mom had always told her to never put off to tomorrow what she could accomplish today. It was something Benjamin Franklin had first said, and he happened to be one of her heroes. That saying went with the good and the bad. If it was terrible news, she may as well get it over with.
She climbed in her car and made the thirty minute journey to the hospital, mustering as much courage as possible for the moments that would follow her arrival. Was she going to walk in, only to find her mother had given up and passed away? Were they going to kick her mom out if she didn’t have the money to pay her medical bills? Ari just didn’t know. She didn’t know if she could handle whatever they had to say.