Fern Michaels - Tuesday’s Child

Happier than a pig in a mud slide, Sophie checked the messages on the cell phone. She had thirty-seven messages. Her eyes popped wide as she listened to them, her face wreathed in smiles. Thirty-one of them were from Nick, and six were from Patty. And the cell phone was blinking red-the battery was dead.

Quicker than lightning, she plugged in the charger and sat back to daydream until she had enough minutes charged to call Nick. While she waited she ran out to the mailbox. And there it was, a large padded envelope from Linda with her belongings. She was ripping at the envelope as she made her way back to the house. There were her pearls, her bracelet, her Timex watch, which was actually ticking and had the correct time on it, and, of course, the locket Nick had given her. Her hands shook as she clasped it around her neck. She slipped on the bracelet and decided the fake pearls weren’t needed but she knew she’d never get rid of them. They were hers, bought and paid for herself with her savings. She knew then she could buy a dozen strands of real pearls if she wanted to. She could buy diamonds by the bushel if she wanted to. She never would, she knew. She had more than enough with what was right in front of her. Money could not buy happiness. It could buy security and contentment but not happiness.

“And how profound is that, Sophie Lee?”

PATTY MOLNAR WAS SO EXCITED SHE HAD TO TAKE DEEP CALMING breaths. Sophie’s plane was due to land in three hours. Patty had personally arranged the welcoming committee. She thought about Nick then, and the look on his face when he told her about his hour-long conversation with Sophie. He had been so happy until he got to the part where Sophie was only staying five days. She herself had been devastated at the short length of time Sophie planned to stay. Lord, how she missed her. How would they ever cram everything in to five short days with all the legal stuff Sophie had to attend to?

There had been so many questions about Jon that she and Nick had to deal with. They had agreed beforehand not to tell Sophie until they could do it in person. Since it was Patty’s week to have Jon’s urn, she had him in the car to hand over to Sophie. She hoped Sophie wouldn’t fall apart. From the conversation they’d had, she knew Sophie wasn’t the same person she was ten years ago. Sophie was tough, or at least Sophie said she was. Patty wondered if it was true. The conversation had been sisterly, full of a lot of do you remembers? and all of Sophie’s plans for the future. The main plan was relocating and putting down roots someplace where she would be at peace.

Hawaii was that place, Sophie said. But it was so far away. An ocean away, thousands of miles away. There was no way she’d be able to call Sophie and meet for some girl talk. Of course, she could use the Webcam, e-mail, and phone, but it wouldn’t be the same. They would still be thousands of miles and an ocean away from each other. A tear formed in the corner of Patty’s eye, then rolled down her cheek. She brushed at it. No time for tears. Today was a happy day. And it was Tuesday!

The last time she’d spoken to Sophie she’d said the charter flight she engaged had to be canceled because of a family crisis of some sort with the pilot’s son. Sophie said she thought the boy had to have an emergency appendectomy, and she was okay with the delay because the earliest the pilot could commit to was Tuesday, today. Everything happens for a reason, Sophie had said happily. “Remember, I’m Tuesday’s Child.” Like she or any of the others could ever forget that fact.

Patty looked down at her watch. Time for what she hoped was the last meeting of her six-man investigative group. She’d file her last report with Kala and move on. With Sophie’s return, Kala said they would be able to wrap it all up.

Already, the Sophie Lee v. Ryan Spenser articles were relegated to the back pages in the papers. There were too many disasters in the world to keep Spenser in the foreground.

Patty sighed as she picked up a pile of folders and headed to the conference room, which could accommodate twelve people easily at the one-of-a-kind teak table Kala had had specially made in Hawaii and shipped to Atlanta.

Patty poured a cup of coffee from the sideboard and settled herself to wait for the others as she was eight minutes early. In less than three hours, she was going to see Sophie, her best friend in the whole world.

Her thoughts were all over the map. She’d been offered a job with Fox News, and she was a hair away from signing on. Her old boss had sent one of his underlings to her house two days ago, asking her what she wanted, to avoid the lawsuit Jay had filed against the paper. She’d gotten such perverse pleasure flipping him the bird and reminding him that anything he or his boss had to say to her had to be transmitted through her lawyer, and she would certainly tell her lawyer about this improper communication.

What will be will be, she thought. The suit, a judge had ruled, had merit. Discrimination of any kind had to be taken seriously. In the past three days, she’d received numerous phone calls from other fired female employees asking to join her suit. She’d turned them all over to Jay, who was working diligently on the case. She knew that sooner or later, it would all be settled out of court; those things always were. She was okay with that because, for her, it wasn’t about the money, it was about accountability. She, along with all the kids at St. Gabe’s, had been taught that you own what you do, take responsibility. She lived by that rule.

The door opened, and Team Patty, as the group referred to themselves, trooped into the room, plopped down, and gave a collective sigh. All six of them looked weary, their eyes bloodshot, their hair mussed, their clothes wrinkled.

“We’ve been working around the clock to meet your deadline, Patty,” Rob said. “If you hold on a minute, I’ll give you everything we have. Bill, give me a hand, will you?”

Patty watched in awe as the two young men wheeled in two dollies with boxes lined to the top, ten in all.

“These are all the old cases that Ryan Spenser either prosecuted himself or oversaw for his ADAs. In the top box on the second dolly are the affidavits of the different defense lawyers who are out there spinning their wheels hoping to get some of their convictions overturned. It’s not going to happen. There are no irregularities, and we had six pairs of eyes going over these cases with a fine-tooth comb. Sorry for the cliché, but Spenser is as pure as the driven snow. We told you the same thing about the Sophie Lee trial, but you didn’t want to believe us,” Rob Pope said.

“Can we go now? We haven’t had a wink of sleep in three days, and no showers either, and we’re a bit gamey,” Bonnie said.

“You can turn all this over to your licensed investigators to handle now. We made it easy for them by writing a detailed summary of every single case,” Rob said.

Chairs were pushed back, and the six law students prepared to leave the room. “You just ruined a guy who gave his all to the system, you know that, right?” Beth snarled. “You and the goddamn media. You all think you’re God! Tell us all, because we want to know, how does Ryan Spenser get his life back? He did his job, and did it better than any prosecutor we came across, and he’s been vilified. This whole thing damn well stinks!”

The door closed with a bang behind the students. Patty sat for a long time, just staring at the stacked boxes. She felt sick to her stomach. She wondered what Kala was going to say. What could she say, when it came right down to it? She tried to drown out her thoughts by thinking of Sophie’s arrival, but Sophie was suddenly taking second place in her mind.