The Last Day by John Ramsey Miller Read Free Book Online Page A

disappointed, and Ward felt the way he always felt when Natasha refused an invitation to be with Bunny.
    Ward went up the stairs. Checking his cell phone's log he saw that Mark had called him at ten- thirteen the night before. They had talked for eleven minutes. And Ward did not remember it.

TWELVE
    Leslie Wilde had worked for RGI for two years and had been Ward's secretary for fourteen months. Anna Bost, who had been his father's secretary was seventy- eight when she'd finally retired and moved to a condo in Charleston. Leslie had been the first applicant. She was bright, efficient, attractive, and quick- witted, and since she already worked for the company and had a reputation, he'd hired her.
    Leslie was busy at her computer terminal when Ward entered her office, which was just next door to his.
    “Good morning, Leslie.”
    “How was the trade show, Mr. McCarty?” she asked him, smiling.
    “Busy,” he told her.
    “I put the order sheets on your desk,” she said. “I also have a stack of letters for your signature, and the new inventory report. The calls you need to return ASAP are on yellow Post- its, the should-be-returned-at-your-earliest on blue, andthe standard sales calls on green. No personal calls.”
    Ward had resisted installing an automated messaging system because he hated listening to a recorded voice and punching numbers to navigate to an actual person. He did have voice mail, but Leslie always asked the caller if she could take a message, or if they wanted to leave a message on Ward's voice mail. Most left a message with her, which further reinforced his belief that given a choice, people preferred to interact with living, breathing humans. Please listen carefully, as our options have changed. Please press one because we're insensitive assholes who are too cheap to hire an employee to answer your call.
    “Very good,” he said. “Listen, Leslie. There's something I want to mention. If a young lady calls to ask for a die- cast car that I offered her for her mother on the flight home, get her name and mailing address.”
    “You don't know her name?” Leslie asked, reaching for a pen.
    “No. I told her I'd give her a die- cast car if she'd call. Get her name and address for me.”
    A look of concern crossed Leslie's features, asshe made a note to herself, then stared at Ward with alert brown eyes.
    “Do you want to talk to her?” She was familiar with Ward's slipping memory and she, like everyone else in the offices, knew of his mother's illness. It had crossed his mind more than once that the same disease might be sneaking up on him from behind like an assassin. Ward was too young, wasn't he?
    “No. Tell her you'll mail her the car unless she wants to pick it up,” he said, not wanting to chance spooking the girl. That is, if she called.
    Ward went to his office, which had remained pretty much the way his father had left it—cluttered but clean. He hadn't cleaned out but a few of his father's personal items, merely introducing a few of his own. Wardo hadn't had a computer in his office, preferring to write out personal correspondence by hand, or type business letters on his Selectric, using carbon paper. In his last years, he'd had his secretary type that which needed formalizing and make copies for files.
    Ward, a generation later, had a desktop and a couple of laptops. A picture of his family stood on his desk that had been taken in KillarneyIreland. Dermott O'caloughan, the owner of the Failte Hotel, had taken it the year before Barney died. Natasha had commented that she'd never visited any place as warm, or any place that had so many tourist shops whose inventory was comprised of so many things she didn't want to own. There was a second picture of Wardo, Mark, and himself taken during a charity tournament on the golf course at the Cabarrus Country Club. All three of the men smiled out from the framed snapshot like successful politicians who hadn't yet been caught at skullduggery.
    For an