The Night I Got Lucky by Laura Caldwell Read Free Book Online Page B

was usual y a space for wonderings about where my father was and worries that his abandonment might somehow have been my fault—or his disappointment in me—was empty now. Those wonderings and worries were gone. I could remember the pain, the longing, the sadness that used to reside there, but I didn’t feel it any longer. Like reminiscing about a distant love affair, the emotions had vanished.
    I took a breath. There seemed to be more room in my lungs now, more room in my head, too. The hours with Blinda must have taken hold. I’d broken the reverse Oedipal thing, and I was free of him.
    I smiled to myself in my new office. I felt lighter, happier. Not only had I gotten over my dad, but I’d had a wonderful morning with my husband, I’d been promoted and Evan had flirted with me. Even my mother had begun her own fabulous life. I had no idea how it happened, but in one night I’d gotten incredibly lucky.
    I thought of my visit with Blinda last night and the frog she’d given me. Could they have anything to do with this? Intuitively, I answered yes! but that seemed entirely il ogical. Yet either way, it didn’t matter. I’d gotten everything I’d wished for. And I was going to enjoy it.

chapter four
    W hen Evan made VP, I had pumped him for every bit of information he possessed about the perks of the promotion. He’d gotten a new computer and cel phone, ditto for new office furniture, and there were no longer limits on client lunches and entertainment, the way there were for the non-VPs.
    I rubbed my hands together at my desk now. Time to spend some company money. Then it occurred to me—maybe I had already done that, somewhere in the yawning chasm between my today and my yesterday.
    I hit Lizbeth’s button again.
    “What’s up, Bil y?” she said cheerily.
    I stil hadn’t seen the girl, and I supposed I’d better “meet” her now so that I didn’t run into her in the hal way and give a blank stare. “Can you stop by my office for a second?”
    A moment later, a woman in her early-twenties appeared in my doorway. Her sandy brown hair was worn in artful waves about her very round face. She had wide, startled eyes and a rosebud mouth shel acked with cotton-candy pink gloss.
    What’s going on?” she said, taking one of my visitor’s chairs.
    “When I made vice president…wel , maybe I should say, do you remember when I made vice president?”
    “I got hired right after, so I don’t remember the exact day, but yeah.” She looked at me oddly.
    “Sure, right. And when was that? I mean when did you get hired?”
    She laughed wryly, as if this were an easy question, but then she scrunched up her shiny mouth and looked at the ceiling. “Gosh, when was that?” She looked back at me with a stumped expression. “I can’t remember.”
    Just like Evan, I thought. Everyone seemed to assume I’d been in this position forever, but I knew different. It made me feel as if I were playacting. It made everything unreal.
    “Bil y?” Lizbeth said. “Did you want something?”
    I shook away my thoughts about the strangeness of it al . No sense fighting a good thing, I told myself. “What I real y wanted to ask you was if you remember some information I got about furniture and technology stipends.”
    “Yeah, I think it was in that packet of material from Ms. Frankwel .”
    “Great, great. And where do I—I mean we …keep that?”
    “You told me to file it at my desk, remember?”
    I made a big show of snapping my fingers. “Right! That’s right. Could you grab that for me?”
    A few seconds later and she was back with a stapled set of papers, headed New Vice President Information Packet.
    “Thank you, Lizbeth. And can you find out for me where the firm buys our computer equipment?”
    I leafed through the packet while Lizbeth trotted off down the hal way. The terms were the same that Evan had received. Perfect.
    Lizbeth soon buzzed me with the name of a computer dealer we used. Five minutes after that, I