Casey arrived at the bookstore late and troubled. On the drive over she had imagined all sorts of awful scenarios: Andrew had been involved in an accident, he was sick, he went hiking and got lost…he ran off to Cozumel with Roberta. The last one she just laughed at, she trusted him. But that didn’t stop her imagination from running riot.
Casey was slightly winded as she ran into the bookstore. Michael and Gail were already hard at work stocking shelves.
“Sorry I’m late.” She rushed past them to throw her bag into the storeroom.
Michael glanced at his watch. “Only an hour…” His tone was sarcastic. “We were starting to think you had taken the cash from yesterday’s sales and blown the country.”
Casey hurried over to the cash desk to sort the float. She gave Michael a sardonic look. “We made good money yesterday, but unless I was destined for Seattle, it wouldn’t have done me much good. There certainly wasn’t enough to retire on.” She smiled and shook her head. “Andrew didn’t happen to call this morning did he?” She tried to sound nonchalant, but failed miserably.
Michael sat back on his ladder and looked at her closely. “Sorry Case, there were no messages this morning, no calls either. Is something wrong?”
She smiled over-bright. “No, no, of course not. He just stopped in to talk yesterday and I was too busy, I expected him to call later… guess I just got home too late.” She closed the cash door with a bang. “I’ll just give him a call this afternoon. I’m sure everything’s fine.” She turned abruptly and walked toward the storeroom. “You two can open up. I’m going to work on verifying the game entries and try to figure out how many prizes we’ll have to give out.”
Entering the office, Casey flung herself down in her office chair. She picked up her favorite pen and unconsciously chewed the end of it. If she’d only stopped to talk to him yesterday, she wouldn’t be sitting her wondering if something was wrong. Well, one phone call should clear it all up. Throwing down her pen, she picked up the phone and dialed the house at Hunter’s Bay. She counted the rings: One, two, three, four, five, six, seven…Casey hung up. He wasn’t there, and she had lost his cell number. He’d taped it to the back of the phone he’d lent her, but it had fallen off somewhere. She’d never had to call it so didn’t recall what it was, and had no idea how to get the contact information out of the phone she was using, if it was even in there. It hadn’t been an issue before; he’d always just been there whenever she thought about him.
She took a deep breath and made herself relax. There was nothing she could do at the moment and he was a big boy, more than able to take care of himself. If she hadn’t heard something by tonight… she’d think of something then.
Feeling a little better, and sure she’d hear from Andrew before the end of the day she turned back to the pile of contest entries and started marking.
She felt a little like a second grade teacher as she marked the wrong answers with her red pen, all she needed to complete the picture was a couple of little stickers that said ‘good job’ or ‘excellent work’ to put on the winning entries.