God's Gift (6 page)

It would be nice, however, when he didn’t have to fight this pain every time he moved.

He was on a vacation. He hadn’t had one in six years. He was going to enjoy it and let tomorrow take care of itself. As long as the vacation was temporary.

This was nice, but it wasn’t his dream.

He wanted to be back in Africa.

The sound of running water made him tilt his head to the side on the pillow, listen more closely to the sounds from inside the cabin. Someone was up.

He listened for the light steps of Emily or Tom to come back down the hall but heard nothing. Someone else was up at 3:00 a.m.? He had been the one to lock the cabin, set
the dampers on the fireplace, turn off the lights at midnight. Everyone else had already turned in.

Not concerned, but curious, and wide awake anyway, James dressed in his sweatshirt and jeans.

Rae was curled up on the couch in black sweats, a book in her lap, a drink beside her on the table.

“Care for some company?”

She looked up, surprised. “Come on in, I didn’t realize you were still up.”

“I could say the same thing about you.”

“Catnap. It’s really annoying to wake up at 3:00 a.m., wide awake. Normally I would find a financial report to read, but the cabin doesn’t run to anything that dry. No use waking up Lace with my restless turning.”

James settled into the chair opposite her. “What did you find?”

She glanced at the spine of the book.
“Biomechanics of the Human Hand.”

“I’d say that qualifies as light reading,” James replied, tongue-in-cheek.

“Actually, it’s quite good. Some of their math is wrong, however. I spent twenty minutes looking at their torque calculations because I didn’t understand their answer, only to realize they made a mistake in their math. It makes sense now.”

“Let me guess, you took engineering classes as electives.”

She grinned. “Doesn’t everyone?”

“No,” he replied, chuckling.

It was a nice time to talk, the dead of the night, no hurry to give a fast answer, no reason to break the silence until a new question occurred. Rae asked about the work in Africa, and James relaxed, enjoying the chance to talk about it.

He asked her about work, and while she hesitated to an
swer at first, she was open and frank in what she said. He had heard Dave and Lace talking, had his conversation with Lace to go on. He knew how hard the past year had been on her. He avoided asking about Leo and she never volunteered his name.

Even so, he learned a lot, both about business and about Rae.

“What are the critical few pieces of information that drive your decisions? The day-to-day trading trends? The company earnings reports? The industry segment? The overall economy?”

“Most of the planning I do is around the company’s ability to increase market share. That’s the critical factor for knowing which companies I want to recommend. The right price to buy is driven by an analysis of the books and the style of management—are they aggressive in growing the business or conservative? How well do they use the assets they have? A company with small reserves but a willingness to use them is invariably a better buy than a company with large reserves that passes up opportunities. When to sell is a crap shoot—I know the fundamentals, but it’s hard to judge how far the market will take a stock that is rising beyond what its fundamentals can support. Invariably, I sell too soon.”

He listened to her, observed her and he realized something. Rae on her own turf, in her domain of expertise, was decisive, clear and confident. She loved the analysis, being able to make the call with confidence, having the facts to make the right decision. Her job perfectly matched her talents and gifts. She was known as one of the best at what she did because she was one of the best—others could only imitate what came to her intuitively, naturally, by instinct.

“No, a red card does not mean it is a diamond,” Rae informed Dave, picking up the cards, overriding his appeal that he had won the hand with a trump card. “A bluff only works if the other person buys it.”

“Face it, Dave, I can read you like an open book. I knew you didn’t have it,” Lace told him, smirking.

“Lace, you can’t be successful all night,” Dave replied, tossing a piece of popcorn at her.

James had figured the bridge game would be a serious event. He should have known better.

The ladies were killing them.

Rae had managed to bluff and win two hands and Lace had just nailed the ladies’ second hand.

Tom, acting as Lace’s partner, finished scoring the hand. “Lace, you really are good.”

“Thank you, Tom,” Lace said, pleased.

Rae shuffled the cards with the ease of someone who had handled a deck of cards for years. “Want to cut?” she offered Dave.

He offered the cards to Emily, sitting beside him.

The little girl grinned.

Rae dealt the cards, a flip of her wrist landing the cards directly in front of each person at the table. “Your bid,” she told James.

“Two clubs.”

Dave and Lace ended up going head to head again, both holding the last of the trump cards.

Dave laid down the three of hearts. “Sorry, honey. You’ve been got.”

Lace laid down her last card with a smile. “You need to count better, friend.” The five of hearts.

Rae burst out laughing at Dave’s expression.

“Next year we’re going to play Monopoly,” Dave told Lace, as Rae collected the cards.

“I would love to be your landlord,” Lace replied, grinning.

“Rae, mind some company?” James asked quietly, stopping at the bottom steps to the pavilion. The bridge game had concluded a little over an hour ago. He had left Dave and Lace haggling in the kitchen over the best way to reheat spaghetti left over from dinner, and come out to walk along the lake before turning in for the night. He had thought Rae had already gone to bed, instead he found her sitting alone in the pavilion, looking at the water.

Tomorrow they would be packing up and heading home.

“Come on up,” she replied, her voice quiet.

He touched her shoulder as he reached the bench.

She was cold.

He slipped off his jacket and draped it over her shoulders.

“Thanks.” She buried her hands into the warmth, one last shiver shaking her frame.

“You should have come back to the cabin for a jacket.”

“I didn’t realize I was this cold.”

James settled on the bench beside her, pushed his hands into the pockets of his jeans. The water was tranquil tonight, the moonlight reflecting off its surface, dancing around. A multitude of stars were out. Nights in Africa had been like this—panoramic in their display.

“What’s wrong?” he asked quietly. She didn’t disappear in the middle of the night without something driving her actions.

She eventually sighed. “I don’t want the vacation to end.”

He turned to look at her. There was so much sadness in her voice. “Why, Rae?” he asked gently.

“I’ve enjoyed the last several days working on the book. I don’t want to give it up.” She leaned back, looked up at the stars, a pensive look on her face. “It’s simple to say I’ll make time to write when I get home, but the reality is, there won’t be time. There is so much work to do, it’s overwhelming.”

“You’re tired.” Tired of the pace of life, tired of the weight, tired of carrying the responsibility, tired of being alone…. How well he understood tired.

She sighed. “In three days, this will all be only a distant memory. I’ll be living on adrenaline again, going from one crisis to another.”

“Rae, you can change it. The schedule is reflecting your choices.”

“I have a responsibility to my clients to see that the job is done well. I’ve been looking for someone to step in and help manage the business, looking hard, but it just hasn’t happened yet.”

He knew what it felt like to be the one carrying the responsibility to make sure a situation worked out. You did whatever had to be done, it was that simple. The early days in business with Kevin, most of the last six years in Africa…a commitment was kept, even if it meant long hours and a lot of lost sleep. But the doctors had been pretty frank—they didn’t think his symptoms would be as severe had he not been pushing himself so hard for so long.

“I’ve watched you this week. You’re one of the best planners I have ever met. You can manage the business until you find someone. Just don’t let yourself get overwhelmed. Set some limits, do what you can and walk away from it,” he advised, wishing he had learned to heed his own advice at some point in his past.

“I’ve never learned how to walk away and really leave my
work at the office. It’s been haunting my sleep the last few months,” she admitted quietly. “I don’t want to go back to that, James. It’s not worth it.”

How he wished he could take away the burden or make it easier to carry. Words were such a limited help.

He thought about how dramatically the past five months had changed him. He had that to offer, the reality of what it was to know the tasks exceeded the resources to meet them. “Rae, I’ve had to learn the hard way that you have to accept and live with the limits you are dealt. You’re going to have to set limits around how much energy you can pour into work, how much stress you can carry. When you reach your limits, walk away. The world won’t stop functioning if you take twelve hours for yourself.”

“No, I might only lose my client’s shirt.”

He smiled. “Somehow, from what I hear, I doubt that is very likely. You’ve got to learn, Rae, that taking a break is just as legitimate a use of your time as continuing to work.”

She sighed. “I feel guilty when I leave a job unfinished.”

How well James understood that guilt. “Believe me, I feel the same way. Limits are never easy, but Rae, in the long run, they prove their worth. Maybe I’m fortunate with this illness to have at least learned that. My body no longer allows me to exceed my limits. It forces me to stop and rest. I wish it would do it in a somewhat less drastic fashion—the pain and fatigue are intense. But it’s made me learn to set priorities for what I will use my energy to do.”

“It’s come down to prioritizing good versus good. I can either ensure the day-to-day decisions are right and on time and risk sacrificing the big picture, or I can focus on the future analysis and risk the day-to-day trading. It’s a no-win situation,” Rae said.

James stopped his train of thought, realizing something. “Rae, do you like your job?”

She was surprised by the question. Surprised enough to stop and think about it before she tried to answer it. When she did, her answer seemed to surprise her. “I want time to work on the book. I want time to spend with friends. I want the job, but not at the expense of those two needs.” She smiled. “Ambivalence. I never thought I would feel that about work. In the past, it’s been the passion and driving goal of my life. I don’t know when it disappeared.”

“Leo’s death,” James said softly.

She thought about it. “No. It changed before that. The day I said yes to going out with Leo. What I wanted in my life changed. I’m good at the job, I just don’t want it to be the only thing in my life anymore. I shifted gears inside to planning for a marriage and a family.”

She sighed. “I don’t know what I want anymore.” She considered that statement for a moment. “Yes I do. I want Leo back.”

He liked her honesty, her ability to be frank. “It’s tough to adjust when you know what you want isn’t going to happen,” he commented, knowing some of what it felt like from his own frustration with this medical furlough. “Figure out a way to put time into your schedule to write, to spend time with Lace. Reevaluate what you think about work when you’ve fixed those problems,” he suggested.

She really did love her job. He was convinced of that. She just needed it to be her job again, instead of her life. Rae was tired, but the love of the job was still there, buried under the weight of the responsibility she was carrying.

“I’ve been trying to think about ways to make my time during the day less fragmented—the trading is a reactive
job, something I didn’t have to deal with before. That’s what’s killing my ability to do the analysis work. There has to be a way to improve the situation.”

James was grateful to hear some of the tension had left her voice. “You’ll find it, Rae. Think of it as a puzzle to solve.”

She laughed. “A puzzle called Rae’s Day on the Job. That’s what it is, too, a problem to be analyzed and solved. It can’t continue as it currently is.”

“I hate to be the one to suggest this, but it is getting late. We had probably better turn in for the night.”

She had yawned twice and her face was showing her weariness. She needed to be in bed.

Rae nodded, pushing herself away from the bench. “Thanks for being willing to talk work, James. I know it’s not the most interesting subject.”

He smiled. “Oh, I don’t know. It’s a good chunk of your life right now. I’m interested.”

“Why?”

“Just because,” James replied, dropping his arm around her shoulders as they walked back to the cabin.

He stepped back as they entered the back door, let her precede him. Patricia had put the kids to bed a while ago. Dave and Lace had turned in; the cabin was quiet. “I’ll see you in the morning, Rae. Sleep well.”

He was surprised by her attempt to contain a smile. “You, too, James. Good night,” she said softly.

It was as he was climbing under his covers that James realized he’d been truly enfolded into this close-knit family of friends.

They had short-sheeted his bed.

F
ifty laps. James touched the wall, breathing hard, and let the water lap around him as he let his body relax. His endurance was back. His body ached, not with pain, but with the exertion of a good workout.

Smiling, pleased, he swam at a leisurely pace to the ladder.

He was over the worst of the symptoms.

Eight weeks of a lot of sleep, a lot of medicine, and careful exercise had paid off. His joints no longer ached.

He had already talked his next step over with Kevin. He thought his body was ready to tackle a building project again. It was time to know. Three weeks working on a house with Kevin would tell him if he was right.

The smell of chlorine was strong in the air as James crossed the tile deck to the chair where he had left his towel and locker key. The health club was surprisingly empty for a Thursday afternoon. A glance at the wall clock showed he had just enough time for ten minutes in the whirlpool followed by a quick shower before he needed to leave to pick up Dave.

Rae was bowling in the finals tonight.

She was still too busy to suit any of them, but James had watched her eyes begin to smile again, knew Rae was adjusting, finding a balance between her life and her work.

He’d become one of the group.

His initiation had been one short-sheeted bed. He still had no idea which one of them had done it, but they had all obviously known about it.

In the six weeks since, he had come to profoundly appreciate their offer of friendship.

He was part of the group.

He’d never experienced anything like it, a camaraderie coupled with loyalty that went so deep as to be nearly unbreakable. He had begun to realize the significance of it the day Dave flew back on a chartered flight from San Diego during a trial to be at an awards banquet where Lace was speaking, and from the awards banquet went back to the airport for a return trip in the middle of the night. It was Rae networking her contacts to donate the medical equipment he would need for the clinics then pulling more strings to get even the shipping costs donated. It was Lace putting in an all-nighter with Dave to prepare a court defense, then getting on a plane herself to make a major presentation the next day. It was Friday night dinners at Dave’s place, movies at Lace’s, basketball games at Rae’s. It was a network of names and contacts and favors that they used freely to solve problems for each other, from getting plane tickets on a moment’s notice to getting phone calls to the top executive of a corporation put through. It was inconceivable amounts of cash flowing from one individual or another to needs the group spotted. It was a common “what I have is yours” use of their time, resources and talents. Cementing it all together was a lot of laughter.

They were friends.

They had chosen him to be one of them.

As the weeks went by, he had grown to appreciate how big a blessing God had dropped in his life.

He had become their expert advisor on cars, construction, real estate, large organization management, and, somehow, their elected chief arbitrator of decisions. There would be options on the table for what to do, where to go, whom to call, priorities to set. And when he finally stated what he thought, they would go that way. He had finally understood a few weeks back that they were doing it intentionally. They wanted him to be part of the team, not a newcomer.

He was going to miss them when Africa put him half a world away.

Six weeks, and he would be standing on scrubland, putting a clinic together where there was only a dream and a need.

He had a feeling that the three of them had simply decided they were going to extend their network around the globe to follow him. Dave had been adding contacts in the State Department to his Rolodex; Lace had already put her international banking contacts at his disposal; Rae, through the foundation money she managed, was already picking his brain for details about the type of doctors he needed to staff the clinics.

They were being friends.

They hadn’t been able to solve his medical problems, but they had literally put in his hand access to one of the best health clubs in the area, the private cards of the best doctors in the city, even season tickets to the White Sox games.

There were times he marveled at the blessings God chose to give. This group of friends could have only been conceived and put together by the hand of God.

“Anything else, Janet?” Rae asked, pausing on her way back from a telephone conference with Gary in Seattle and Mike in Houston.

Her secretary glanced down her running list. “Mark said he would fax the corporate resolutions over tonight, Linda had a question on the tax distribution from March—I had the information she needed so I faxed it to her—I need a decision on when you would like to meet with Quinn Scott, and Bob Hamilton wants to have lunch next week to follow up on your proposal.”

Rae felt like doing a dance, but settled for a significant smile. “Accept any day next week that Bob Hamilton has available—I’ll call and apologize to whomever you have to bump from my schedule. Remind me to send Dave a thankyou. Pencil Quinn in for either late Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon next week.”

Janet added the information to her list. “I’ll leave you a confirmation message on your voice mail and update the board with what I can arrange. That looks like it.”

“Wonderful. Thanks, Janet.”

Rae was going to be able to leave the office by 6:00 p.m. The changes made in the past six weeks had finally begun to pay off.

She entered the trading room for one last review of the day’s events. She had the place to herself, a rare occurrence.

Mr. Potato Head was smiling.

Rae grinned and tipped his pipe down. Leo’s toys still dotted the room. She’d never had the heart to remove them. This was still his domain, even today. Besides, she liked his toys, they each had a story to tell that made her smile.

It was a spacious room made crowded by the volume of
equipment. She glanced at the news feeds, three televisions monitoring CNN, the financial channel and the news channel, all three taped for playback in case of breaking news, then at the bank of stock price monitors. Leo had written the software driving the price monitors. One monitor showed prices and movements for all the stocks they owned, another monitor showed prices and movements for stocks on their watch list, and the last monitor showed prices and volumes in the market as a whole.

Scott was breaking down the stocks that had dropped or jumped up during the day, would give his recommendations by voice mail tonight; she would do her own analysis of the data in the morning in light of his recommendations and make some decisions.

Rae settled down in the captain’s chair and tipped back, sipping the cup of coffee she had brought with her as she watched the terminals on the trends desk flip through the daily, monthly and yearly graphs for each stock they owned. She paused the progression of the graphs occasionally, adding a few of them to her work list for the morning. On the whole she was satisfied with what she saw.

A touch of a key flipped the display to client portfolios. Rae took her time reviewing the thirty-two screens, looking at the effects the day’s markets had had on her clients’ portfolios.

It had been a good day overall.

All the information she was looking at was available in her own office, but she had decided after coming back from vacation that it would be a strategic move to separate the analysis and planning work she did from the trading work she also directed.

After six weeks, her office felt like a haven again. She had
to worry about instant decisions and responding to events when she was here in the war room; outside of this room, she could back off to her more natural planning mode. It had been a good compromise.

Hiring two more excellent secretaries and thinking through carefully what data she needed to see each morning had let her focus that critical first forty minutes of her day. At Lace’s insistence, she now had breakfast being delivered for everyone in the office at 7:00 a.m. Her appetite was still nonexistent, but Janet was keeping a watch on her, showing up with a plate of food if she forgot to stop working to eat. Rae was pretty sure the dozen roses on the corner of Janet’s desk were from Dave. Trust her friends to have a spy in her office.

A glance at the middle clock on the wall, the one set for Central Standard Time, showed ten minutes before six. It was time to get moving. She needed to swing by Lace’s condo and pick up Dave’s leather jacket on the way to the bowling alley. How Dave’s most cherished possession had ended up at Lace’s place in July was a mystery Rae intended to solve before the night was out.

Lace had been in Canada for a conference, it could have conceivably been cool enough she would need a jacket, but Dave’s leather jacket? It wasn’t fashionable. And Dave didn’t exactly just hand that jacket out. Letting a lady wear that jacket was Dave’s equivalent of giving a class ring.

“Nail it, Rae.”

She stopped the swing, the loud call coming just as she began to step forward, the momentum spinning her around. “Would my cheering section please quit interrupting my concentration?” she demanded, amused.

“Why? You bowl better when we interrupt you,” Dave said.

“Your only strikes came with our help,” Lace confirmed, her patent leather shoes resting on the back of the chair in front of the bench. She was shelling peanuts. She looked about sixteen with the outfit she had on—the poodle skirt was vintage sixties if it was a day, the bubble gum had to be interfering with the peanuts, and her hair was in two ponytails. Two. It was carrying cheerleading beyond the call of duty. It did explain the leather jacket.

“How many strikes is that?”

“Two,” James added cheerfully from his seat as acting scoring secretary.

She scowled at him. She was having a rotten game.

“Try to behave, you’re embarrassing my team.”

“They’re okay, Rae,” the rest of her bench chimed in. Dave tipped his can of soda in thank-you for the support. He had bought the first round of soft drinks for the entire league. He was everyone’s pal tonight.

Rae reset her position, considered what Leo would have done in this situation, and laid a blistering twist on the release, crossing her ball over the fifth board. She watched it flair out to the second board, cross the second set of diamonds and promptly hook into a pocket with a vicious pop.

“All right, Rae!”

She walked back to the bench, smiling.

She slapped hands with her teammates and picked up the towel she had tossed on her seat.

“You’re a pretty good player, aren’t you?” James leaned forward across the back of the seat to whisper.

“Sort of,” Rae whispered back. “We promised the league we would make the games competitive this year.”

“So, where are we going from here?”

It was late, and the foursome paused in the parking lot to consider Dave’s question.

Dave had his arm draped around Lace’s shoulders. James could understand why he didn’t want the evening to end. He didn’t particularly want to see the evening end, either.

Rae paused beside him as they considered what they would do, shifting her bag holding two bowling balls to her other hand. He had offered to carry it for her, but she had declined with a smile and a soft thanks. He hadn’t made an issue of it. The symptoms were gone, but she was still being cautious. Either that, or she didn’t want his help. He preferred to think she was still being careful of his wrists. The first time at the bowling alley, weeks ago, he had picked up a bowling ball and the pain in his wrist had made him nearly gasp in pain. Tonight, he bet he could bowl a game and not feel even a twinge.

“James, will a late night be a problem?” Rae asked him in an undertone, confirming his suspicions of what she was thinking.

He appreciated the question, but he really was okay now. “No.”

“We could go to Avanti’s for a pizza,” she suggested to the group.

“Great idea. They have the best garlic bread sticks,” Lace commented.

“Garlic? Lace…” Dave began to protest.

Lace slipped out from under his arm. “Don’t go making assumptions, Dave. I’ll ride with Rae and we’ll meet you two there.”

Dave sighed. “Sure.”

James hid his smile, aware, as was Rae, how Lace and
Dave were skirting around actually dating. “Come on Dave, ride with me and give me directions. I’ll bring you back here to pick up your car.”

They walked across the parking lot to the car Kevin had loaned him, listening to the laughter of the ladies as they walked in the other direction to Rae’s Lexus.

James unlocked the car, catching sight of Dave’s expression as he turned to watch them. “She does like you, you know.”

“I thought getting a kiss when I was sixteen was a big deal,” Dave commented. “It’s nothing like trying to get one from Lace. I’ve never met a lady with more contrary signals in my life.”

“She doesn’t want to mess up a friendship.”

“No, it’s not that. Rae was like that. I think Lace just likes to be contrary. I made the mistake of asking her out only after I found out she was dating some tax attorney. She’s miffed at me.”

James smiled. “She looked really miffed tonight.”

Dave gave him directions to the restaurant. He smiled. “She does make nice company. But James, I swear, she’s going to have me going in circles for months before she says yes.”

“So, ask her to something you know she can’t refuse. She’s into art in a big way isn’t she?”

“Impressionists.”

“Find a showing she would love to see, make it hard for her to turn you down,” James suggested.

“That’s a good idea.”

James turned east on Hallwood street, easily keeping Rae’s Lexus in view up ahead.

“What’s Rae like to do?” he asked casually—too casually—a few minutes later. He had a few weeks before he left the country; he wouldn’t mind spending some of that time with Rae. He enjoyed her company.

Dave laughed. “Not aiming low, are you?” He thought for a moment. “Rae? I guess I would put bookstores at the top of her list, pet stores, charity auctions, medical conferences. Any conference related to work—financial planning, taxes, stock selection. She’s always been pretty hard to pin down.”