Chapter One

“Ree? Ree Medina?”

Regina turned around and glared at the man who had stopped her in the hallway of the office building where she worked. He was tall and strapping, but his face was goofy and boyish. His hair was buzzed close on the sides, and a thick yellow shock hung from the top over one eye. He had a big, delighted grin on his face. When she looked pointedly at the hand on her elbow, he let it drop and reddened. He pushed his hair aside. He’d had no thought but delight to see her, but he was now feeling like a worm.

“I’m sorry, I thought I knew you.” Then he was confused. “That is you, isn’t it? Aren’t you Ree Medina?”

“My name is Regina Hannon,” she told him coldly. Then she realized he looked familiar. “Mary Medina is my sister,” she added. “Some people called me Ree when I was in high school.”

“Al McDonald. I’m sorry. I really thought your name was Medina.” Then he smiled disarmingly. “You probably don’t remember me. You went to Richfield, right? You might not remember me, but I knew you. I had a crush on you. You were a star, I was a goat.” Then he looked puzzled again. He had known her as Ree Medina.

She looked around. Why was he here? “Do you work here?” Even as she said it, it occurred to her that if he was a client, she was being very rude, and it could get her in trouble.

“No, I work at Pike Patterson, just started. Engineering, other end of the building. I was looking for Rosa.”

Rosa was an ad tech who did drafting after hours at home. Regina said, “She’s probably here. This way.” She was thinking, What a nuisance.

She passed through the front hall. It was early, and no one was in the front offices yet. Good. She didn’t want to see anyone. In the back, Rosa’s desk lamp was on, and she was already working at her desk.

“Morning, Rosa,” and to the man who was following her, without turning around: “Nice to see you.”

Regina continued down the hall to her own office at the very back and shut the door behind her. It was small, but it was hers. She preferred it to the larger offices up front, not that she could have had one. She liked her office because the window faced a wooded lot. She had carefully positioned her desk so she could not see anything but trees, and so a person had to come all the way around the door to see her.

She thought about Al McDonald and tried to remember him. It would have been a good fifteen years. She had not seen a single person from her high school since she had graduated, and she would have preferred to keep it that way. Then she remembered him from Physics class. Smart guy. Sat next to her. Certainly not cool. She found an unexpected soft spot, though: he was nice. She remembered that she used to like to talk to him. He was easy to talk to, and she always ended up saying more than she intended. It annoyed her and made her sad.

She pushed away the thought of Al McDonald, opened a portfolio in front of her, and paged through a presentation she had ready. She hated it. Then she tried to think how she could have done it differently and couldn’t think of anything. Maybe it was good. Actually she did like it. In fact, she thought it was one of the best things she had done. She blew out the breath she had been holding and shook herself. Enough of this. She had a few more things to finish up before a nine o’clock meeting where she would show her boss what she had done. It was the first time he had given her a job this big. Usually she played second to Steven Dare and carried out his ideas. Steven wasn’t saying so, but she knew he resented her having the lead on this one. Whatever she did, he wouldn’t like it, and he would be there and he would say so, and Ron, the Puppet, would listen. Ron was the boss, but he deferred to Steven on any issue of substance. The Puppet had inherited the business.

“He gave that one to you because you’re a woman.” Steven had actually said this when she first got the assignment. A woman had not held a position of any importance at this advertising agency in the forty years of its existence, and he thought she had the lead because she was a woman.

“Kind of like he hired me because I’m a woman,” she had replied. It was 1975, and women were just beginning to win leadership roles in businesses, even those like graphic arts; the men had the top positions. Steven brushed off her suggestion that he was being sexist. He considered himself enlightened.

“Don’t be silly. The clients are a bunch of feminists. But they’re going to have to take it to the donor, whoever he is. So it’s got to be good.”

“It will be,” she had said. Now she looked at it blankly. She could not judge. She struggled with mounting panic. Stop it, she commanded silently. It was only a meeting with Steven and the Puppet. Who else would be there? No one, she hoped, but she couldn’t be sure. Still, no reason to panic. She considered Steven for a minute and decided she suspected that Steven wanted to get her fired. She suspected that she was being given rope to hang herself. If the clients didn’t like her proposals they could lose the job. Ron and Steven had cleared her table so she could focus on this one project. If they lost it she’d be dangling in thin air. They could easily cut her loose. They would say business was slow, making necessary cutbacks and all that. She was being set up. She gasped aloud as she grasped this picture. She stood and paced.

There was a knock; it was Rosa at her office door.

“I brought you an empanada. Homemade, pumpkin.”

“Thanks.”

“I want to thank you for sticking up for me about me working six to three this week. It really helps.”

“How’s your daughter?”

Rosa shrugged. “This way, I keep an eye on her. She sleeps ‘til noon. By the time she’s moving around, I can be home.” She looked at the boards on Regina’s desk. “I love it.”

Regina said nothing.

“It’s so cool, it’s all your project.”

“Rope to hang myself.”

“No!” Rosa wailed. “They’ll love it!”

“Steven wants me fired.”

“You’re kidding. Oh come on.”

“Yeah, I’m kidding.” She sounded serious, though.

“Steven is always sniffing around here. I think he likes you.”

“Liked. He’s been asking me out. I’ve been blowing him off.” This was more or less true. He kept asking her to go for a drink or a cup of coffee after work. This he did with every attractive young woman the firm ever hired, and since Steven, the firm only hired women who were young and attractive. The previous Friday, she had been unwisely confrontational about refusing him. Defensive, he had called her. Just being friendly. Why did she always have to be so prickly?

Rosa lingered, looking distressed.

“Need anything? For the meeting?”

“No, thanks, I’m fine.” When Regina said nothing further, Rosa said, “You know Mr. McDonald? He said he knew you in high school. He’s so nice. He’s an engineer with Pike Pat. He’s so cute, and he’s really nice to me. I guess he’s too young for me.” Rosa was forty, single mother of three, the youngest 13. “About right for you, though. I think he likes you. He was saying he was afraid to even talk to you when you were in high school, you were so beautiful and popular. Didn’t you know him?”

Regina was hardly listening. When Rosa waited for an answer she looked up, played back the last noises in her head, and said, “I knew him, but I really don’t remember much about him.” She looked at the clock. It was five to nine.

Briskly, her manner betraying none of her doubts, Regina entered the conference room and laid out her work on the big oval table as people drifted in with coffee cups. The Puppet smiled and said, “Oh!” involuntarily. He liked what he saw. Regina liked it, too, as she saw the colors and the elegant design splashed on the table. She felt a little thrill. It was actually quite beautiful. But she stole a glance at Steven, who was saying nothing. Ron had brought in several other artists and one of the salesmen, too, and they all murmured approvingly. Then Ron turned to Steven. “What do you think?”

“It’s beautiful work, as usual,” he said, and Regina’s jaw tightened. She heard the “But”. It was something about the way he left it hanging.

“This is a PSA about victims. Women who are trapped and living in fear. We are supposed to reach out to them and connect. They need to understand that we know what it’s like for them, so they can come forward to us.”

They all waited expectantly. Regina said nothing. She was thinking, Right, Steven, you would know how they feel. Steven continued. “The colors are gorgeous, but they’re bright and strong. This is almost light-hearted in tone. Where is the tragedy here? Where is the fear and helplessness they must be feeling?”

He spun on his heel and spoke to Ron as if addressing a roomful of people. “Ron, do you remember that piece I did for Safe Haven? We did a photo shoot in the alley at dawn. Remember that? We got an award for it.”

Regina thought about it. She remembered a shadowy, terrified-looking face. She said, “The award from the Chamber of Commerce?”

Ron looked back at Regina’s jewel-like designs. “Regina,” he said, “This is beautiful work, but Steven does have some experience in the subject matter. He may be right. But it’s not up to us, it’s up to the client, and you never know what they’re going to say. I like to run with more than one option. How about working up an alternative that’s kind of on the other end of the spectrum? We’ll see what they like.”

“We’re supposed to show it to them tomorrow. I can’t ‘work up’ another presentation like this by tomorrow even if I stay here all night.” Regina heard herself mocking his words and felt danger. “I mean, Ron, I can’t. It’s too late in the process.”

Ron looked at Steven, who shrugged. “Let’s show it to them then. I’m not saying they won’t like it. I’m just saying what I think their message needs to be. If they really don’t like this tone we can show them the Safe Haven project and offer to redo it along those lines.”

The salesman looked up. “Doesn’t that kind of suggest we did our best work for some other client?” He looked at Regina, “That’s assuming they’d like Safe Haven better, which I don’t necessarily think will happen.”

“Tell you what,” Steven said. “I’ll pull the artwork for Safe Haven, without the copy. We can just have that available to show them if they say they want something a little more – he stopped to choose a word.”

Regina said, “Tragic?”

“Empathetic,” Steven said.

The salesman shook his head. “What if they’ve seen the Safe Haven project? They’re in the field. They’ll see we’re giving them stuff we’ve used before for other clients.”

“It could be why we got the job,” Steven said. “Have we thought of that?”

Ron said, “Look, it’s Regina’s project and the work is good. She’s put a lot of time into it, been doing nothing else. We’re done, and it’s time to show it to the customer. Let’s run with it. I don’t see why we couldn’t have the Safe Haven artwork on hand just in case for some reason they want something with a darker mood.”

Regina said, “Sure,” easily, like it was nothing. Only a spot of color high on her cheek betrayed her fury. She saw as she began to reach for her work that her hand was trembling and stalled, fussing with her portfolio like something was missing. The meeting broke up. Ron’s assistant Beckie started straightening the chairs.

Steven said, “Great job, Regina. I mean it. I was just speculating about the perspective I got from a similar job.”

Then he cornered Ron and they left together. Beckie caught Regina’s eye with a sympathetic smile. “I love it,” she said. Regina didn’t trust herself to answer.

“I think Ron liked it, too,” Beckie said. She shrugged.

“How’d it go?” Rosa asked as Regina passed by on the way back to her office. Rosa followed her to the door.

“Fine. Terrific. Steven ripped it up and Ron wants to go ahead and show it to the client anyway.”

“What?” Rosa looked bewildered and dismayed. “You don’t mean he ripped it up.”

“He doesn’t think they’ll like it.”

“But why? It’s beautiful.”

“He said it had the wrong tone. Ron’s going to show them Steven’s artwork from another project and give them a choice.” Rosa made a little sympathetic moan. Regina said, “I’m fine,” and Rosa backed away.

Regina slapped her portfolio on the desk and sat down, thinking there was absolutely nothing she could do. She was cornered.

She could hear a voice in the hall and then she heard her name. It was that pest from the engineering firm, coming to see her. She could hear him talking to Rosa, and Rosa babbling away. What in the hell was she telling him? Finally a pause. Was he gone? But there he was.

“Hi.” He was red again. He had blond hair and the kind of face that showed his emotions. At the moment, it showed he was having second thoughts about trying to approach her. Why then did he persist? “I thought maybe you’d like to get some lunch. Maybe,” he got even redder, “just catch up on old times, high school.”

She looked down at the portfolio in front of her on her desk.

“Are you busy? Is this a bad time?”

She sighed again. “Not really. There’s nothing more to be done. Maybe lunch is a good idea.”

He stepped closer to a watercolor on the wall and studied it.

“Isn’t that the Hannon place?”

“That would be my place,” she said, and once again her tone was acid. Why didn’t he give up? She had all but told him to go away and leave her alone. But he continued looking at the painting. It showed a large house on a hill overlooking an expanse of water and surrounded by trees in fall colors.

“It’s beautiful,” he said. “It had a name…”

“Blue Lake.”

“Is that the lake or the house?”

“Both.”

He saw the RPH in the lower righthand corner and said, “Did you paint this?”

She nodded.

“Was that always the name? Didn’t it have another name before that?”

“A long time ago it was called Happy Lake.” When he continued listening she said, “But a little girl drowned there. It belonged to my great grandfather then, and the house wasn’t there, just a summer cottage. The lake was smaller then. It was dammed up and enlarged when the house was built. But all this was a very long time ago. How could you have heard about that?”

“I don’t know, it was sort of a local legend, like the lake was haunted or something. Or not haunted, unlucky. I mean when I was a kid. We knew it was there, but it was private, so it was kind of mysterious. They said it was really dangerous, and whenever somebody went in, they got sucked under. They said if you went in to help, you got sucked under, too. But I knew some kids who snuck in and swam there on a dare, or on Halloween, not that I ever did, I didn’t. It was true that somebody drowned there, then? Was it that long ago?”

“Two little girls drowned there. One a long time ago. Then another one many years later.”

“That’s what they said. One of the Hannon girls.”

“That would be one of my sisters.”

“I’m sorry.” He colored again. “I didn’t mean to bring that up.”

“It was before my time. I never knew her.”

“So you lived there.” Something was still confusing him, and Regina knew what it was.

She spoke haltingly, like she was trying to explain something extremely complicated. “When I was in high school, I stayed with … Mary Hannon … my sister … a lot of the time because … my mother was … ill.”

He said, “Oh.”

She added, choosing her words carefully, “At one point, there was some confusion about my name being the same as Mary Hannon’s. She is much older. She was married. Medina is her married name. Her maiden name was Hannon. My name is Hannon. Their children, the other children, are much older.”

This was a fair enough presentation of the facts, she thought, all true. She was looking somewhat exasperated by now, and he was looking even more confused.

“Look,” she said. “I’m sure you don’t need to know my family history.” Was it possible that he was even redder?

He said, “I know you’re in the middle of a big project.”

She waved dismissively. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Rosa said it’s a big opportunity.”

“For them to fire me.”

He scratched his head. “Yeah, I know. I heard. I’m sorry.”

Regina’s head snapped up.

“What?”

“Wait, what did you say?”

“No, what did you say?”

He looked pained and began to back out. “Ree -- Regina, I’m sorry. I’m interrupting you...”

Regina stood up. “It’s okay. Just never mind. Excuse me a minute.”

She slipped around him out the door and disappeared down the hall. Al drifted out toward Rosa’s desk, unsure what to do. He decided to wait.

“Ron?”

“Hey --” Ron looked up and broke off as Regina shut his door and stood in front of his desk. He motioned and said, “Have a seat.” She remained standing.

“I quit. I’m resigning.”

“What? Just like that?”

“Something has come up. I’m leaving.” In the corner of her eye she saw Steven at the door.

“But we’ve got a meeting in the morning, with your client.”

“The work is done. If they like it, you’re all set. If they don’t, you’re back to square one anyway, and Steven’s got it covered. You don’t need me for this.”

“Where’s the artwork? I mean, where do we find it all? Can you give it to Steven?”

“It’ll be in my office.”

He started to say something and changed his mind.

“We’d be sorry to see you go. Think it over. Stay in touch.”

She stalked past Steven, who followed her.

“Regina.”

He grabbed her arm, and she whirled to glare at him.

“Something came up?” He said it as though it could not possibly be true.

“Yes, something did.”

“I can fix this.”

“Fix what?”

“Come on, let’s talk. I’ll buy you lunch.”

She gave him an incredulous look and snorted derisively, unable to conceal her contempt.

“This is about this morning.”

“No, Steven, this is about something else entirely. It has nothing to do with you.”

“You said you quit because something came up.”

“Something did. My father is dying. I need to go home.”

She watched his face as he struggled visibly with shock, surprise, and confusion. She turned on her heel.

Back in her office, Regina began to gather her belongings, while Al hovered uncertainly at the door. What was hers? What did she care enough about to take with her? Her diplomas of course. Ivy league and summa cum, Master of Fine Arts. Those wearyingly credentials.

The painting.

A picture of her smiling in a suit, surrounded by Ron, Steven, and a couple of board members of local charities: she would leave that behind. She considered tossing it in the trash, but opted instead just to leave it behind with the paperclips. Abruptly, she called an end to it, taking only her purse and her diplomas. She wanted out.

When she turned to go, Al McDonald was still waiting right where she’d left him. When she looked at him blankly, he said, “Are you ready now?”

He looked at what she was carrying and looked confused again. Was he always so befuddled? She headed out the building and he followed.

She said, “Ready for what?” They both stopped on the steps, now in bright sun.

He said, “For lunch?”

“Oh. Look, I’m sorry. Something has come up. It’s my father. He’s very ill. I have to go home.”

It was unanswerable, but he looked at her as though he was beginning to wonder if she was crazy. So she said, “I just quit.” Why was she telling him this? “My father and I were not close. It’s a long story. But I have to go home.” Vaguely, she said, “There’s the house and the property, and I doubt I’ll be back any time soon. So it’s not about that,” she waved at the office. He looked down at the watercolor under her arm. “I’ll be at Blue Lake.” And for some reason, she gave him the number.

He watched as she slipped into a blue MG. The top was down and the sun shone on her red gold hair. She was, if anything, more beautiful than he remembered her. But nothing about her made sense. She was Ree Medina. Wasn’t she? Since when was she Regina Hannon? Did she really just quit? And what was this about her father all of a sudden? He watched for a while after her car sped out of sight. And then she was gone.

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