“Natalie!” Sherri sounds like she’s smiling too. She has a great voice. Very perky, like the girl next door. “Are you ready?”
“So ready,” I say.
I’ve done several podcast interviews in the past, so I feel relatively experienced with them. Usually, I find a quiet place to set up, like the conference room, and I invested in a decent mic so listeners can actually hear me. This is the fifth podcast interview I’ve done to promote my 5K, so I shouldn’t be nervous at all.
But something about this entire day is making me edgy.
“Today we have Natalie Farrell joining us,” Sherri’s voice pipes up through the speakers. “Natalie has organized a 5K run this Saturday to benefit a foundation doing research in cerebral palsy.”
“That’s right, Sherri.”
“Now, Natalie, I hear you have quite a few people participating in this charity run?”
I clear my throat. The key to talking on podcasts is not to go on too long. You want it to be a conversation, not a monologue. “Yes, that’s right. I work at a fabulous company called Vixed, which sells nutritional supplements, and almost all of my coworkers will be running, as well as many people in the community. We’ve raised a lot of money so far and are still soliciting donations.”
“And this is not the first time you’ve done this, right?”
“It’s my fifth time. And we have more people participating this year than any other year previously.”
“Amazing.” Sherri pauses. “Now tell me a little bit about this charity. I hear it’s very meaningful to you.”
I am vaguely aware that Sherri has asked me a question and I need to answer it, but something has distracted me. Before starting the podcast, I put my phone on silent and placed it on the conference table next to my laptop. Now the phone is vibrating with an incoming call. I look down at the screen—the call is from a blocked number.
Like this morning.
Help me.
“Natalie?” Sherri’s voice startles me out of my distraction. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, yes.” Thank God she can edit this prior to the broadcast. I’m desperate to take the call, but I recognize how incredibly rude it would be, so I let it go to voicemail. “Sorry about that. What was your question?”
“I was just wondering why this charity is so close to your heart.”
“Well…” I close my eyes and take a deep breath. I always get choked up during this part, but at least it takes my mind off the mystery phone call. “My best friend growing up had cerebral palsy. She struggled with it a lot. Unfortunately, she’s no longer with us. So this is in Amelia’s honor.”
“Oh my. I can hear how much you must miss her. I’m sure she’s looking down on you and grateful for what a good friend you were and still continue to be.”
“Yes. I… I hope so.”
I take another deep breath, struggling to get my composure back. It’s hard to talk about Amelia, but she’s the reason I’m doing this. That always needs to be said.
We spend the next fifteen minutes talking more about the charity itself and the details of the run. This Saturday is promising to be a beautiful day, and we’re going to have a great showing at Florian Hall, which is the start and the end point of the run.
I expect it will go off without a hitch.
Chapter Five
One thing I love about my job is that I’m not stuck in the office all day. I would lose my mind if I had to spend nine to five in that cubicle Monday through Friday. But fortunately, Seth allows me to travel to vitamin and health stores in the greater Boston area, because he knows that the personal touch can help to make sales.
Soon after a quick sandwich in the office, I travel to a sales call at a nutritional store in Quincy. Quincy is a commuter town on the transit system’s Red Line, largely made up of an eclectic mix of people who want to live near the city, but can’t afford to pay the steep Boston housing prices. And it has an amazing Chinatown, where I could seriously eat dinner every single night.
There are also a large number of vitamin stores, and by now I have sold products to nearly every single one of them. I like to think of myself as Quincy’s Official Vixed Girl. Today I visited one of the stores I’ve never made a sale with in the past, but I managed to leave with an order for three boxes of our products. And the owner informed me that if they sold well, he would be requesting more.
As I climb back into my car with the paperwork for the new orders, I check my phone. There’s a text message waiting for me from my mother:
Coming to dinner Sunday night?
My mother invites me to Sunday night dinner well in advance nearly every weekend. It’s a bit of a tradition in our family. She told me once that she (not so) secretly hopes one day I will show up with a serious boyfriend, but unfortunately, I have not yet dated a guy who is worthy of the Sunday night dinner. After all, whoever I bring is going to get grilled all night long.
But for the first time, I consider inviting a guest this Sunday: Caleb. I really feel like he could be the guy. At the very least, he could withstand my mother’s incessant questioning. And if I invited him, he would say yes.
I type into the phone:
I’m bringing…
Before I can type the rest of that sentence, I rethink it. What Caleb and I have is great, but it’s still very early. I don’t know if I want to subject him to my mother yet. And if things don’t work out, I’ll never hear the end of it. What happened to that nice Caleb? Why wasn’t this one good enough for you? So I revise my text:
I’m bringing salad.
Bringing salad is a much smarter choice than bringing Caleb. After all, my mother only cooks greasy, fatty meals.
I scroll through the messages on my phone. I checked my voicemails right after my podcast, but the blocked caller didn’t leave a message. And now it’s nearly three and there has still been no word from Dawn. She is the kind of person who always responds to text messages within five seconds, so no response the entire day is extremely strange. I shoot off a quick message to Seth:
Did Dawn show up for your meeting at 2?
Immediately, those little bubbles appear on the screen. A second later, his response pops up:
No. I guess she forgot
Dawn—forget a meeting? That seems highly unlikely. Although now that I think about it, there were a few meetings a bit ago where she showed up just when the meeting was ending and seemed confused when she realized she was an hour late. But that problem resolved itself, and lately, Dawn has been back to her almost scarily prompt self. In fact, if Dawn appeared even a millisecond after the scheduled start time for a meeting, I would faint dead away from shock.
And of course, there was her request to meet with me as well, about that “matter of great importance.” And in a very uncharacteristic fashion, she left early and blew me off. And then that phone call this morning…
Help me.
This is not like her at all. Something is wrong. I know it. Maybe everyone else at the office blew it off, but they didn’t hear the way Dawn sounded on that phone call. She’s in trouble.