Back to Astaroth’s Wager, Part XV.
Adelaide and Hank were still sleeping soundly when Thomas got up the next morning. He admired and envied the peace of their slumber and saw no need to wake them as he slipped out of the bedroom. Florence was already stirring in the kitchen, however, and she offered to make him breakfast. The stove wasn’t lighting properly again. He said, “I thought they were supposed to come by with a new stove yesterday.”
“They did, but it was working fine yesterday morning, so I just sent them away while Adelaide was taking a bath with Hank,” Florence explained.
Thomas groaned. It had taken them two weeks to order the new stove, and he was deeply annoyed at the possibility of another two weeks before they could schedule a new delivery. “Please don’t send them away next time. This stove hasn’t worked in a while.” He fetched his gold lighter from his coat pocket and used it to light the stove, and after it was lit, he set the lighter down on the kitchen table.
He sat down to drink his coffee and caught the time. He wasn’t quite sure how, but it was twenty minutes later than he’d thought it was. He dashed out the door without breakfast and hurried in to work.
When he got to his office, Bernadette was missing. For some reason, she hadn’t shown up or called in to tell him where she was, and he went about his morning handling everything she normally did, such as answering his calls and filling out forms, in addition to writing a report about the missing $1,000 in accounting.
Thomas went into the accounting office to follow up on his investigative work from the night before, and he was met with a number of cold dismissals from everyone there. He found it extraordinarily odd that none of them wanted to make so much as eye contact with him. After a couple of minutes of trying in vain to get information out of them, he headed back to his own office.
He ran into Mr. Meese in the hall. “Tom—I was just looking for you. I need to see you in my office. Say—do you have a light? I can’t seem to find mine.”
Thomas reached into his coat pocket for his lighter, but he remembered that he’d left it on the kitchen table. He apologized—“My sister borrowed it this morning”—and followed Mr. Meese into his office.
Mr. Finch, the head of the studio, was waiting in Mr. Meese’s office along with a sheepish Bernadette.
“Have a seat, Tom,” Mr. Meese said.
“What’s this about?” Thomas asked. He was worried. He didn’t understand what was going on.
Mr. Finch said, “Bernadette here came forward with what happened. We told her she didn’t have to, but she felt it was only right that you had a chance to face the person who produced the evidence against you.”
“What evidence?” Thomas asked.
“The check you stole. She found it underneath your clock this morning,” Mr. Finch said. “Now, I hardly want to make this a police matter—”
“I didn’t steal anything!” Thomas cried.
“Tom, I didn’t say anything about the lighter before—” Mr. Meese said.
“What?”
“You stole that lighter out of my office. It’s ok—you can keep it, but I’m afraid—”
“I haven’t taken anything! You gave me that lighter, back in San Francisco—remember?” Thomas pled.
Mr. Finch said, “Son, you can’t keep your job. Now, we need you to pack up your office and leave by one o’clock. If you’re not out of here, we’ll have to call the police.”
“This has got to be some kind of misunderstanding. I didn’t steal anything. You’ve got to believe me. Mr. Meese, please—you know I didn’t take anything from you,” Thomas said.
“Tom, I hope you can learn to be a better man after this,” Mr. Meese said.
“Bernadette—where did you find it exactly? Maybe it was someone else,” Thomas insisted.
“It’s a good thing your father’s not here to see this. He’d’ve been disappointed in you, son,” Mr. Meese said.
There was no further discussion. Thomas was shown to the door, and while a couple of Mr. Meese’s burlier male assistants watched, Thomas packed up his office and left the studio offices.
He couldn’t go home, though. Everything had just started to improve for them again, particularly with Florence’s miraculous recovery. Thomas was sure he wouldn’t be able to get another job in the pictures, because he knew he couldn’t get Mr. Meese to write him a letter of reference. They’d have to sell their house and move to an apartment, and Thomas would have to take whatever job was available to them again. He was only 24, and he felt ruined. He didn’t understand why, either. He couldn’t figure out what had happened. The greater part of him was outraged at the thought of being accused of stealing, even though he hadn’t done so much as steal a paperclip from the office, and he wanted to run through the studio offices, screaming and punching everyone who didn’t believe him. He fantasized about it, but he didn’t do it. He just drove to Santa Monica and stared at the ocean from the pier until it was the time he typically headed home.
The traffic home was difficult. Despite staring at the ocean all afternoon, Thomas had no idea how to explain to Adelaide what had happened. The afternoon was extremely hot, and the air felt hotter when he drove into his neighborhood. There was a stinging, unpleasant smell in the air that was characteristic of a fire, and because he didn’t believe that his day could get any worse, it didn’t occur to him that it could be his own house.
At least, not until he pulled onto his street.
Everything was gone. Everything. Everyone was gone, too. Adelaide and Hank and Florence. They were all gone. They were dead. They had all died in the fire that had destroyed everything that Thomas Carver had counted as his own in the whole world.
The conclusion is coming next week! Really! Dominus tecum.
