Secrets

Chapter 34

Waiting for things can be a very hard thing for anyone at any age. One will say that children are the worst at waiting as they have not learned the value of patience and while this is true, their eagerness to receive a reward on their birthday or when their parents return from the grocery store is understandable and the many of us feel in our everyday lives. For myself, I learned to be patient while waiting a long time for the woman I love to accept my marriage proposal. For a villainous individual, she learns to wait inside the fancy urn outside my hotel room, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. For the bogeyman, it is waiting for the moment in which you turn out your light that he will emerge from the closet and attempt to scare you.

Oftentimes, when you are waiting for something and practicing patience, the most you can do is watch others around you because they are not waiting for something like you are, except for the bogeyman as he is always waiting and watching you. As Holly Snicton sat on the polished wooden bench at Mulctuary Money Management, waiting for a man to plan and make arrangements for a guardian she did not need and in a place where she did not live, all she could do was watch. Watch as other bankers went from one office to another to compare bank statements, watch financial advisors make notes on their charts about changes in financial accounts, watch administrative assistants travel from the copy machines and answer the telephones as they rung, and watch customers and clients walk in and out to either withdraw money or open their own accounts. Sometimes Holly liked to imagine what they were saying to one another and what their lives were like outside this particular moment. Perhaps they needed the money to open up a company that sold water ski equipment or perhaps they served oysters in a badly themed restaurant where one was forced to dress like a mussel and secretly search for pearls in the dishes.

She often did this with her father on the beach on days when it was particularly busy, and she was forced to wait for it to clear up so she could go swimming without it being so crowded. The two of them would sit on their back porch and watch all the people putting on suntan lotion, setting up their umbrellas, eating a picnic luncheon, skipping rocks along the fjord, searching for pearls in oysters, rowing their boats across the surface of the water, reading a book, or simply take a nap on their beach towels. They'd quietly take guesses about how each person came to end up on this beach. A summer holiday, studying the sands and tides, wanting to learn how to swim, or fleeing from the law, is the one that I find is the most common reason people come to beaches. The father and daughter would then guess at what they were saying and laugh privately to themselves before going to get an ice cream. It was a way to pass the time and develop patience. Her father also said this helped her learn how to observe different things such as what the person was carrying, and you could make assumptions of who they were and what their job was. Now knowing that he was part of a secret organization, she wondered if he was teaching her how to recognize good and bad people.

A woman emerged from Mr. Poe's office in a hurry, breaking Holly out of her thoughts. This person was likely the meeting that the banker had mentioned before and she was in such a hurry that she ran past the girl, who simply watched her go.

Dressed in a floral dress and a large hat with a feather sticking out of it that did not match the rest of her outfit. She carried a large camera in her hands and a pencil behind her ear. Hanging off her arm was a purse that contained several notepads. Just by those observations alone, Holly could guess that the woman was likely a reporter who was always looking for the latest scoop and if she had to guess, the woman was covering the Quagmires' kidnapping. For a moment, she wanted to stand and talk to the woman to see if she had information that could help her in saving her friends. However, she expected to be ignored as most children are by preoccupied adults. The young girl was startled when the woman paused to look at her.

"Well, hello there," a pleasant voice said. "What is your name?"

"Holly. My name is Holly."

"What I lovely name. So very merry, reminds me of the various holidays that occur in December. My name is Eleanora Poe, editor-in-chief of The Daily Punctilio."