Which leaves me with addressing it. But how?
My phone rings, but I let it roll to voicemail. It rings again, and I sigh grumpily as I look at it because there are few people I answer the phone for—Mom, River, Noah, Arielle, Eli, Becky, Simon, and Loretta. Anyone else can leave a message or text me. Mostly because I do not need my car’s warranty extended and I’m not falling for your computer virus scam.
But I see Arielle’s name on the screen. So even though I do not want to talk right now, I answer. “Hey, I can’t talk now. Work stuff is—”
Arielle cuts me off. “Answer your Zoom call. Now.” The line goes dead as she hangs up.
“What?” I ask, but she’s already gone.
A moment later, my computer screen is taken over by a Zoom invitation. I don’t want to answer that either, but Arielle has never done this before. What if there’s something wrong with her or Eli, or Becky, or . . . one of the residents? I’d never forgive myself if I was so caught up in my own drama that I missed saying good-bye to someone. It hurts that my mind goes there, but it’s a sad reality with Arielle’s patients.
I click to join the session and Arielle’s face pops up, filling my screen. Her face is bare, and her hair is pulled up in a messy bun that says she was still feeling last night’s karaoke party this morning too.
“Can you hear me? See me?” Arielle asks, waving at the camera.
“Yeah,” I say sullenly. “Can you hear and see me?”
In answer, Arielle steps back from the camera and instead of the break room at the nursing home I expected to see, she’s in the activity room with a handful of residents.
“Wow! What will these kids think of next?” Mabel asks.
Viktor whistles and shouts, “Looking good, Riley.”
“Uhm, hey, everybody. How’re you doing?” I don’t know what to say. I don’t have time for this when that story is getting shared as we speak and comments are pinging down my feed faster than I can read them.
Hazel barks out, shushing us all instantly. “Quit yer nonsense, girl. We aren’t calling about us, we’re calling about you.”
“Me?”
Arielle leans forward, getting closer to the camera to be heard over the group of seniors as they offer support with various versions of ‘we’re here for you, Riley.’
“I don’t even know how they found out. Not like anyone here is on the ’gram or social media. Hell, they call it ‘The Interwebs’ and ‘The Google’. But news spread like wildfire, and they insisted on talking to you.” She looks over her shoulder, saying quieter as if we have any privacy at all, “How’re you holding up?”
“I’m okay,” I answer instantly.
Arielle’s lips press together. I can read the disappointment there. I absolutely just did what she said I do. But is it such a bad thing to focus on the good? Why wallow in bad stuff when there’s so much joy to be found, even if it’s hard to find it right now?
“You’re okay? My bad then. I guess we can hang up, everyone. Riley’s fine, totally fine. She’ll probably go online later and post something about Joroast. Business as usual, nothing at all out of the ordinary happening today.” Arielle raises a brow in challenge.
I growl, giving in. “Fine. You want the truth? I have no idea what to do! I hurt Noah and need to fix that. I’ve got this scandal going on because I said . . . what I said.” I don’t want to repeat it. I’ve already hurt enough people, Noah and myself included, with my thoughtless words. “And I need to fix that. People are coming out of the woodwork, gleefully dancing through my comments with pot-stirring crap that hurts. And I just want to . . . hide.”
Arielle snaps her fingers and then points at me through the screen. “There you are. It’s about damn time.”
I sag, feeling empty after that outburst.
Viktor pipes up, “Aw, girl, don’t look so sad. That fire you just showed? It shows your strength, and it’s real pretty on you.”
Mabel bumps him with a shoulder. “Not the time to flirt with her, old man.”
Viktor winks at Mabel and then smirks at me. “There is never a wrong time to flirt.”
“How about at a funeral?” Hazel deadpans.
Viktor chuckles. “You’d be surprised how a little bit of pleasure can soften the hurt of grief.”
“Ew,” I say, not sure how the conversation got onto this topic.
“Wasn’t there something you wanted to say that wasn’t grossly inappropriate, Viktor?” Arielle prompts.
Viktor looks at Arielle in confusion for a moment and then recognition dawns on his face. “Yeah, yeah . . . there is. Back in the day, I was a bit of a politician. Betcha didn’t know that, did you?”
Hazel interrupts with a snarky, “Bet you did more than your fair share of shaking hands and kissing babies.”
Viktor frowns at her before continuing to tell me, “Anyway, there’s a lot of mudslinging in politics. I had to put up with a lot. People talking about me, my wife, even my kids . . . like they knew us up close and personal, which they most certainly did not. Sound familiar?”
I nod. “Yeah. What’d you do?”
“My damn job. Those people elected me to take care of the city, and I wasn’t gonna let some mouthy folks stop me from doing it. But I also wasn’t gonna let people say things about my sweet Agnes. Her kind soul didn’t deserve that. Lord knows, she had enough on her plate taking care of me,” he says wistfully. I swear the women are getting teary-eyed too, likely remembering their long-passed spouses.
“I gave ’em hell, I did. They’d write that I was misusing funds, and I’d invite them all to the budget meeting. They insinuated that Agnes was unhappy with a sour man like me, so we’d go on the town and I’d spin her around the dance floor until she was so dizzy, she couldn’t help but grin. They said I was doing a bad job, and I told them to send in their suggestions.”
Hazel pats Viktor’s hand. “That’s actually real nice. I bet Agnes loved that.”
He lays his hand over Hazel’s and offers a small smile that looks sweet, right up until he says, “You aiming to get spun around the floor yourself? That could be arranged, you know. Arielle . . . I think we need to have a dance.”
“Like a prom!” Mabel shouts in excitement. “We can have a ‘Get Fancy’ day and then dance the night away.”
“As long as we’re done by seven PM. That’s my bedtime,” Bertha adds.
Arielle glares at me as the residents get more and more excited, some of them telling stories of their younger days attending dances. Apparently, Mabel was prom queen. Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me.
“You see what you’ve started? A prom? Seriously?” Arielle says on a sigh, but I think it’s all for show. She loves her patients, and if they’re excited to get dressed up and sway back and forth a bit, Arielle is for sure going to make it happen.
I shrug but smile. Just a little one, but it feels good. Like even in the middle of chaos and disaster, there can be something good if you look hard enough. And if you can’t see it, you just make it happen yourself.
“I’ll help plan everything,” I assure Arielle.