The Gift of a Lifetime Read online

  Marley stared at the coffee cup in Beth’s hands with a blank look on her face and then sighed heavily. ‘Oh, IDK.’ Beth quickly tried to summon up her minimum text-speak knowledge and realised that this meant ‘I don’t know’. ‘Maybe they want you to do something,’ the younger woman suggested then. ‘Whoever sent it. Like maybe it’s a clue of some sort.’ She shrugged then, already becoming bored by it all. ‘You should probably just Google it. That’s what I do if I don’t understand something, you know?’

  ‘You’re probably right – I’ll check it out later.’ Though, Beth knew that spending the rest of the day trying to keep her thoughts off the mysterious delivery and on her customers would be hellish.

  But sometime later, as she was wrapping up a purchase, the shopper’s silver charm bracelet shining beneath the overhead lights caught her eye, and she stopped short.

  ‘Everything OK?’ the woman enquired, looking up at Beth’s sudden sharp intake of breath.

  ‘Of course, yes – thank you.’ She smiled absently but her heart was pounding. Something had just popped into her head related to that strange message with the coffee cup. She couldn’t be certain, and she was desperate to get home to check.

  But if her suspicions were correct – and Beth was pretty sure they were – it merely made this morning’s delivery all the more mysterious …

  Chapter 8

  Danny was feeling claustrophobic. Adele was studying him, waiting for an answer and he just didn’t want to talk. Why couldn’t she understand that? Why did she have to press him so much? It was as if she didn’t truly get the situation he was in. She was looking at it all completely one sided.

  ‘Well?’ she enquired. ‘Haven’t you said anything yet? And if not, why not? You know this isn’t going to end well, Danny. The longer you draw it out, the harder it’s going to be on her, on everyone.’

  She was pushing. He hated when she did this. And lately it seemed as if she pushed all the time. He buttoned his shirt up quickly and averted his eyes from her gaze.

  Even though Adele knew so much about him, and had seen him both at his best and his worst recently, Danny still felt as if they didn’t really know each other. And what scared him more was that right now she looked so determined. Almost as if she was tempted to pick up the phone and tell Beth herself.

  He knew that she wouldn’t – that she couldn’t – do that but sometimes when Adele looked this way, well, he wasn’t so sure. As if, rules and boundaries be damned, she would take matters into her own hands and maybe do what she felt was right on a woman-to-woman level, or something.

  Danny swallowed hard. He couldn’t begin to imagine how that would work out.

  ‘This isn’t just something you casually announce over a cup of coffee, OK? It’s a bit bigger than that,’ Danny said quietly, wishing they could get off the subject. ‘I thought you understood.’

  Adele nodded, her look softening. She pulled her long hair back and threw it over her shoulder. It was interesting, he noted, how she was Beth’s polar opposite. Where Beth was fair, soft and petite, Adele was angular, dark and chiselled.

  It must be her Mediterranean background, Danny thought. Adele Rovere. Although like him a New Yorker born and bred, she’d told him she had Italian ancestors.

  ‘I understand that, I really do. I’m just not sure if you are handling this well. You are making it worse and more complicated with every day that passes. And if you think that Beth doesn’t realise something is up by now … well, I wouldn’t be so sure. Call it women’s intuition, but we sense this sort of thing. We know.’

  Danny wanted to argue with that, wanted to deny it, but he knew that it was probably true. If anything, Beth’s behaviour of late suggested that she did sense something.

  But then again, if he was different or acting off, then she was too. That recent dancing around the kitchen thing like she was starring in a Nora Ephron movie attested to that. And he knew that that wasn’t necessarily caused by him. He had done nothing to invite that kind of behaviour, and he had to admit that bothered him. That she could be so happy when he was feeling like this. They had always been so in tune with one another, he thought sadly. How had things ended up like this?

  ‘Yeah, well, if she senses something, then let’s just say I am realizing a few things too,’ he replied darkly, feeling glum.

  Adele’s eyebrows raised on her smooth forehead. ‘What does that mean?’ she asked, her chocolate eyes narrowing.

  ‘Well, despite what you think, Beth seems in particularly good spirits at the moment. And it’s not because of anything I did. So much for women’s intuition. What do you suppose that means?’

  Adele shrugged her shoulders. ‘I have no idea – how could I? I don’t know Beth, after all. All I know about her and what she’s like is based on what little you have told me. Yes, she’s happy-go-lucky but a delicate soul, and you don’t want to turn her life upside down and all that,’ she intoned, and he looked at her, annoyed.

  Was she trying to suggest that Beth was weak? Because that certainly wasn’t the case. Yes, she might prefer always to look on the sunnier side of life, but there was nothing wrong with that. It was actually one of the things that had made Danny fall in love with her.

  Adele was shaking her head again. ‘Anyway, I’m not the one you should be talking to about all this, Danny. I’ve told you before, I think you should come right out and just tell her. No tiptoeing around it, trying not to hurt her. At this point, that’s impossible anyway.’

  He waved a dismissive hand, feeling irritated by her today. ‘Like I said, just let me do it in my own time, OK? You don’t know her like I do…’

  Adele reached out and tried to put a comforting hand on his arm, but he moved away. ‘Come on, you know I’m just trying to help. I care about you. I know that none of this is easy on you. Because it happened so quickly, and it’s so close to the holidays now … I get it. But I think that despite what’s gone on you’re still reluctant to admit it is happening, Danny. All this…’ she waved towards the bed and around the room. ‘You have to make a decision. And soon.’

  Danny placed his head in his hands, frustrated. ‘And at the end of the day what would that solve? If I tell her now, do you think she’d ever be able to forgive me?’ He stood up and straightened his shirt collar, readying himself to leave. He couldn’t handle this conversation any more at this point. He thought again about what she had said, and wondered if he truly was just sheltering Beth from the truth like you would a fragile doll.

  Sensing that the conversation was definitely closed, Adele followed as Danny made his way to the door.

  ‘Well, you might think you know what you’re doing,’ she warned in parting, her words echoing in Danny’s mind as he took his leave, ‘but keep this up for much longer, and you might just be making Beth’s decision easier when she does find out.’

  * * *

  After work, Beth returned home to Gold Street to discover that once again she’d reached the apartment before Danny, but today she was too distracted to worry or be concerned about it.

  After disposing of her work clothes in lieu of a pair of yoga pants and a T-shirt, she shovelled down a cook-from-frozen lasagne for dinner, then headed into the living room, Brinkley skittering at her feet.

  Sitting down on the sofa, she turned on the TV.

  Smiling, she patted the space next to her and the little dog jumped up, taking a seat on top of a nearby cushion. Powering up her laptop, she waited for the machine to go through its startup and then eagerly opened up her browser and prepared to enter a search query. Immediately, she saw what she was looking for: a YouTube clip from a movie scene; one that she recognised all too well. Clicking on the clip, Beth’s eyes widened happily as she realised that she was right.

  ‘We could have this engraved, couldn’t we?’ said a male voice. The instantly recognisable Paul Varjak played by George Peppard, was speaking to a salesman at Tiffany’s. Beth watched raptly as the salesman took the ring that Paul had just
offered and examined it.

  ‘This, I take it, was not purchased at Tiffany’s?’ the salesman was asking.

  To which Paul replied, ‘No, actually it was purchased concurrent with … uh … well, actually … came inside of … well, a box of Cracker Jack.’

  Beth smiled delightedly. THAT was why today’s set-up all seemed so familiar, the coffee cup, Cracker Jack and more importantly the curious line, ‘We could have this engraved.’ It was from a movie.

  And not just any movie …

  ‘I knew it.’ Beth tossed her computer onto the sofa and jubilantly threw her arms in the air in celebration of her discovery. Brinkley jumped up from the cushion and barked suspiciously, apparently miffed by the disruption. ‘Coffee – like the coffee that Audrey Hepburn drinks as she stands outside the windows of Tiffany’s in the opening scene of the movie. And Cracker Jack – Paul got the ring out of the Cracker Jack box so he would have something to engrave at Tiffany’s,’ she cried, exalted by her discovery. The clues all pointed to the movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s. ‘You know what this means, Brinks?’

  The little dog tilted his head at the question, as if he was waiting for her to tell him.

  She thought again about the hidden message inside the coffee cup, and what it represented. Clearly the sender did want her to do something, and the Breakfast at Tiffany’s-related inscription on the cup was not just a message, but an invitation. Meet me there. Beth was unaccountably thrilled and delighted, not only at the prospect of such an adventure, but where it might take her.

  ‘Seems somebody wants me to go to Tiffany’s.’

  Chapter 9

  The next day at lunchtime, as she approached the famous Tiffany’s store on Fifth Avenue, Beth’s excitement reached a peak. That morning she’d barely been able to concentrate on work at all.

  Thankfully a new stock delivery had kept her busy for much of the time, but it also meant she hadn’t had the chance to talk about any of yesterday’s events with Jodi, whom she guessed would be just as excited and intrigued by it all as she was.

  Or maybe not. With Jodi you never knew.

  Beth took in the store’s front façade, which always looked especially beautiful during the holiday season. This year the merchandisers had made it look as though the store itself was wrapped up with a huge glittering red bow, which ran the entire length and width of the corner building. While it was one of the most exclusive jewellery stores in all of Manhattan, it was also a world-famous landmark – thanks to Audrey Hepburn and the eponymous movie – and regularly amassed extensive crowds both inside the store and outside. Throngs of New York Christmas shoppers and tourists crowded around the front just then, many of them looking to pose for photographs in front of the window that the beautiful Ms Hepburn had made famous in 1961.

  Meet me there.

  OK, so she’d figured out that Tiffany’s was the place she should go. But where exactly? There was nothing about any specific meeting spot (or indeed time) in the clues she’d been given.

  Beth spied the huge picture display windows and wondered if this area was where she was supposed to be. Maybe there would be something obvious in the content or theme that connected everything?

  She quickly but politely made her way through the crowds, having been waylaid by a small group of giddy teenage girls – who all had their hair in up-dos and were sporting big Jackie O-type sunglasses and fake fur coats – to take a photo in front of the window where Holly Golightly stood in the movie.

  Beth’s eyes took in everything. The stunning vintage Christmas-themed showcase full of glistening adornments that were worthy of royalty, elaborate designs using precious stones, the jewels alone easily costing thousands of dollars, if not hundreds of thousands. But all in all it was simply a festive display. The store’s holiday windows were merely tempting those on the outside with their wares – there was nothing in the display or amongst the arrangement that connected to her clue.

  And, disappointingly, there was no one (at least not anyone she recognized) looking for her by the windows, or indeed anywhere around the store’s exterior. Who was she supposed to meet? And where?

  Beth decided to refocus her efforts. There had to be someone waiting for her inside. There just had to be. Why else go to such elaborate lengths to get her to meet whoever it was if the person wasn’t going to turn up?

  As she pushed through the revolving doors that led to Tiffany’s glittering inner sanctum, she wondered just what she was hoping would happen, or who she’d be meeting there.

  Her mouth grew dry and she swallowed nervously. Was it Ryan? The thought had crossed her mind more than once since yesterday’s curious delivery. If so what was he up to? Had their recent conversation about Danny given him reason to think that Beth’s head might be for turning?

  Or could it be Jodi, her friend trying to distract her from what she’d already warned was a potentially troublesome dalliance? No, that seemed a little over the top and not remotely like Jodi, who always preferred to cut to the chase and say straight out what was on her mind.

  In any case, it certainly couldn’t be Danny (who’d arrived home from work at some godforsaken hour yet again last night). To say nothing of the fact that he was up to his eyes at the office, he’d barely had the time to speak to Beth these last few weeks, let alone go to the trouble to concoct such an elaborate gesture.

  No, it had to be Ryan. Beth thought back to recent conversations that the two of them had had over lunch. About New York movies, baseball, relationships and so much more. It was totally like him to do something like this. But Tiffany’s? That seemed a little excessive for a guy she didn’t know that well, didn’t it? Unless he really was that swoonsome romantic type like the hero in Sweet Home Alabama, who’d closed off this very store to propose to his girlfriend.

  Of course Beth knew this wasn’t going to be a proposal or anything like it. In fact she still had no clue what it was all about, but she couldn’t deny that this kind of spontaneity, almost playfulness, was exactly what her life had been missing lately – something exciting, something adventurous and fun.

  Still, she had to be careful. By going along with all this – thrilling though it was – wasn’t she in danger of ending up somewhere she wasn’t yet sure she wanted to be?

  Well, she was here now anyway, Beth argued with herself, so despite her misgivings about what was going on or who was behind all this, she might as well find out what happened next.

  * * *

  Walking into the store, she eagerly returned the smiling doorman’s greeting and then looked around. Trying to make sense of the mass of people here – as well as determine just what exactly she was looking for – was definitely going to be tricky.

  Beth tentatively made a loop around the jewellery floor on ground level – taking a moment to appreciate the stunningly beautiful robin’s egg-blue and white Christmas trees dotted around the room, all adorned with those famed little blue boxes.

  Realizing then just how big the Tiffany’s flagship actually was, she tried to figure out how in the world she was supposed to know if she was in the right area – let alone the right floor.

  Wondering where her intended meeting companion might be, she actively sought out the gazes of people who happened to catch her eye – store clerks, other shoppers, innocent-looking tourists – until she realised that she was probably looking like some kind of weirdo desperately staring down everyone in sight. So she decided to abandon that plan completely.

  Beth paused for a moment next to a display case filled with sparkling diamond necklaces, earrings, and the odd engagement ring. Her mind wandered a little as she took in the beautiful sparklers – symbols of love and commitment – and immediately a wave of melancholy washed over her. Peering down at her unadorned left hand she thought about Danny and wondered if she would ever have a ring like that on her hand.

  Seven years together. But nothing tangible to show for it. No greater commitment had been made. And why was that? Beth wondered.


  She continued staring at the case of diamond rings, trying to imagine what one would look like on her finger; picturing what it would be like if Danny proposed, what he would say. And then, without any control of her thoughts, her mind switched gears. What if it was someone else – say, Ryan – doing the proposing?

  She felt flushed at the thought and immediately abandoned that line of thinking. Again, she was getting way ahead of herself. She barely knew Ryan. And she felt guilty too. Danny was the one, the only one she wanted a ring from.

  Wasn’t he?

  Just as Beth was about to move away from the display counter and concentrate afresh on finding the person she was supposed to be meeting, a Tiffany’s saleswoman behind the counter said, ‘What’s it gonna be, Angelina?’

  Beth looked up confused, and trying to determine if the woman was in fact addressing her. But there was no one else around. She was at least a ten foot radius from anyone else on the sales floor. Plus, the woman, who looked to be in her mid-fifties, was looking directly at Beth. Clearly she was talking to her.

  But why was she addressing her as Angelina?

  ‘I’m – I’m sorry?’ Beth muttered, looking at her in that confused and embarrassed way one gets when in an uncomfortable social situation.

  ‘What’s it gonna be, Angelina?’ the woman repeated, this time with a wry smile on her face.

  Beth’s brow crinkled and she shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, my name isn’t Angelina. I think you must be looking for someone else.’

  But the woman didn’t look at all deterred. In fact, her smile broadened. And her next question made Beth’s heart leap in her chest.

  ‘I assume you like Cracker Jack?’

  This certainly got Beth’s attention, and she moved back towards the counter, placing her hands eagerly down on the glass. ‘Of course I do,’ she exclaimed, and then blushed at her obvious enthusiasm. ‘I mean, I haven’t had Cracker Jack in years. But … so you know about it, yes? The coffee cup and this meeting I’m supposed to be having here?’ she pressed, eager for answers.