1
Once upon a time, color had dominated Eva Jamison’s days.
Now she stared at a white wall, with nothing but a black computer screen, a pen holder, and a stapler decorating her tiny world. Flat off-white fixtures overhead fed canned fluorescent light to the open room where her desk was squeezed in with ten others. The single window in the space—located about as far from Eva’s desk as possible—gave a view not of Central Park but the side of another gray building.
But it wasn’t the Manhattan Heart Center’s fault that it was an artist’s nightmare, with its minimalist black furniture, drab olive carpet, and tacky motivational posters.
No, the problem was her. She didn’t belong here.
And yet this was the only place she wanted to be.
“Eva.”
She startled. The center’s director, Maryanne, stood next to Eva’s desk, wisps of graying hair falling from her bun.
“Oh, hi. What’s up?”
“I need those reports for my one o’clock.” Maryanne checked her teal watch, which clashed horribly with her fuzzy red short-sleeved sweater—an interesting choice given the cloying end-of-August humidity outside. “Did you send them?”
Reports? . . . Which reports? Eva’s cheeks burned. “Um . . . I thought so.” She turned back to her computer and navigated to her woeful to-do list. Found the item Maryanne referenced.
Not checked as complete. Ugh.
“I’m sorry, Maryanne. I was working on it yesterday and got distracted. I’ll get on it right away.”
Maryanne rubbed the corner of her right eye, clearly suppressing a sigh. “No, it’s fine. Send Jerry what you have and he’ll help me finish.”
“I don’t mind. Really.” She was supposed to meet her best friend, Kimberly Jensen, for lunch in a few minutes, but she’d understand if Eva needed to reschedule.
“No, no. We’ve got it.”
In other words, Eva had failed. Again. Last week’s debacle—in which Eva had accidentally sent an internal message to all donors—had upended what little confidence she’d gained at her job.
If she were a paid employee, Eva surely would have been fired by now.
But the nonprofit center couldn’t afford to turn away volunteers, even ones so ill-suited to administrative work as Eva Jamison.
“I really am sorry.”
“Why don’t you take your lunch break? In fact, why not just take the rest of the day off? We’ll see you tomorrow, fresh and ready to go.” Maryanne’s tone indicated wishful thinking rather than certainty that any improvement in Eva’s work would ever occur.
As Maryanne walked away, Eva locked her computer and snagged her phone to text Kimberly. Like always, the photo on her screen sent a jolt to her heart: Eva in a gorgeous A-line dress on a beach in Hawaii, her self-made bouquet of orange roses, cymbidium orchids, bird-of-paradise, and red ginger dangling from one hand as the other embraced her new husband.
They’d looked so different—Brent with blond curls and skin that tanned only after burning a few times in early summer, Eva with dark eyes and long brown hair. But their hearts were the same.
He’d been her inspiration. Her muse. Her joy.
All that was gone now.
Everything was gray.
Eva sent a text, grabbed her purse, and hurried down the hallway.
“I have to redo everything Eva touches.” Her coworker Valerie’s voice drifted from the break room. “It’s ridiculous.”
Eva ground to a stop outside the door. She told her feet to move, but they wouldn’t.
“I’ll admit, she’s not very good at remembering the details. But she’s very sweet and friendly.”
Thank you, Susan. The fiftysomething woman had been kind to Eva since her first day here six months ago.
“But we need someone who is also competent enough to follow simple directions. It’s not like the stuff Maryanne gives her is difficult.”
“Her husband and brother-in-law died in a horrific accident. She’s still grieving.”
“Oh, sure, bring up the dead husband,” Valerie huffed. “We’ve all had tragedy. My husband left me, but do you see me unable to do the simplest of tasks? No. And I didn’t get one cent out of my ex. Brent left Eva richer than God.”
Eva nearly protested out loud. Sure, No Frills Fitness—the string of high-end gyms and yoga studios that Brent co-owned with his best friend, Marc—had done well in the last three years. But other than taking out enough to pay the rent on her Brooklyn apartment and other basic living expenses, Eva had most of it tied up in investments and savings.
Money had never mattered to her or Brent. It had only been a means to live out the adventures of life.
“That’s enough.”
“What? I wish she’d just leave us a sizable donation and take her attempts to help far, far away.”
Eva had considered doing that, but being here, in a place that had meant a lot to her husband, made her feel closer to him somehow.
Susan’s audible sigh met Eva’s ears. “I feel bad for her. You can tell she just wants to make a difference. I only wish there was a kind way to tell her that her efforts are making more work for the rest of us.”
Tears welled in Eva’s eyes as she strode out of there, nearly stumbling across the freshly waxed epoxy floors in the center’s lobby. When she exited the building, a wave of oppressive heat smacked her in the face. Yesterday’s thunderstorm had left the air charged with moisture, and the eighty-degree temperature felt more like one hundred. Thankfully, the jaunt to the restaurant where Kimberly waited was a short one. After five minutes, Eva had managed to wipe away evidence of her cry session before walking into the trendy vegan place.
Or so she thought.
As Eva approached her friend, who sat in a corner booth studying the menu, Kimberly’s head popped up and her eyes narrowed. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, nothing. I’m fine.” Eva leaned over to give Kim a hug, then slid into the booth opposite her.
Kimberly’s brown hair had been pulled into a smart knot on the top of her head, accentuating her long neck. Her couture white blouse and diamond climber earrings evidenced her growing success as a wedding coordinator. “You forget I’ve known you since we were scrawny thirteen-year-old wannabes. I can tell when you’ve done some makeup patching. So spill.”
“You’re bossy.”
“And you love me for it.”
Her friend, who’d attended college in NYC and started her event-planning business after graduation, was the whole reason Eva had come here from Portland seven years ago at the age of twenty-three. When she’d called Eva about an acquaintance looking to hire an apprentice in his florist shop, Eva jumped at the chance to learn more about a career where she could put her creative tendencies to use. It definitely beat waiting tables and teaching drawing to a handful of students around town.
Despite the protests of her engineer mom and professor father—neither of whom understood their artsy daughter with no interest in college—Eva left home in a matter of days and moved in with Kimberly. They’d worked together on countless weddings since then, Eva always being Kim’s florist of choice.
But that all stopped just over fifteen months ago. May 19 of last year had changed everything.