Free Tell Me No Lies: The Black Orchid, Book 1 by Magnolia Smith Page A

cubicles. I tried to pick up my pace and turn the corner could see me, but damn if I didn’t walk directly into him.
    He patted me on my back. “Give any thought to what we discussed?”
    Sam matched my stride as I turned into my office. “I’m still thinking about it.”
    “What’s to think about? Don’t you like money?”
    “Of course, I like money. I’m just…conflicted.” I turned away from him and gazed at a charcoal sketch of the North Carolina mountains on my wall.
    “About?”
    “Being happy,” I mumbled under my breath.
    “What?”
    I turned around and faced him. “Being happy!” I said, rather emphatically and way too loud. “Being happy,” I repeated in a normal tone.
    “Being happy?” He looked at me strangely, as if he didn’t understand the concept.
    I shrugged vaguely. I didn’t want to discuss this matter with him. I went to my desk, picked up several folders and begin rifling through them.
    “It’s nothing really. I’ll have an answer for you. End of the month, just like you requested.”
    He looked puzzled for a moment. “All right then. I look forward to hearing your decision.”
    I nodded to him as he left and then reached for my vibrating cell phone. It was my sister.
    “So, Mom said you got a promotion at work. You don’t know if you’re going to take it? What’s the controversy?”
    “No controversy, not really.”
    She immediately responded. “When are you going to pursue your café idea? I mean, like what are you waiting for?”
    “What do you mean? I was done with all of that when I got my MBA.”
    She was silent for a moment. “I get that you wanted to please Mom and Dad. But you’ve done that. When are you going to make yourself happy?”
    Happy. I closed my eyes, then tighter so tears would not fall down my cheeks.
    “Rain, are you there?”
    “Yes.” I opened my eyes and cleared my throat. “Why have you never been concerned with making Mom and Dad happy? Didn’t they want you to go to medical school at one time?”
    She cackled into the phone. “That dream ended when I clogged the toilet with my Doctor Barbie doll.”
    I could practically hear her eyes rolling through the phone.
    “I think I was seven. Mom and Dad have never put the same pressure on me as they have you.”
    “I wonder why?”
    “Maybe because they learned early on I’m not susceptible to their influence. I’m going to be me, regardless.
    “I just know what I want and I go for it. I’m doing what I want,” Haley said, pointing out the obvious. “It always surprised me that you quit on your dream like that. I mean, you’d defied our parents by getting the education you wanted and then you were going to New York, which should have been awesome. But then you returned from your trip to Jamaica and then nothing. What happened to you there? You never said.”
    There was a long silence and I couldn’t find the words to break it. It wasn’t about what happened in Jamaica, it was after that destroyed me. And I hadn’t shared the humiliating details with anyone but Charlotte.
    “I was away at school, but Mom said you kinda had a meltdown and then went through this weird hermit phase.”
    “Wait. Mom said all of that? I barely saw her, how would she even know what was going on with me? I didn’t melt down. I wasn’t a hermit. I mean really, a hermit?”
    “Whatever. But then you apparently, no obviously, recovered to some extent. Mom fairly crowed when you found your current job. But to me, it seemed like you just gave up on all of your hopes and dreams and became Mom and Dad’s little puppet.”
    My temples pounded in earnest. “Puppet? You don’t consider my life a success?” My eyes darted around my large corner office furnished with heavy Oak and Italian leather furniture. I certainly had the appearance of doing well.
    She snorted into the phone. Full of derision, I might add. “I’ve always thought that you had to be dissatisfied with your life. How could you not be,