Over the course of the next two weeks they exchanged emails on an almost daily basis. Robert could tell that Annie seemed to be much more open as she corresponded with him. On several occasions, late in the evening, he found an excuse to phone and speak to her directly. They had pleasant conversations for over an hour each time.
Neither of them was quite ready to plan their next poker trip. Robert had lots of work with his business, and she was working extended hours due to injuries three nurses had suffered in a traffic accident on the icy streets.
The third week of January proved to be of great consequence to both of them as individuals, and ultimately to their budding relationship.
It started when Annie wrote an email that excitedly informed Robert that she had been invited by one of the male nurses to accompany him to a retirement party for one of their supervisors. She had agreed, and was positively excited about having had the confidence to agree to attend the party with him.
This information caught Robert very much by surprise, and upset him much more than he would have thought it would. This message had the effect of making him believe that he had helped Annie to get over some of her fears, only to let one of her coworkers be the beneficiary of her new-found confidence and courage.
There wasn't much time for him to mull over this news, as the very next day his sister phoned him in a panic, wanting him to arrange to come immediately to Toronto to do some work on a computer network that her company's lawyers used.
The firm that normally did the work had suddenly declared bankruptcy, and it seemed that the other firms that should've been able to take on the job were already backlogged with new clients that had resulted from the bankruptcy. The legal office was having trouble with their server, and were unable to generate billings.
Patty sounded desperate on the phone, "Please say you can catch the first flight for Toronto. I know you can help us out much better than the smaller companies here could. We're sort of desperate. You can stay with Mike and me, in our guest bedroom, and the company will be happy to pay your other expenses as well as your hourly rate."
By the time he got off the phone, Robert had agreed to take the next flight to Toronto to help his sister's firm out. He knew that he could do his normal work from virtually anywhere, including Patty's condo. By the next morning he had arranged an early flight, packed his suitcase and laptop, and was standing on the concourse of the Thunder Bay Airport waiting to check in.
Two hours later he was in Toronto taking a cab to his sister's office. She quickly introduced him to the office manager, and he wasted no time in getting to work.
That night, at his sister's condo, he was finally able to thank her for getting him the job, and settled into the guest room in her condo. Patty was a willowy 5 foot eight, just a bit shorter than her brother. Her shoulder length hair was lighter than her brother's, approaching dark blonde. Mike, her boyfriend, was just slightly taller than her, and sported a shock of red hair.
Robert had met him on an earlier occasion and found him to be fun to be around, as his sense of humor was infectious. He also noticed that the two of them had settled into a very comfortable living arrangement together, and he decided that they were as good as married by their actions.
+++++++++
The next few days were very busy for him, but by the end of the second day everything was under control with the balky server, and he was spending his time auditing the hardware and software that had been in use at the firm. He had already advised his sister that there were improvements that they could make to prevent a similar outage in the future.
Within half a day the firm's senior partners and their accountant gave Robert the go ahead to prepare a proposal for them. As a result of his long and busy days at the law offices, he was forced to skip over Annie's emails so that he would be able to have enough time to maintain his own business in the evenings.
Finally, with some time to sit back and relax, Robert brought up the various emails that he had set aside for lack of time. Besides several from Annie, other friends had also been in touch with him, and he began reading and replying to them in order.
When he finally reached the first of Annie's emails, he discovered that it was a long and very cheerful description of how much fun she had had at the retirement party.
As he read, and then reread her message, Robert felt himself slowly but surely becoming deflated. This description of how Annie, and her date Sid, had enjoyed dancing at the club that the majority of the guests had attended after the retirement party was over, got to him.
He couldn't help but feel that he had given Annie the confidence she needed to carry on with her life. She even told him how in the low light of the dance club she had been able to remove the sweater she wore over her short sleeved blouse. She was ecstatic that none of their party had commented about the scars on her arms, assuming they had noticed them at all. She thanked Robert profusely for helping her to see herself in a new light.
It took Robert a few minutes to work up the desire to even answer her message. When he did write, his reply to her was a terse three lines congratulating her on finally getting out, and letting her know that he was working in Toronto for the next week or so.
His interest in replying to any of his remaining messages had evaporated in tandem with his growing belief that Annie would be moving ahead without him, and he soon shut down the laptop before heading for the shower and his borrowed bed.
+++++++++++++
Robert managed to keep very busy the next week as he inspected the network, decided on a course of action to recommend, and then implemented the changes that were agreed to almost immediately after he had made them. Finally, he created documentation that would allow any future firm contracted to work on the system to fully understand the system and what he had done with it.
He had spent most of his evenings at the law firm, leaving himself hardly any free time to keep up to date with his own clients, and virtually no time to spend with his sister and Mike. His personal email accumulated in his inbox, as he continued to skip over it so that he could select only messages that were necessary to maintain his business clientele.
