“Hey lady,” I said, plopping down in the chair across from her.
“Hey!” she said, holding her hand in front of her mouth to keep bits of jelly donut from flying out.
Maddy washed down her bite with a swish of coffee.
“Good to see you, Jane,” she said. “I'm so glad you wanted to meet up. How are things going?”
“I can't complain,” I said, wanting to be a little bit vague. I couldn't tell Maddy how amazing things actually were, because I didn't want her to feel bad. The last thing I wanted was to make my only friend at work feel like I was rubbing my promotion in her face.
“I heard through the grapevine that you're some kind of stock prodigy child,” she said, with a playful smirk. “Some of the employees in accounting have been talking about you.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Oh really?”
“Yeah. Remember when I told you that news travels fast around Winthrow?” Maddy asked. “I wasn't kidding. A lot of people think that Winthrow Financial only works with stocks and other investments. In actuality, though, we specialize in being the biggest gossip factory in the world.”
She was obviously joking, but I couldn't help but to think that if that were true, then Maddy would have been CEO. The Chief Executive Officer of Gossip Production.
“For what it's worth, I'm not a stock prodigy,” I said. “Sometimes I just get these feelings about an investment, though. It's hard to explain.”
“A feeling?” she asked, squinching her face into a confused expression. “I thought you were a numbers girl.”
“I am,” I said. “Sometimes, though, there's a different part of my brain that kicks in. Or maybe it's not even my brain. It's my gut. It just tells me what to do and it seems like whenever I listen to it, it turns out to be right.”
“A woman's intuition,” Maddy replied. “Maybe you're an old soul. A wise old soul.”
“I'm hardly wise,” I said. “Besides, we'll see how many more investments I get right. I've only done well on a couple of them so far and it's quite possible that I've just been lucky.”
Maddy responded, but her words faded out. Her voice became distant as my focus suddenly shifted. A woman to my right had stepped up to the counter to order a coffee. In front of her was a baby stroller. It caught my eye and I glanced over to see a beautiful baby girl asleep inside of it. She was wrapped in a pink blanket and looked so peaceful. Without even realizing it, I had brought my hand to my belly.
That's what I really want, I thought. Success at Winthrow Financial is one thing, but a baby of my own is the only thing that will ever make me truly happy. I just know it.
“Jane!” Maddy said loudly, causing me to face her again. “Are you okay?”
I nodded quickly. “Yeah, I'm fine. Why?”
“You're holding your stomach,” she said, looking down to where my fingers were grazing my belly. “Are you sick or something?”
“What? No, no. I'm not sick,” I replied, quickly pulling my hand away from my body.
Maddy looked over to the mom with the baby and then back toward me. She was analyzing the situation, trying to figure out what it was that I was thinking. I'd seen her do it before. Not just to me, but to others as well. I assumed she was mining for something that she could gossip with the rest of the office later. There was a minute or so of silence, then finally she shrugged.
“Anyway, I'm to hear that everything is going well for you up there on the top floor,” she said. “Things are a mess in accounting right now. David has been on my ass about year end reports. It's annoying because...”
Maddy continued on, chatting away at breakneck speed. My coffee arrived and I sipped while pretending to listen. In reality, though, the only thing that was on my mind was how exciting it was going to be when I finally became a mother. Seeing that little baby had once again sent my instincts into over drive. I just hoped that I could make it happen for myself sooner rather than later.
> Chapter 8
When we got back to work, the TV was on in the lobby. I stopped, the familiar tickers scrolling by with numbers that usually got me excited. That wasn't what I was looking at, though. The CEO of New York Solar Company was on, and he was about to deliver a press conference.
Maddy paused, then touched my shoulder. “I'll catch up with you later,” she said. I nodded, but never turned from the television screen.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the man started. “I know there must be some questions about what happened this morning. We believe it to be a question of the big players in this market finally taking notice of us. Fortunately, we have a multi-year head start on this technology, and our patents make our methods proprietary.”
I laughed out loud, right there in the lobby. I had told Carter that they would say that other companies were trying to bully them out, but the notion that their tech was proprietary was ridiculous. I could think of two companies that had similar solar power generation processes and were bigger than this company.
Already, though, I could see that the stock had risen a half a point. People were buying it, for now. They wouldn't for long.
The man continued to talk as I ran to the elevator, hitting the button for Carter's office, more excited than I had been in a long time.