A Daughter's a Daughter Read online

  Three Generations of Women

  Widowed Pam Ridgeway decides to be daring after losing her dull clerical job in a mass Wall Street layoff: She’ll mobilize a charity to help laid-off workers. That will thrust her into the public eye, which she’s always hated, unlike her estranged daughter and intimidating mother. Yielding to their insistence on publicity tactics takes Pam totally out of her comfort zone—until she meets Bruce, her mother’s handsome new neighbor at her Long Island beachfront home. Bruce is sympathetic, easy to talk to, and attracted to Pam. But Bruce has a secret agenda involving her mother and a mystery from the past.

  Pam’s daughter is a fiercely ambitious cable financial reporter with an agenda of her own about the hottie she works with. She fights to keep a lid on her desire, otherwise their passionate attraction could burst into flames in the newsroom and destroy their careers.

  Pam’s mother wonders why Bruce reminds her of someone from the past. In a long life filled with social activism, she has met many people, but there’s something about him…

  Please post your review of this book by clicking here to visit my Amazon author page. And enjoy checking out my other books!

  Also by Irene Vartanoff

  Selkirk Family Ranch Series:

  Captive of the Cattle Baron

  Saving the Soldier

  Temporary Superheroine Series:

  Temporary Superheroine

  Crisis at Comicon

  Summer in the City

  A Daughter's

  a Daughter

  Irene Vartanoff

  Dedication

  To Robert Freedman,

  a gentle soul gone too soon

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations, organizations, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, or to actual persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

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  Formatting by Polgarus Studio

  Cover design by Ashley Byland of Redbird-Designs.net

  Copyright © 2016 by Irene Vartanoff All rights reserved.

  Published by Irene Vartanoff

  www.irenevartanoff.com

  P.O. Box 27

  Gerrardstown, WV 25420

  ISBN 978-0-9968403-2-3

  ISBN 978-0-9968403-3-0 (ebook)

  “A son’s a son ’til he gets him a wife,

  A daughter’s a daughter all of her life.”

  Chapter 1

  September, 2008

  Pam, 8:30 a.m., Wall Street

  Pam Ridgeway picked up the ringing phone on her desk and started to recite, “Document Retention—”

  Her daughter burst out with, “What’s happening over there?”

  “Linley? Is everything all right?”

  “Is it true Menahl is going under?”

  “I’m fine. You don’t have to worry about me,” Pam replied.

  “I’m asking about Menahl, not you. What’s happening?” The anger in her voice came through clearly.

  Pam’s chest hurt as her breath caught in her lungs. Her daughter didn’t want to know about her. She only wanted information she could use to promote her career. The same pattern Linley had followed for years now, brushing aside Pam and her feelings as unimportant.

  She looked around the Document Retention Department, where her coworkers were quietly placing their personal possessions into tote bags and plastic grocery sacks and a few cardboard cartons. Trying to process the shock of the mass layoff by doing something.

  “I’m sorry. We’ve all lost our jobs. I can’t talk now, Linley.” She put the phone handset gently back on the receiver.

  The rock she’d clung to since Jeff’s death had crumbled. Bankruptcy had been declared this morning. Pam felt adrift in a sea of dread. What would her life be now?

  #

  Linley, Times Square

  Linley Ridgeway fought the desire to throw her cell phone against the wall. Her mother wasn’t helping at all. Damn her.

  Only minutes ago, Linley’s morning had been normal. As usual, she’d stridden in hours early to the WFWF news network studio, well-prepared for her day of being a featured expert on cable television. On the way to her dinky cubicle, she’d tried to make sense of a new tweet. The tweet was garbled. Something about Menahl, the venerable Wall Street investment banking firm. A huge volume of financial transactions passed through Menahl. What could it be? Damn tweets for being only one hundred and forty characters.

  Walking by the offices with windows that employees with more status occupied, she had promised herself she’d soon rate one. Why not? She looked the part of the successful news anchor, from her carefully styled blonde hair to her fashionable journalist suits to her designer shoes. She was a hard worker and made sure everyone knew it. She had featured spots on three finance-oriented shows, but she wanted more.

  As soon as she’d thrown her fashionable messenger bag under her desk, she’d flipped on the desktop computer and started the television feed with access to all the competing networks. She began looking for news about Menahl. Then she saw the flash from the AP wire.

  “Oh, my god!” Unbelievable. She leaped out of her chair.

  “Jason!” she shrieked. “Did you see this about Menahl?” She ran around the cubicle barrier and down to Jason Egan’s office.

  Jason moderated the afternoon show on which she was a panelist, and he always came to the station early too. He wasn’t her boss, but he outranked her. She found him studying the same flash she’d seen. His office had a window, but the room was small and stuffed with tapes, DVDs, papers, and all kinds of accessories to the job. The windowsill was being used as another shelf.

  Jason sat at his computer, his tall, fit body immaculately turned out in a well-tailored suit and tie as always. He was concentrating hard, tapping in multiple URLs to find confirmations and details.

  She moved to his side. As usual, she had to hide an intake of breath from the impact of seeing him. Jason was a handsome man. His brilliant dark eyes were intelligent, piercing, and ringed with thick eyelashes. His strong nose was set off by an even stronger chin. His mouth was full and could curve with humor. He exuded the self-confidence of a mature male. She was no teenage virgin, so the strong virility he radiated didn’t frighten her. Instead, it tantalized.

  “Unreal. Menahl is the lynchpin of investment banking. How could the Fed let it die?” Jason muttered. “This could cause the entire U.S. financial system to crash.”

  He checked out the source. Then he grabbed his office phone.

  “Who are you calling?” she asked.

  “I know a few traders at Menahl. They’ll have details.”

  Then he paused in the act of punching in the speed dial command. He raised his handsome head and looked up at her.

  “Doesn’t your mother work for Menahl?”

  “Yes,” she admitted. Her mother’s mundane, low-level job was embarrassing. Linley tried never to mention it. Today, however, her mother was a potential news source.

  “I’ll call her,” she conceded. She turned away to make the call to her mother’s office number. Pam Ridgeway toiled in a large room filled with low-level worker bees. She didn’t even rate a cubicle.

  Yet her mother had hung up on Linley.

  #

  The sounds of sobbing came from be
hind Pam in the large room, along with low, muttered curses, but she heard them from a distance, shielded by a wall of silence. The blood rushing inside her own head was much louder. She tried to catch her breath and failed.

  Her job was no more. Her life as she had known it was over. Again.

  Her heart seemed to shrink, trying to absorb the pain and smother the fear. A huge chasm had suddenly opened up in front of her.

  The shock had numbed her. Slowly, the numbness wore off.

  Magda, who had been in the same office with Pam for five years and had a son just starting college, began sobbing, too.

  Stan was the first to openly rebel. “I’ve worked at this lousy company for twenty-eight years. Twenty-eight years. No severance, but they want me to wrap up my projects and go quietly? Screw them!” he cried. His mostly bald pate seemed to glow red to match the fury in his face, and his lumpy body lurched as he leaped up. “I’m outta here. I’m never going to staple a document again.” He grabbed the stapler from his desk and tossed it in the trash can. Then he stalked out.

  Magda still sobbed as she made a pile of the documents on her desk. “Calca che vacca! Du-te dracului!” She either cursed or prayed in her native Romanian as she clicked her lighter to set the papers on fire.

  The smoke curled upwards lazily.

  “Are you crazy?” Pam grabbed the glass vase from her desk and threw the water from it onto the fire. Then she knocked the papers to the floor and stamped on them.

  Magda watched without attempting to fight. Her eyes glowed with a frenzied light.

  “I hate them! I hate them!” Magda cried, her face contorted with rage. “In one month, tuition payment is due. One month. What shall I do? How shall I pay?”

  “Destroying legal documents won’t help,” Pam said, although Magda’s anger was justified.

  Magda kept repeating, “How will Marc stay in university?”

  Pam moved closer to the younger woman and put a hand on her arm. “Go home now. I’ll call you. We’ll figure this out.” Pam would give her the money if necessary.

  Magda sniffled and then straightened her spine. “You are right. I must leave this accursed place.”

  Magda began packing up.

  Pam returned to her desk, found her tote bag, and threw her possessions into it. Family photos, odds and ends from ten years of pushing papers. She kept packing. When the bag was full, she stopped. Whatever was left would have to stay. She picked up her purse and her sweater. “I’ll call you,” she said again to Magda.

  Pam nodded at other former coworkers and then walked out of the records room the back way. She didn’t wait to witness more tears and lamentations. She was trying hard to stifle her own. Going through the motions, her lifelong method of coping.

  When she exited the elevator into the main lobby, she saw half-a-dozen security guards through the glass doors to the building. They held back a pushing, shoving crowd of people. Mostly reporters with cameras. Her mother, the activist Dorothy Duncan, would have swaggered up to them and held an on-the-spot press conference.

  Pam shuddered. She’d never had the courage to face such open scrutiny. Keeping her face averted, she hurried past them and the gantlet of gawkers as they battened on others who’d been in the elevator with her. She left the building, knowing she would never return.

  #

  “My mother said they were all fired. Then we got cut off.” No way would she admit to Jason that her own mother had hung up before Linley had gotten what she wanted. How dare she? Didn’t Pam know how important getting insider news was to Linley?

  Jason said, “I can’t get through at all. Management might have shut off the phones.” He consulted the list on his phone and hit a different number.

  “I’ll try her cell.” She was already tapping the buttons. No answer. Her mother must have the phone turned off. If she was even carrying it. Pam Ridgeway was old-fashioned. Not like Grandma Dorothy. Grandma would be on her phone right now if she was still in the game. She’d be telling media connections her side of the story. Dorothy knew the secret to shaping news in her favor.

  Jason had better luck with his contacts, but nothing concrete yet. Linley hastened to start down her own list. Within a few minutes, they had more details.

  Jason had hardly put down his cell phone before he picked up the office landline to call their boss, Marty.

  “You heard about Menahl? When do we air our special? Who do you want on it? No, not many details yet. Only Linley’s here.”

  He looked up at Linley, and spoke to her on the side, “Hustle up whatever you can find out. Keep calling everyone you know. Especially your mother.” Then he waved her off and got back to Marty.

  Linley could hardly hold in her elation. Her strategy of coming in hours early had finally paid off. She had a jump on the other guys. If they were here, they’d each be pushing to get airtime on this hot situation. Now she had the inside track.

  She needed something useful, or Marty and Jason wouldn’t put her on the air. Why didn’t her mother keep her cell phone on?

  #

  “Pam! Over here!”

  She looked toward the sound and there was Sarah, her best friend, at the edge of the crowd outside the Menahl building. Far enough away from the reporters a shout didn’t alert them.

  Sarah held out her arms. Pam changed course and walked into the comforting embrace.

  “Oh, you poor thing. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  Sarah walked her briskly away from the crowd, where any open emotion could become camera fodder. Sarah grabbed the stuffed tote bag. Its weight pulled her arm down. “What’s in here, gold bricks?”

  “Just my stuff. Not including a final paycheck.”

  “Severance?”

  “None.” No need to explain more. Sarah worked in finance at an executive level.

  “Bastards,” Sarah said. “Of course the traders and the execs will still get their bonus money and golden parachutes.”

  Pam nodded. “Support staff gets nothing.”

  “Too bad you didn’t take my advice and retire.”

  “Not that again. You’ve got a one-track mind,” she said. “I need a new job.”

  “In this job market? At your age? Get real.”

  “I have to work. I need a regular paycheck.”

  By now, Sarah had steered her into a mostly empty coffee shop. Once they were seated in a booth, Sarah went on the attack. “Didn’t Jeff leave you set?”

  Pam made a small grimace. “I used up all the life insurance.”

  “In only four years? What did you do with all that money?”

  “I paid off the children’s college loans and my mortgage. Then I bought each of them a home.”

  Sarah stopped her coffee cup in midair. “You didn’t tell me.”

  “You would have said not to.”

  “You got that right.” Sarah banged the cup on the saucer. “Jeff left that money to you, for your future. Steve and Linley are adults who can pay their own bills.”

  Without giving Pam a chance to comment, Sarah continued. “Linley earns big bucks working for that cable network.”

  Sarah’s expression showed her irritation. “Plus, she treats you like crap. I’m sorry, but it’s the truth. You yourself told me she never calls or visits. She doesn’t make time to lunch with you once in a while, like Steve. Did she even thank you for buying her that fancy condo?”

  “I didn’t require thanks, not exactly.” At Sarah’s silence, she continued, recalling the loving impulse that had urged her to help her grieving daughter deal with the shock of Jeff’s sudden death. “I wanted to reach out to Linley.”

  “It didn’t work,” Sarah commented.

  “She took it as an inheritance from Jeff, not my gift to her,” Pam sighed. She made a helpless gesture with her hands. “I guess I was trying to buy back her love.”

  “You were being a generous mother.” Sarah patted her hand. “But you have to look out for yourself.”

  “I’ll be oka
y for a year or two. I have rainy day savings.”

  “You’re too young to qualify for your pension or Social Security, of course.” Sarah gave a half-laugh. “Imagine being too young for anything at fifty-eight.”

  Pam didn’t feel young, but she didn’t feel old, either. She felt blank, as she had for four years. She drew an abstract pattern on the Formica tabletop with her fork. Then she shrugged and looked up. “I’ll find a new job. I can’t sit around the house and do nothing all day.”

  “You should take the layoff as a gift. You were on automatic. Now you have time to examine your life and improve it.”

  “No way. I like my life as it is.”

  “We’ve had this conversation before,” Sarah said, drumming her restless fingers on the table. “You’re stubborn, but fate has outsmarted you. Don’t you see? Your comfortable rut has disappeared.”

  #

  Sarah’s harsh words about the emptiness in Pam’s life echoed in her head a few minutes later as she walked to her train station. Sarah had an office to return to. Sarah’s law degree, coupled with her finance degree and her years of experience, would keep her employable. Unfortunately, she had told the unvarnished truth about Pam’s chances. A middle-aged clerical worker was likely to face age discrimination and diminishing employment opportunities. Plus, thousands of her former coworkers would be competing for the same jobs. What a mess.

  Pam was sure she could eventually find a new job. She still had a youthful figure and her face was unlined. Hair color never had to be grey as long as there was Clairol.

  Her duties at Menahl had not been challenging. At first, the job was something to do once the children were in college. Jeff also worked in the city, so they drove to the train together, met up for lunch often, and commuted home together. It was cozy. After Jeff died, she continued the same routine, trying to keep her mind off how lonely she was without him.