My Sweetheart's Psyche

What Can I Say

Silence filled the air. My mind was a blank. How? How did he know? I heard him gulp audibly.

"Y-you're not really my assistant, are you?" He repeated.

Words. I knew they existed, but none would come to me. What could I say? What should I say?

Should I just lie and laugh it off? Should I break down and tell him everything? I mean, what did he really know? That I was a caretaker? That I was his girlfriend? That he wasn't really him? I didn't know.

"Ms. Walton, I hope you're on your way. We really need you up here," the intercom echoed.

Thank god for small miracles! That reminder was exactly what I needed to bring me back to reality. I gave Oliver a small, hopefully reassuring, smile.

"Sir, there's an emergency," I explained. "I have to deal with that now, but I swear we'll talk as soon as I return."

I didn't wait for his response. I hurried out of the room. Part of me was glad this personality was so unfamiliar with the mansion. It might buy me a few extra minutes to collect my thoughts on the way back.

However, the thought collection would have to wait until after whatever was wrong upstairs. As soon as I entered the room, three people ran over to me. Two were ladies on the cleaning staff, the other was one of the supervisors. I'm guessing this was "Calvin."

"Hey, Ms. Walton. Sorry to bother you, but there's a little problem here," he explained.

"What's wrong?"

"Well, a couple of our girls noticed a draft in the room. At first they thought you left the window open, but it looks like it's actually cracked."

"The window broke?!" I asked, concerned.

"Now, now. It's not quite that bad," he reassured me.

He led me over to the window and pulled back the curtain. Since this was a study, it had one of the more ornate windows in the house. The "window" was actually composed of several smaller panes of glass to make a more intricate pattern. One of the larger panes was, indeed, badly cracked, but the rest of the window was still in good shape.

"Looks like a rock or something got flung at it," he said, pointing to a small  impact point near the bottom. "Wind probably did it yesterday. I think the rest of the cracks just spidered out from there. There's a small hole where it got hit, but it doesn't look like any of the actual glass broke."

"Oh," I said, breathing a sigh of relief. "That's good."

"Yeah, but you'll want to have it replaced sooner rather than later," he warned. "It's staying put for now, but there's no telling when it will finally break."

"Of course. I guess I'll call somebody after this," I muttered, trying to remember if Thomas' list of contacts included a repairman.

"If you want, I can let the handyman in town know when I get back," he offered. "He looked kind of busy today because of the storm, but he could probably fix it sometime this week. Until then, we can tape it up so it doesn't get worse."

"That would be great. Can you leave me his number so I can check up with him in a day or two?"

"Sure, I'll give it to you at our meeting later," he promised.

"Thanks. Is there anything else I should know about?" I asked.

"So far, no. I'll let you know if anything changes though."

I smiled and gave him a small nod. I nodded to the women as well before leaving the room.

Okay. A cracked window. Bad, but not terrible. One of Mr. Weston's personalities discovering that I wasn't actually his assistant though? Very bad, potentially disastrous. So how was I going to handle it?