A Work in Progress
an excerpt

Maybe it was something in the air, but after a morning like that, Jacqueline figured that she should have realized it was a bad omen. Seattle was a great city, but if anyone took bets on how predictable the traffic patterns were, Jacqueline would tell them to get out of business – nothing ever went the way you hoped, especially on a Monday. After weaving through nearly two hours worth of traffic, she finally arrived at her comfortable, familiar, and mercifully suburban bungalow. It hadn’t been cheap – it hadn’t been new, either – but when Jacqueline moved here 4 years ago, she’d poured a little bit of her soul into every room to make it her own. Specifically, it looked nothing like her parents’ house in Chicago. That was what mattered.
The silence each evening when she came home was gloriously deafening: no pets, no noisy neighbors (the beauty of living in a noise-controlled neighborhood), no roommates, no radio – just pure, unadulterated silence. A cup of warm ginseng tea and the news always made great dinner companions – they were cheap and never complained, and after a Monday like this, who really needed anything else?
She had just warmed the kettle and settled in for a long evening with Anderson Cooper when the phone broke the stillness. Jacqueline let out an exasperated groan and considered ignoring it, but her inner Marketing Analyst couldn’t allow a phone to ring more times than necessary – it was a waste of time, and you never knew what kind of statistics could be waiting on the other end. Unfortunately, after picking up, she wished she had just let it ring. “Hello?”
“Miss Jacqueline Puissante?”
Great, a telemarketer. “That’s ‘Ms’, thank you, and no, I have no interest in purchasing whatever it is you’re selling. Good night.” She moved the phone toward the receiver, but heard a loud “Wait!” from the other end. “Sorry, what?”
The unfamiliar male voice sighed. “My apologies, Ms. Puissante, but I’m not a telemarketer. I’m afraid I have some unfortunate news for you, you may want to have a seat.”
Jacqueline’s first instinct was that someone was having a joke at her expense, but something in his voice made her second guess. “What do you mean?”
“Are you seated?”
She lowered herself into the nearest kitchen chair. “Yes.”
“Good.” The voice cleared its throat. “Ms. Puissante, I am calling on behalf of Chicago General Hospital. Your father, Doctor Arnolde Renault Puissant, passed away earlier this evening after coronary failure. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Ms. Puissante, and we wanted to let you know as soon as he was admitted to the hospital here, but we had a bit of trouble finding your telephone number.”