Part 6
Nora looked at the papers covering the desk. “Did Caleb ever ask you to approve invoices?”
“No.”
“Did he talk about a new venture?”
“He talks about six new ventures a month.”
“Brighton Market Strategies?”
Luis’s mouth tightened. “That’s the guy with the hair.”
“What guy?”
“Evan something. Came in twice. Tall, tan in February, wore loafers with no socks. He and Caleb used the dining room. They had a presentation about packaged cookie dough.”
Nora remembered seeing sample pouches in a trash bin. Caleb had said they belonged to a potential wholesale client.
“Did Evelyn know?”
“She interrupted one meeting and told them frozen dough was what happened when people stopped respecting mornings.”
Despite herself, Nora smiled.
Luis leaned against the doorframe. “Are we in trouble?”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know yet.”
He accepted the answer. “Do we open Monday?”
“Yes.”
“You sure?”
“No.”
Luis nodded. “Better answer.”
He left, then returned a minute later with Nora’s winter coat from the hook near the loading door.
“It’s thirty-eight degrees,” he said.
“I have a car.”
“You still have to walk to it.”
She took the coat.
Her car was parked two blocks away beneath a sycamore that had dropped wet leaves across the windshield. Nora sat behind the wheel without starting the engine. The engagement ring was gone from her hand, but the skin beneath it remained pale.
Her phone showed nine missed calls from Caleb, four from Diane, one from Robert, and two from her older sister, Marisol.
Nora had texted Marisol only: It happened. Can I stay with you?
Marisol’s reply had arrived three minutes later: Door’s open. Sofia’s asleep. Don’t ring bell.
Nora drove north through Saturday traffic, past corner stores, brick rowhouses, and restaurants glowing against the dark. At a red light, she began crying so suddenly that she had to pull into a pharmacy parking lot.
She cried with both hands on the steering wheel and her forehead against the cold leather. There was no dramatic sobbing. Her nose ran. Her left contact lens shifted. A shopping cart rolled across the empty space in front of her car and bumped softly against a concrete divider.
When she could see again, she bought saline solution, a toothbrush, and a package of plain white T-shirts because the ones at the apartment felt unreachable.
Marisol lived in a narrow house in Fishtown with her husband, Daniel, and their six-year-old daughter. She opened the door before Nora knocked.
“You look awful,” she whispered.
“Thank you.”
“I mean emotionally.”
“I know.”
Marisol took Nora’s bag and led her into the kitchen. A school art project shaped like a turkey covered half the refrigerator. Daniel had left soup warming on the stove. There was a note beside it: Not asking questions. There’s bread.
Nora stared at the loaf. It had come from a supermarket.
Marisol followed her gaze. “We can hide it.”
Nora laughed, then covered her mouth so she would not wake Sofia.
They sat at the kitchen table while Nora told the story. Marisol listened with both elbows on the table, dark curls tied on top of her head. She had never trusted Caleb. This had made family gatherings unpleasant, because Marisol did not possess the ability to dislike someone discreetly.
When Nora described the transfer, Marisol stopped her.
“You own the building?”
“Technically, an entity owns the building, and I control—”
“You own the building.”
“I control the company that—”
“Nora.”
“Yes.”
Marisol stood, opened the refrigerator, and removed a bottle of sparkling water. “I need something stronger, but this is what pregnancy left in the house six years ago.”
“You knew about the transfer.”
“I knew Grandma Evelyn was planning something. You wouldn’t tell me.”
“She asked me not to.”
“And you always do what old ladies with strong opinions ask.”
“I’m not sure that’s the lesson.”
Marisol sat again. “Did Caleb know you knew?”
“No.”
“Did you know he was going to throw you out?”
“I knew he wanted me out of management. I didn’t know about today.”
“Why?”
Nora traced a scratch in the tabletop. “We fought on Thursday.”
“About?”
“He wanted to sign a licensing agreement for frozen cookie dough. I said we needed to see the financial model. He said I was a kitchen employee pretending to be an executive.”
Marisol’s eyes narrowed. “And you were still going to marry him?”
“The wedding wasn’t until June.”
“That is not an answer.”
Nora looked toward the dark hallway. “I thought he was scared.”
“He was.”
“I thought scared wasn’t the same as cruel.”
“It isn’t. People can be both.”
Nora hated the sentence because it allowed complexity when she wanted permission to simplify him.
She slept on a pullout sofa beneath a blanket printed with cartoon planets. At three in the morning, Sofia wandered in wearing one sock and climbed beside her without waking fully. Nora lay rigid at the edge of the mattress while the child’s warm foot pressed against her calf.
In the morning, Sofia opened her eyes and said, “Your face is puffy.”
“Apparently my family tells the truth before breakfast.”
“Mom says lying makes your stomach hurt.”
“Your mom lies about how much garlic she puts in food.”
Sofia considered this. “That’s not bad lying.”
“No.”
They watched a nature program with the volume low until Marisol woke.
At eleven, Nora met Celeste Warren in a glass-walled office fourteen floors above Market Street. Celeste was fifty, with close-cropped gray hair and a habit of aligning every object on her desk before difficult conversations. She placed three sealed envelopes between them.
One bore Nora’s name.
One bore Robert’s.
One bore Caleb and Diane’s names together.
“Evelyn instructed that the letters be released if anyone challenged the transfer,” Celeste said. “Your description suggests a challenge is likely, but no formal claim has been made. She also allowed me discretion if disclosure might prevent harm.”
“Can I take theirs?”
May you like
“No. I’ll contact them.”
Nora touched the edge of her envelope. “Did you know they were going to fire me?”
