“Hi,” I said to the young woman at the front desk. “I’m here to meet with Maggie.”
“Sure, have a seat and I’ll grab her.”
No more than five minutes later a woman whom I assumed was Maggie came in from a back room. She spotted me holding my resume and smiled, crossing the room to hold her hand out to me to shake.
“Peyton Blake?” she said. “So glad you could make it on such short notice. Follow me?”
With a nod and a smile, I followed Maggie across the waiting-room floor and into a cozy back office for my interview. Maggie closed the door behind us and sat down, crossing her legs and turning in the office chair to face me. She reached for my resume and I handed it over, but she barely glanced at it before setting it aside and focusing on me.
“So,” she said, brushing a mop of curly black hair over her shoulder. “Tell me about you.”
“Well, I just moved home from where I worked at a clinic in Denver as a phy—”
“Not your work,” Maggie said quickly, cutting me off with a friendly wink. “We’ll get to that in a moment. I want to hear about you.”
“Me? Well, I don’t know what there is to say. I’m not as interesting as people seem to think I am.”
“Really?” said Maggie, and her smile only grew. “I haven’t seen you since you were a kid, and you have nothing new to add at all?”
“Seen me since I was a kid?” I repeated, and that’s when it dawned on me.
“Margaret Johnson,” I said. “You were my babysitter!”
“The one and only,” Maggie said with a small laugh. “It’s all right that you don’t remember me. I didn’t recognize you until you walked in, though I should have recognized the name.”
“No, it’s okay,” I said quickly. “I’ve been gone for a long time. But honestly…it’s good to see you. You look good.”
“How are things?” Maggie asked, and at this point I felt like I was catching up with an old friend and not interviewing for a job.
“Things are good,” I told her, but then wanted to bite my tongue at once. “Things are okay.”
“What brings you back to Eagle River?” she asked kindly, and I found myself looking down at my hands, hoping I’d find the answer written in the creases of my skin.
“My mom could use some help,” I said quietly. “She hasn’t been feeling well. I knew I had to be here for her.”
“Susan,” Maggie said with a nod of her head. “A great woman, your mother. God, I was just thinking about her the other day. Is everything okay with her?”
I wasn’t quite ready to tell anybody about my mother’s diagnosis. It really wasn’t my secret to tell. So instead of answering directly I shrugged and nodded and tried to play it off the best I could.
“She’s doing well, thanks. Just some health concerns. She just needs an extra pair of hands to help her out some until we know more.”
“Good to hear.” Still smiling like she always had, Maggie leaned forward a bit and spoke again. “It’s nice to see you back, Peyton. This town missed you. You were, like, the golden child, you know? Valedictorian, prom queen. People just loved you.”
I said nothing to this, only forced a smile that I wasn’t sure reached my eyes. Sure, I’d done well in school, and in a town as small as this one it wasn’t difficult to stand out, but behind that happiness was nothing but shitty memories and bad days.
“Thanks,” I said with a tight nod, waiting for Maggie to go on, preferably about the job. When she just continued to smile, looking dumbstruck, I spoke again. “So, this employee who left,” I said, trying to steer her in another direction. “Was she a therapist?”
“Oh, yes,” said Maggie, and I breathed a sigh of relief as her mind seemed to focus on something other than my absence from my hometown. “She’s very good, but I imagine you are, too. We knew she would be going on maternity leave, but it turns out her baby was ready to come earlier than expected. She had to go, and she’ll be out a couple of months, I imagine.”
“Well, that sounds perfect,” I said. “I don’t intend to stay longer than a few months, anyway. I still have my house and my old job, so it will only need to be temporary.”
Maggie nodded, making a note on her paper. “There’s a new client starting here tomorrow, and we’ll have to assign him to you, as well as whatever caseload of clients Jenna has currently. Are you comfortable with that?”
“Of course.”
“And how soon can you start?”
“As soon as possible,” I said honestly. “I have bills to pay, you know?”
