1
Depending on the season, the office on a Monday morning smells like roses, lilies, or peonies.
Because it’s May, the month of my birthday, it smells like lilacs.
Like I need the reminder.
The flower delivery always arrives just as I’ve disarmed the security system. The delivery girl, Katie, brushes by me quickly and places the first arrangement—lush lilacs and seeded eucalyptus—on the marble entryway table. “Morning, Cass!” she says on her way out to fetch the rest, her Land Cruiser parked along the curb.
“Morning,” I call out as I walk through our waiting room—a large space filled with floral-patterned sofas and chairs, high-piled cream rugs, and oak tables. Sunshine streams through a row of windows looking out into a courtyard set up with white iron benches and giant potted ficus. A black walnut tree shades it all, its skinny leaves shedding onto the dark-green cushions of the benches. The morning light is soft, and I take a moment to appreciate it before the day gets away from me. I close my eyes against the sunshine, willing myself into the present moment. Not the coming birthday.
When the last of the flowers are placed on the front desk, Katie leaves and our office manager, Shreya, arrives. “Please let me take over,” she says to me, brusquely, at the espresso machine where I’m starting to make myself a cappuccino. Shreya is young but bossy, because she is the eldest daughter to Indian immigrants, or so she tells us in all the memes she posts. She nudges me out of the way as she sets out delicate cups and saucers on the counter.
I let her, because her drinks are so much better than mine, and lean against the counter. “How was your weekend?”
“Good,” she says, keeping her eyes fixed on the milk frother. “Oh, I got an update from the private investigator. About…” She glances around before whispering, “Daniel.”
I lean in close, my heart jumping into my throat. “And?”
She shakes her head once. “Sorry. He ended up being a college student. In Florida.”
Damn. “Thanks, anyway.”
She softens for a minute and even makes a move to touch my shoulder before stopping herself. “We’ll find him. I know it.”
I nod tightly, trying not to acknowledge the little flare of hope I had that maybe I’d get this one big thing—the biggest thing—off my list before I turned forty. But I don’t want to make Shreya feel bad so I joke, “At least I can cancel that bikini wax, huh?”
“Cassia.”
“Gotcha. Regressive, internalized misogyny alert.”
She gives me a wink and hands me my latte. “Proud of you.”
A chaotic jumble of noise echoes through our lobby and I know the interns have descended. Matteo and Lila walk in wearing sunglasses and various low-waisted bottoms. Lila is drinking something out of a giant 7-Eleven plastic cup and Matteo is eating a powdered donut, the sugar dusting his Fair Isle sweater.
“The nerve of your metabolisms,” I say as Shreya hands me mycappuccino, the cup clinking against the saucer. The delicate bone china is at my grandmother’s insistence. We’ve broken about half of the beautiful cups, but I have secretly replaced them with eBay finds over the years. I now know how to spot an original Spode Italian Blue from a mile away. Halmoni never has to know.
“Coffee’s gross,” Lila mutters as she grabs a banana out of a fruit bowl. Also at my grandmother’s insistence.
While I balance my coffee and red suede tote on the way to my office, the front door flies open again.
“I almost rammed into one of those damned robot cars,” Sunny says in greeting. She shakes out her Burberry trench and hangs it on the coatrack. My aunt’s bob is streaked with gray and impeccable, as are her gingham capri pants and red cashmere sweater. As the marketing and publicity director, she is our most public-facing employee and always looks the part.
“On purpose?” I ask, my lips hitching into a smile.
She rolls her eyes as she walks by me, reaching out briefly to squeeze my upper arm. “Morning, Cass.” Then she heads to her office, leaving behind a scent of something expensive and subtle.
The phone rings and Shreya rushes to the front desk to answer. “One & Only Matchmaking,” she answers. “How can I help you?” She hands me a folder wordlessly as I sidle by and I add it to my load.
My day really begins with my calendar—my ride or die. I keep calendars for not just my work life, but a shared one for my family (so I can keep track of their endless old-people doctor appointments), and one for me and my best friend, Marcella—which includes her kids’ various doctor appointments and extracurriculars on days she needs me to help her out. I wake my computer and check out the day’s schedule. Four readings, oof. Then a meeting with our Web designer about some changes we need on our website. Once the calendar is sorted, I make my to-do spreadsheet. This is a list thatwould, in Marcella’s words, make Microsoft Excel’s creator jizz his pants. Since I’m director of operations at One & Only, meticulous spreadsheeting comes with the territory. And an unhinged obsession with schedules and routines doesn’t hurt, either.
A small figure pops into frame. It’s my grandmother’s sister—who I call Emoni, a nonsense honorific I made up as a child because I couldn’t actually pronounce the proper Korean name for Great Aunt, “Emo Halmoni.”
“Cassie-ya,” she says with urgency. “My computer is doing the thing again.”
We have an on-call IT contractor, but I get up anyway, never able to deny Emoni anything. “You need to stop clicking on YouTube ads.”
“I didn’t!” she insists, her perm bouncing in indignation as we walk down the hall to her office. “At least, maybe I didn’t.” Emoni is technically the VP and chief financial officer of One & Only, though her hours are pretty much part-time now. But Emoni was never one to sit still so she remains very much a part of the business—a family business run under the thumb of a true matriarch.
