She’d since lost that gaunt look.
Which meant she was sleeping better. Eating better.
The benefits of a regular paycheck, I mused.
Recently, she’d added a light blue blouse and black dress pants to her wardrobe rotation, which was still very limited. All of the blouses and bottoms were interchangeable. Which told me she was more practical than she was fashionable.
Every day, she carried a large tote from a local grocery store, which held her lunch bag and a ridiculously sized water bottle that she never drank more than half of.
Why did I know that?
And a cheap pair of black heels she swapped out for sneakers. An indication she walked some distance to get to the office. Maybe from the bus stop two miles down the road?
There was an address, of course, in her personnel file, but I’d never looked at it.
Why would I? I didn’t care where she lived, only that she showed up on time every morning.
Which she did.
Except, I kept going back to what she’d said. I couldn’t let it go.
When had she been hungry? For how long? Was it part of some diet or eating disorder? Or was it a circumstance of her upbringing?
“Lunch,” Anna announced from the door of my office, startling me out of my reverie. I had to blink a few times to make sure I hadn’t imagined what she said.
But it was Anna. In her unfashionable, interchangeable clothes and barely styled brown hair she typically wore in a clip.
Unremarkable in every way except for her marvelous predictability.
She stepped into my office with a white bag in one hand and a soda can in the other. Since I’d asked her to grab me lunch, this was entirely acceptable.
“Your BLT and extra mayo, as ordered. I want you to know they threw in a bag of chips with your sandwich, which technically, you didn’t order. But just so there is no misunderstanding, I had nothing to do with it.”
“When were you hungry?”
The words exploded from my chest and I instantly regretted it. I didn’t want to hear some sob story about her teenage years when she was bullied, so she stopped eating.
Or worse, some food allergy that made eating anything unsafe.
She set the bag and soda down on my desk. Slowly, as if she was being careful not to trigger an explosion.
“Why are you asking me that?”
“A few weeks ago you said you were happy because you weren’t hungry. That implied you were. Hungry. At some point. I’m curious enough to ask.”
She crossed her arms around her middle. “Doesn’t that break our rules?”
The unwritten rule of nothing personal. Just business.
“Just answer it,” I said stiffly. Yes, technically, I was breaking the rules, but since I was the rule maker, it was my prerogative.
She pursed her lips as if to consider her options. Some half-truth or sanitized version that would get her out of this conversation quickly. I did that thing with my eyes, where I communicated non-verbally she didn’t really have any options. I’d have my answers.
Her shoulders fell in defeat. “I was a foster kid. When I aged out of the system, things were tight for a while. But now I’ve got this plush gig. So everything’s cool.”
She smiled in a way that took up her whole face and I was learning it was a distraction tactic. Which, actually worked, because I was distracted. There was something engaging about her smile. It was the ways her eyes crinkled up like you were in on some joke she was sharing.
Wait? Was I letting her distract me with smiles? Impossible.
