A man from Marketing raised his hand. “If we’re doing so well, why is it just sitting in the accounts like deadweight?”
“Because it’s not deadweight.” Jay folded her arms behind her back. “It’s a buffer. Part of that deadweight ensures that your salary gets paid after all.”
She hadn’t been trying to be funny, but several people laughed—not at her, thank god—and she was able to get throughthe rest of the presentation before handing the remote off to Arthur and retreating to her seat as he gave the introduction for the next speaker.
Nicholas was sitting several seats down and looked very intimidating in his dark suit, which he undoubtedly intended, since he had worn the same one to intimidateherwhen he had come to San Francisco that first time and literally dressed her down in that little vegan diner.
She smoothed out an imaginary crease in her trousers, remembering her mother’s ability to zero in on her appearance and immediately point out all her flaws. She had donned her work clothes as if she were putting on armor, but as she was getting dressed, she found herself ticking off all the flaws out of habit, from the worn-out heels of her shoes to the fashion tape she used to keep her blouses from gaping open when the buttons were spaced too wide.
The thought of confronting her mother, in person, was terrifying.
Her fidgeting drew Nicholas’s eye. He gave her a brief, but pleased nod.
“Great talk, Justine,” someone said to her, and Jay looked over in surprise at a clutch of female employees, whose names she didn’t know.
“Yeah, you nailed it.”
“Um, thank you?” She smiled uncertainly, wondering if she were being mocked. After Annica was let go, she had left a schism in her wake. Most people supported Nicholas publicly, but privately, Jay knew there were people who felt that Annica had been punished for speaking the truth. They wouldn’t meet her eyes and left every room that she walked into.
She had two other meetings, neither of which she had to present in, before spending the rest of her day at her desk, reviewing metrics from some of her new direct reports and responding to emails. Her mind kept getting pulled towards her mother.
Nicholas no longer bothered to wait until after the building closed to collect her, which made her wonder, with a little lurch, if all of those late nights had been because of her.
As he strolled up, Jay fumbled to lock her computer, while stuffing her things in her bag. “You did nail that presentation,” he said, as she stumbled to her feet. “By the way.”
“You heard that?”
“You’ll get used to the office sycophants. They’re irritating but harmless.” He rested one hand on the small of her back as he dug into his pocket for his keys. “Are you ready to go?”
“I guess.”
“You’re ready. Just remember—your mother’s desperate.”
And desperate people are dangerous. They don’t have anything to lose.
Her mother was staying in Ridgeview, in what the people in the Granite County area referred to as “the bad part of town” because what they actually meant was that it was “affordable,” and therefore undesirable because it wouldn’t be inhabited by the rich elite worthy of their time.
Jay remembered Annica’s glaring once-over as she said, dismissively, “Youlooklike you grew up here.” As Nicholas drove his car through this genteel version of “poverty,” she found herself recalling all the times she had gone to bed hungry or used watered-down dish soap as hand soap, and wondered if her coworker would have liked her any better if she’d known that she had grown up even poorer than her.
Probably not. Jay looked at the peeling paint of what she assumed was her mother’s apartment complex, noting the proximity to the railroad tracks and the empty, yet-to-be-developed-lot next to a convenience store with a burnt-out sign. The cars parked on the street were old, but all of their windows were intact and none of them were perched precariously on wooden blocks.
“She told me she was on the verge of living on the streets,” Jay said.
“And you believed that old liar?” He parallel parked across the street, almost hitting the Volvo in front of them. “That’s the car I had tracked, right in front of her house. It’s the newest one on the street. Looks like they’re spending the night in. How cozy.”
He headed across the street without any sort of preamble and Jay jogged a little to catch up to his long stride, wondering if their formal office attire was drawing stares through those shuttered windows. She would have liked more time to prepare herself but Nicholas seemed nearly eager.
“Danielle!” He rapped on her door so sharply that he opened up the scrapes he’d gotten from whaling on Michael, leaving little streaks of blood on the paint. “Open the fucking door.”
“Maybe she’s not ho—” Jay began, only for the door to swing wide open. “Oh.”
She hadn’t seen her mother in years. She was still petite, and her spare, lean build suggested that she still worked out. Her long blonde hair was scraped back into a ballerina bun and her cheekbones were dusted with some kind of glittery bronzer. The only nod to her true age were a handful of sunspots and a few fresh wrinkles.
Her mother gave her a once-over. Critical and unfriendly, it made Jay feel like she was being measured and found wanting even as she was being condemned for both.
“Oh,” she said. “It’syou.” Her eyes shifted to Nicholas. “I guess you don’t make idle threats.”
Jay turned to Nicholas, who was looking at her mother the way someone might look at a buzzing fly in a restaurant.When did he talk to my mother?she wondered, disturbed by the glacial rage in his eyes.
