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She tapped her fingers against the hardwood on the arm of the chair. Long pauses were the worst part of conversations with her boss. Josie Campbell seemed to spend more time sitting in front of her boss’s desk than she did sitting at her own. She hadn’t asked for this situation, but it had been thrust upon her several months ago. She was only trying to make the best of it, but it wasn’t her fault that her team was incompetent.
“Josie, how many times do we have to do this?”
She wanted to answer with an astronomical number, but her sarcasm would not be appreciated by Sandra, her boss of three years. Sandra ran the multimillion-dollar marketing company where Josie worked as an account manager, and she didn’t have the best sense of humor or the best understanding of Josie’s management methods.
“Look, I’m sorry. You know I never asked to lead a team. I work best alone.”
Sandra sighed. “Businesses work best when there are team players.”
“Not everyone wants to be on a team. I am much more productive working alone.”
“When I put you in a management position, it was because your clients raved about your work ethic and what you did to increase their bottom lines. But as soon as I put you in charge of other human beings, it’s like you became a different person. I’ve only seen a modest increase in our bottom line, and that is solely because you have refused to delegate!”
Josie’s mind wandered for a moment as she thought about the stack of work still sitting on her desk. She really didn’t have time for this today. “Again, I get much more done when I just do it myself. My staff is inept, Sandra. I constantly have to follow up to see if they did what they were supposed to do. At a certain point, it makes more sense to handle it alone.”
“Or train them?”
“Train them? I don’t have time to hold the hands of adults. They should know their jobs.”
Sandra opened a file folder that was on her desk. “This is your personnel record.”
“You keep records on us? That’s a little Big Brother-ish, if you ask me.”
“Last month you told Bill to create a proposal for the Jenkins file. Do you remember that?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Bill got the proposal done in time, but you delayed it at the last minute. And rather than give him feedback, you threw it in the trash.”
“That’s because it was trash, Sandra. It looked like a fourth grader wrote it.”
“Another employee saw you throw it away and then told Bill. How do you think that made him feel?”
“How would you have felt if the client saw that awful proposal? I saved the client! I rewrote the proposal. Bill turned it in late to me, and I could tell it was a total rush job. The meeting only got delayed by a
couple of days.”
“The client still complained about the delay, Josie. And now Bill is threatening to quit.”
Josie leaned in and whispered, “It wouldn’t be a big loss.”
Sandra turned to the next page in the folder. Josie wondered how long this process was going to go on. She needed to inhale her salad and then get on a videoconference call with her newest clients in Texas.
“We recently hired a new college graduate named Tasha, and she worked for you for twenty-two days before going to Human Resources. She said you only let her mail packages and make copies, Josie.”
Josie chuckled. “I don’t know how she graduated from college, to be honest. She couldn’t even manage simple tasks. For example, I needed her to send a package to Elliott Madders in Seattle, but for some reason, she sent it to Washington, DC, instead! Why, you may ask? Because she apparently thinks Washington always means DC, and paid no attention to Seattle on the note I gave her. She did it three different times, so yes, I raised my voice. I was frustrated. I had to spend hours on the phone smoothing that over. So I did put her on copy duty because, again, I don’t have time to babysit grown adults.”
“This is not working out, Josie.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that we need effective leaders in this company, and you’ve become a liability. Your staff is constantly complaining, and you haven’t increased profits even with a whole team of people. You’re fired.”
Josie’s mouth fell open, and she was sure she felt the blood completely drain from her face. Imagining she currently looked like a mime who’d been told shocking news, she swallowed hard and found her words again. “Are you kidding me?”
All she could think about was her daughter. Kendra was going through all the teenage strife right now, and the last thing either of them needed was financial issues. She had to keep Kendra in the good school, but how would she continue paying rent?
“I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”
“Please, don’t fire me. I’ll try harder. I’ll apologize to everyone, and I’ll even go see a shrink or something. Don’t fire me.”
“I’m sorry, Josie, but this is it.”
“Sandra, you just said I’m the best. Clients will be so upset . . .”
“Please clean out your desk and leave your key card with Patti.” Sandra stood up and crossed her arms.
Realizing she wasn’t kidding or bluffing, Josie slowly stood. “What am I supposed to do now?” Her voice, softer and possibly trembling, fell from her lips in more of a stutter.
“I don’t know, but I wish you the best. I really do. I wish things could have been . . . easier.”
Easier. That word had never been part of Josie’s vocabulary. From her earliest moments of life, her existence had never been described as easy. Better words for it were complicated, emotional, gritty, raw, and maybe even sad. But easy? Never.
Josie felt her feet walking slowly out of the office, but she didn’t feel in control of them at all. It was as if they were floating across the floor, and she was just an unwilling passenger. She made it to her office, which was just a couple of doors down from Sandra’s. There was already a box sitting on her desk. She turned around to see if anyone was standing behind her, but no one was.
As she slid behind her desk, probably for the last time, and laid her forehead against the beloved mahogany surface, she held back tears. Crying wasn’t her thing, and she wasn’t about to start now.
“Are you okay?”
She looked up to see her friend—her only friend, really—Melody. She was standing there with an empathetic—or maybe sympathetic—look on her face.
“What have you heard?” Josie replied, her throat inexplicably hoarse.
“Pretty much everything. Gossip travels fast in this place. Who gave you the box?”
“No idea. I assume somebody who is really excited to see me leave.”
“Do you want me to help you pack?”
“No, thanks. But can you give my key card to Patti? I don’t feel like walking right down the center of the office when I leave. I prefer to slink out the back door and disappear into oblivion.”
Melody walked over and sat across from her. “You’ll land on your feet. You always do, Josie.”
“I’ve always had to. I’m pretty tired of starting over.”
“It’s just a job! Remember, you’ve got a wonderful fiancé and a beautiful daughter.”
Josie laughed. “My fiancé is pretty great, but my daughter? Well, she’s a handful, just
like I was at her age. She scares me.”
Melody laughed. “You’ll be okay. I just know it.”
“Thanks for the pep talk, but I’d better pack my stuff before they send in the military to extract me.”
She watched as Melody left her office and then looked down at her desk. She had two framed pictures, her favorite pen, and her iPad. Other than that, nothing else belonged to her.
Josie had always packed light, never expecting to stay somewhere long. That, too, was a part of her childhood. Some things never left you, and the feeling of having no roots never left her. After all, how does a person get roots if they were never given any?
She tossed her belongings into the box and stood up, grabbing her messenger bag and favorite umbrella from the corner. As she turned off the light, she sighed. Another new beginning she didn’t ask for. Another failure to add to her long list of them. The one bright light was the fact that she was having dinner with Craig tonight. He’d make it better. He’d tell her how amazing she was, how smart and determined. He’d pump her up until she could find a new job. She just had to make it until dinnertime.
Josie opened the front door of her townhome and slammed it behind her. This day had not gone as planned, and she was ready to drink an enormous glass of wine and watch trashy daytime TV until her eyes bled.
She lived in the fanciest suburb of Atlanta, and most of her neighbors were away at work during the day. The only people she saw were nannies and stay-at-home moms with their cute yoga pants and expensive sneakers. Even though she lived among them, she was anything but rich. Never in her life had she been “well-off” when it came to money. It was only recently that she could afford the rent in a place like this to provide the best life for her daughter.
Now that Kendra was sixteen and a junior in high school, Josie felt like her job as a parent was almost done. Her grandmother had told her a long time ago that parenting was forever, but she hoped her daughter was going to fall in line soon and become a contributing member of society. She had always been a straight-A student until her grades recently began to slip, and she started hanging out with the wrong crowd. Josie had to do something. Getting them into this townhouse six months ago had been like an act of God. The rent was still a stretch, but the pride she’d felt when her daughter started at a better school had been worth all the long hours at work, especially over the last year. Though not spending as much time with her daughter had been hard, and sometimes Josie blamed herself for Kendra’s new attitude problems.
She walked into the kitchen and opened the fridge, selecting a half-drunk bottle of wine. Had she really drunk that much in the tub last night? Staring at the bottle, she scoffed at the idea. There was no way she drank that much. Brushing off the worry that her daughter might’ve done it, she poured herself a glass and leaned against the cold granite countertop.
How would she cover the rent next month without a good-paying job? Car repairs had taken her savings weeks ago. Getting into another marketing company and making a management-level salary would not be easy. Her résumé wasn’t even up to date. She’d have to work on that immediately. But first, she was making herself a big plate of French fries and watching those court shows where mothers sued daughters and landlords sued renters.
Just as she was opening the freezer to find the bag of fries, she heard a noise upstairs. Was it muffled voices speaking? Frozen in place, she thought
about the decision to not own a gun. Right now seemed like an awfully good time to have one. Knowing her inability to aim and how her hands shook when she was nervous, she’d opted to own pepper spray instead. Of course, she had no idea where that was.
She grabbed a knife from the big wooden block on her counter and slowly climbed the stairs, turning sideways like she saw in the movies. Why did they turn sideways like that, anyway?
At the top of the stairs, she looked left toward her bedroom. The door was still open, and her bed was unmade. Nothing looked amiss there, so she turned right, toward Kendra’s bedroom. The door was closed but cracked, and she could see sunlight peeking through, which meant Kendra had left her window blinds open before leaving for school.
Thinking she’d just imagined the noise, she turned to walk back downstairs.
Then she heard it again, and it was definitely coming from Kendra’s room. She pulled her phone from her pocket, her finger paused over the number nine.
Suddenly, the door swung open. A teenage boy stood there, shirt off, hair a mess. A red plastic cup—filled with God knows what—was in one hand and a cigarette was in the other.
“Who in the heck are you?” Josie yelled, holding up the knife.
The guy held up his hands and laughed the laugh of someone high as a kite. “Whoa, lady! Don’t cut me. I’m just trying to have a good time.”
“Why are you in my house?” she asked through gritted teeth.
Kendra came up behind him wearing a long T-shirt and a tiny pair of bike shorts. “Mom?”
It occurred to Josie that the look on her daughter’s face wasn’t one of embarrassment or shame. Nope. It was a look of irritation that Josie had come home early and ruined their “good time.”
“What do you think you’re doing?” Josie asked, pushing past the shirtless dopehead and grabbing Kendra’s arm.
“Let go of me, Mom!”
“So, I’m just gonna go downstairs,” the boy said, chuckling under his breath. For all Josie knew, he was laughing at the monkeys playing tennis in his tiny pea brain.
“I cannot believe this,” Josie said, pushing Kendra back into the room and slamming
the door behind them. “Why aren’t you at school?”
Kendra rolled her eyes and sat down on her bed. “Because school is stupid.”
“No, you’re going to be stupid if you don’t finish school.”
“You didn’t finish school!”
She had a point. Josie had given birth a week after her eighteenth birthday. Kendra wasn’t planned, and her birth hadn’t resulted from a committed relationship—at least not a mutual one. It resulted from too much alcohol and not enough parental supervision.
“I got my GED, and I built a great career. At this rate, you’ll be living in the local trailer park with a mobile home full of babies and the shirtless wonder down there smoking beside the crib!”
“Wow, Mom, you really painted a picture there. Look, I just didn’t feel like going back to that stupid school today. The teachers hate me, the kids are so lame, and I have better things to do with my time.” Kendra walked over and picked up a pair of blue jeans she had slung over the back of her vanity chair. She slipped them on and then ran a brush through her tousled hair.
“I don’t want you to make the same stupid mistakes I did.”
She looked at Josie. “So you think I was a mistake? Because you had me when you were eighteen years old?”
Josie looked at her, feeling regretful of her word choice. “You were not a mistake.”
“Well, I wasn’t in your plans either.”
Josie sat down next to her daughter and sighed. “You don’t need to be hanging out with losers, skipping school, and drinking. It won’t lead anywhere good. Our family has a history of stupid mistakes, Kendra, and you can choose a different path.”
“Why are you home, anyway?”
“Because I got fired today.”
Kendra’s mouth dropped open. “You got fired?”
“Yep.”
“What did you do?”
The accusatory tone in her voice was unwelcome. “I did nothing wrong. My staff was inept, and I work better alone. Sandra just couldn’t see that.”
“Mom, even I don’t believe that.”
She sighed again. “Look, I don’t want to talk about all of it right now. I came home to relax, not watch my daughter turn into a social reject.”
Kendra rolled her eyes and groaned. “Oh my gosh, get over it already! You did way
worse when you were my age.”
“And how do you know that?” Josie asked, standing up and putting her hands on her hips.
“Because you were pregnant at eighteen, Mom. That’s way worse than skipping school. And you did other stuff too. Nana told me.”
“Nana shouldn’t tell you things like that.”
“It was a while back, anyway.”
Josie’s grandmother, Adeline Campbell, was her rock. She’d been there for her since birth, raising her off and on for her whole life. Even though Adeline had been the picture of propriety and the consummate Christian grandmother, Josie had always acted out. Her relationship with her own mother had damaged her beyond repair. But Adeline never gave up, and somehow Josie escaped their small town and made it to Atlanta, starting her life over and building a career.
Until today. Today she was back to being an unemployed loser, ...
