I headed to our bedroom; he turned back down the stairway. Within moments, I followed and made my way to the Day Room. I passed close by the dining room and, although I knew I’d be welcome, I was glad I wasn’t in there. Isabel didn’t need me. This was hers now, whatever became of the visit and the thesis.
Before I reached the Day Room, I heard Nathan’s voice coming from the library across from it. The door was ajar, so I pushed it and looked inside. It was a charming little space—a completely interior room with walls fully lined in books. It smelled of dust, ink, old leather, and furniture oil.
Nathan’s back was to me. He was typing at his computer, his phone resting near him. I noted the long white cord of earbuds and stepped forward to tap him.
“I disagree. Engineering is not the place for cuts, not when entering the fourth quarter . . . A sale will never clear that fast and you know it.”
He sat back. I stepped back.
“Benson? Rodriguez? Davies? Whom are you planning to sacrifice, Karen? We’ve run the numbers and WATT’s got payroll secured through May . . . This is precipitous . . .”
I froze where I was, knowing he hadn’t heard me come in.
“She’s responsible for 42 percent of deliverables in the past three years . . . I understand that and I’m not saying it isn’t an issue . . . I don’t . . .”
I backed out of the room completely. I understand that and I’m not saying it isn’t an issue.
That “she” had to be me. How had it not occurred to me that Nathan would discuss me? That I was part of what was right—or wrong—at WATT? He’d followed me around for a month. He had to have opinions about my work. Was I getting fired? Was he agreeing? Or was he defending me? And if he was defending me—was it because I was good at my job, or because I was now his girlfriend?
“I didn’t hear you come down.”
I started at his voice. “Just now . . . How was your call?”
“It was fine.” He gestured into the Day Room.
I walked in first and curled into one of the armchairs. “You don’t look fine.”
“We don’t need to talk about it.” He pointed to a small silver tray, then handed me one of the two glasses of port resting on it. “I ran into Duncan. He brought these for us.”
“We can talk about it if it would help.” I waited.
“No . . .” Nathan sat back and watched the fire, seemingly lost in thought. He took a sip. Another. Then he turned to me. “I’ve asked before, but I don’t think I fully understood your answer. Why did you never share your Golightly work with Benson or Rodriguez? They’re both solid engineers with different skill sets. They could’ve helped you.”
“It got away from me in a lot of ways, but it also was my job to get it right.” I set down my glass. “Craig never pushed me on this. Why are you?”
“Because it’s an issue, Mary. It cost a lot of money and, bottom line, he should have. There’s no way around that.”
“He understood I needed it.”
“But as your boss he should have pushed, so there wouldn’t be questions now.” He flinched as if he’d just revealed something he shouldn’t have.
“What are the questions now?” I paused, but he didn’t reply. “Are you going to tell me what you’re really after? Or do I have to guess?”
“I can’t, Mary. Not now, not yet.”
I was getting fired. I set down my glass and pushed out of the chair. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
Isabel was still at dinner or in the ballroom. I looked around our room at the scattered dresses and ribbons, at the silks and wools. This wasn’t my world. I grabbed my phone and my computer and I fled.
I headed back to the narrow stairs and the long hallway of cupboards. That first night, while fixing Clara’s flashlight, I’d noticed a small room. It had a table, stools, and rows upon rows of jars lining the walls. I assumed it had been the canning room at some point. Tonight it was my hiding place.
I perched on the stool and opened my computer. My hands felt too heavy to move, so I just rested them there. I thought it would hurt more—losing a job after five years, losing a man after five minutes.
It’s just a job. My brothers had thrown out that line countless times over the years—to me, to my dad, to each other. It’s just a job.
And not even one I’d picked . . . Craig had picked me. Hounded me to join his start-up. He was the one who started the conversation in that elevator and practically grabbed the device I’d created for my professor from my hands in his eagerness. And working in that garage was stifling . . . There were only ten of us that whole year, working eighty-hour weeks and living on Craig’s wife’s casseroles and Tamarind Jarritos. And the new offices? Always cold and gray. All those divider walls were gray.
It took me twenty minutes and an equal number of data drops to send every remaining scrap on my work to Benson—stuff I’d left off the shared server. Another 13 percent of my hard drive was now free. Golightly and everything else I’d been working on was his.
Why did you never share your Golightly work with Benson or Rodriguez?
Karen had harped on me daily about “collaborative creativity” and “dialoguing across sectors” and “an atmosphere of free data exchange and ideation.”
It wasn’t that I didn’t agree with any of those concepts, once I took out the buzzwords, or that I thought Benson or Rodriguez would steal, ruin, or diminish my ideas. WATT wasn’t like that. I wasn’t like that. But this one—that’s what I couldn’t explain to Nathan, but Craig, on some level, had understood—it was asking for judgment on a piece of my soul. I never should have started designing Golightly in the first place. That was my mistake.
But just as Isabel had said today, I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun. I was originally testing my emotions, remembering that movie and even my mom, with some ocular advances the physicists discovered. Then Craig found out, saw the marketability, and pushed me forward. Something tentative, small and private, went above and beyond me before I could balk and call an end to it all. I let it roll me in hopes I’d catch up. I never did.
I scrolled through my e-mails in search of one I hadn’t truly considered but also never deleted. MedCore had reached out ten times over the past two years. Maybe it was time to reach back.
I sent a query—just three lines. It hardly took any time at all.
Then I tapped my phone.
“I didn’t expect to hear from you.” The delight in my dad’s voice almost made me smile. It was soft and croaky. He cleared his throat. “I’m taking a coffee break. It’s a beautiful day here, by the way, down to seventy-eight degrees . . . I had a good talk with Isabel today.”
“I told her to take over the updates. She said she’d call Dr. Milton too.”
“She was going to do that right after we talked. I expect I’ll hear from her again. She sounds good, strong. You did well, Mary.”
“Thanks, Dad. How’s the Historical Society building?”