A Mother Adored: From Office Outcast to CEO's Beloved novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: The Recording
In the CEO's office she plays the recording and asks for her own job, then her father calls for money, and her badge goes dead.
Nolan Whitaker's office was on the ninth floor, and it had nothing on the walls.
One desk, two chairs, a lamp, and a window that showed all of Columbus in the rain.
He did not sit down.
He stood with his back to the glass and held out his hand for my phone.
"I'll play it here," I said, and I set it on his desk myself.
His eyebrow moved a quarter of an inch.
I pressed play.
Dale's voice filled the room, soft and sure of himself.
"You come to my place when I ask.
"And you don't tell anyone, because nobody will believe a girl who showed up in boots."
The recording ran for four minutes.
Nolan listened to all of it without moving his face.
Only his right hand changed.
It lay flat on the desk, and by the end the knuckles had gone white.
When the clip finished, the rain filled the quiet.
"There are thirty more," I said.
"They're not as clear.
"He texts me at midnight, and he calls it mentoring."
"Why did you wait?" Nolan asked.
It was not an accusation.
He asked it the way a man asks about a leak in the roof.
"Because I'm an intern with a farm to pay for," I said.
"And I didn't have anything he couldn't call a misunderstanding."
"And tonight?"
"Tonight he said it with the drawer open," I said.
"I wanted him to say it out loud."
For the first time something moved in his face, and I could not tell what it was.
"Tell me what you want," he said.
I had practiced this on the elevator ride, and I had lost the words somewhere between the fourth floor and the ninth.
So I just said it.
"I want a formal complaint filed tonight, with HR and with the board, not with his golf partner.
"I want him nowhere near my work.
"And I want my permanent job, because I earned it.
"I don't want it for being quiet, and I don't want it for being sorry for."
Nolan looked at me for a long moment.
"The contract is a committee decision," he said.
"Dale doesn't sign it alone."
"He told me it was in his drawer."
"He lied to you," Nolan said.
"That is what men like him do first."
My phone buzzed on the desk.
The screen said DAD, and a text slid under it.
Bank wants 2400 by Friday. Send it tonight. Don't make me ask twice.
Nolan read it upside down, because it was lying right in front of him, and I watched him decide not to say anything.
I picked up the phone.
"It's my father," I said.
"I send him most of what I make."
"Why?"
"Because my mother left us a farm, and he's the one who stayed on it," I said.
"That is the short version, and I'm tired."
The phone rang while I was still holding it.
I turned it face down.
It rang again.
Nolan did not look at it.
He looked at the clock on the wall, which said 10:41.
"When is your last bus?" he asked.
I looked at the clock too.
"Ten forty," I said.
"It goes from Broad Street, and it takes forty minutes to get to my room in Whitehall."
"So it left," he said.
"It left."
"Then you'll let me drive you."
I should have said no.
Instead my stomach growled so loudly that we both heard it, and I realized I had skipped dinner for the third night in a row.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"I'm a little hungry."
The corner of his mouth moved, and for a second he looked almost like somebody else.
"There is a drawer full of crackers in the break room on nine," he said.
"They belong to my assistant and she hides them."
"That's stealing."
"She stole my last pen," he said.
I laughed, and I hated that I laughed.
Then both our phones went off at once.
His chimed in his coat, and mine buzzed on the desk.
An email had come in from Dale Brower to the head of Human Resources, with a copy to me.
I read it with my heart going hard.
It said I had been caught removing confidential client files from the building.
It said my access should be revoked immediately, and it said he would file a police report in the morning.
He had sent it four minutes after the elevator closed.
Dale had not wasted any time.
I turned to Nolan, and I opened my mouth, and then my badge went dead.
It was clipped to my coat, and the small green light on it went red.
On his office door the lock beeped twice, and the reader flashed the same color.
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