My Family's Bonus Was a $5 Million IOU? Cute I Took the Million-Follower Brand Enjoy the Crash novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Marge's Couch

In Marge's kitchen Willa watches the intern's cut clip pass two million views, posts the notice herself, takes a process server's envelope, and then Porch Light posts a photo she never took.

Marge Clapton's kitchen smelled like onions and floor wax.

She put a grilled cheese in front of me at eleven at night and told me to eat it before I said another word.

I ate half of it standing up.

"You didn't take the whole sandwich," she said. "That's how I know it's bad."

All the way across town I had thought about one sentence from the lobby.

On October 24 I had been at my father's grave, and I had not quit anything.

I had not quit anything until two hours ago.

Her house was a narrow brick one on the east side, six blocks from the warehouse.

She had lived in it for thirty-four years and had a box of work gloves by the back door for every season.

My phone had buzzed in my coat pocket the whole ride.

Louisa, nine times.

Mom, three times, with no message, only a missed call each time.

Trent, once. It said: You have no idea what you've done.

I turned the phone face down on the table.

"Look at this," Marge said.

She held out her own phone.

It was a short video with a caption in pink letters: Daughter wrecks family company at Christmas party.

The intern had shot it from the third row.

It showed me walking up the aisle.

It showed me taking the microphone out of my mother's hand.

It showed me tapping my phone and saying the words I had said.

It did not show the sheet of paper.

It did not show the number on it.

It did not show Trent with his keys, or Louisa with her ribbon, or Mom's voice saying half.

It cut straight from me taking the microphone to me setting it down.

"Two million views," Marge said.

"Since when?"

"Since an hour ago."

The comments were rolling down the screen so fast I could not read them, but the top one was clear.

Imagine doing this to your mom at Christmas.

I felt the sandwich turn over in my stomach.

"I know you," Marge said. "You're about to go and explain."

"I'm not."

"You are. You've got your thumb on that scar."

I took my thumb off the scar.

"They cut it," I said. "They cut out the paper."

"So post the paper."

"On what?"

Marge looked at me with her eyebrows up.

"Honey," she said. "You own a page with one point three million people on it."

I had not posted a single thing on Porch Light in four days, because I had been so busy getting the company's calendar ready for Callow.

I opened the app.

My own login worked, and nobody else's did.

I found the photo I had taken of the notice, on my phone, in the ballroom while I was reading it twice.

A white page. Black type. A number with a dollar sign.

And at the bottom, Joan Whiting, CEO.

I did not write a caption.

I did not write anything.

I put the photo up, with nothing under it, and I set the phone down and finished my sandwich.

Marge washed the one plate we had used and kept an eye on her own phone.

By midnight, the photo had four hundred thousand likes.

The comments had turned.

Wait, a five MILLION dollar bill? For a day off?

And the intern got fifteen thousand?

Her mom gave the son a CAR and the daughter a LOFT and this girl a BILL?

Somebody had found Trent in the background of the intern's first shot.

Somebody had already found the loft.

"Well," Marge said, "that's something."

"It's not."

"It's something. Go lie down."

She had made up the couch with a quilt and a pillow from her own bed, and set a pair of men's slippers on the floor.

"Whose are those?"

"My husband's. He doesn't need them any more."

In all the years I had known her, it was the first time she had mentioned him.

There was a knock at the front door at ten past midnight.

Marge looked at me.

Neither of us moved.

She went to the door with a rolling pin in her hand, because it was what was nearest, and opened it on the chain.

A man in a puffy coat stood on the porch with a manila envelope.

"Willa Whiting?" he said past her shoulder.

"Who's asking?"

"I'm a process server, ma'am. I have a document for her."

I took it through the gap.

It was a demand from the company's lawyer.

It listed my work laptop, my work phone, my badge, and a company camera I had bought myself and expensed.

Under that was a paragraph that said that the Acknowledgment of Debt was due in full by January 2.

And under that, Trent's name, in the margin, in blue pen: Told you she'd be at Marge's.

I looked up from the page.

"How did he know where I'd go?"

"Honey," Marge said. "Everyone knows where you'd go."

I sat down on the couch with the quilt in my lap and opened the Porch Light app once more, to read the kind comments.

There was a new post on the page.

It was a photograph of a candle in a window.

I had not taken it.

The caption said: Taking some time for family this holiday. Back soon. xo W

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