My Brother Gave Her My Place, So I Stopped Coming Home novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: She Gets the Table, I Get the Work

Janie takes the head of the conference table while Sasha is moved to a desk by the plotter; Kirk dresses her cut hand, then forwards an email Janie wrote in Sasha's voice.

At 8:15 the turnstile in the Klingenberg Group lobby flashed red.

I tapped my badge again, and it flashed red again.

The receptionist looked up and went pink.

"Oh, Sasha. I was told you'd be on leave. I'm so sorry. Let me buzz you through."

"Who told you I'd be on leave?"

"The calendar," she said, and buzzed me through.

On the fourth floor, everyone had moved.

My desk by the window was gone. The Beacon wall, with fourteen months of my sketches, was covered in a clean white board.

The conference room doors were open. Janie sat at the head of the long table, with Dad on her right and Dylan on her left.

Twelve people in the office sat around them, and every one of them looked up when I walked past.

Dylan came out into the hall and handed me a sticky note.

"Production desk," he said. "By the plotter. It's a lateral move, Sasha, it's what the project needs."

"What does the project need?"

"Someone to turn Janie's redlines into drawings. You're the fastest hand we have."

The production desk was a folding table beside the plotter, with a stool and a stack of paper two inches thick.

Every page was my own Beacon sheet, marked in green pen, and every one had a note.

Change title block.

I stood there until the plotter finished printing, and the paper fell into the tray.

Somebody put a coffee beside my elbow.

"Oat milk," Janie said. "I know it's not the same as a desk. I told Dylan this is wrong, I swear. He said it's temporary."

She looked so sorry that I almost thanked her.

"What does the title block say now?" I asked.

"Just a team credit, I think." She was already looking at her phone. "I'm going to fix it. I promise."

She went back into the conference room, and I heard Dad say, "Kiddo, you good?"

I stood in the hall with the pages.

Then I walked into the room, in front of all twelve of them, and said, "Dad, can I talk to you?"

He came out, and I steered him to the printer alcove.

"I've worked here seven years," I said. "I led Beacon for fourteen months. Why is Janie at the table and I'm at a card table?"

"It's for a month. Just support her."

"Why?"

"Because she's family," Dad said, and I waited for the rest.

He looked past me at the conference room, where Janie laughed at something Dylan said.

"She's had a hard year," he said.

"So have I. This morning."

"You're strong, Sasha." He patted my arm and went back inside.

I returned to the plotter and started cutting sheets.

The trimmer on the plotter table has a blade that is not meant to be rushed.

I was rushing. Dylan walked by, tapped the stack, and said, "Janie needs those by noon."

I flinched, and the blade went through the side of my left hand.

It didn't hurt at first. Then it did, and blood dripped on Janie's green pen notes.

"Don't move."

Kirk was standing at the end of the hall, in his work jacket, with the building's blueprint cylinder under his arm.

He crossed to me and took my hand in both of his.

"Hold it up," he said. He pulled a clean handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it hard on the cut.

His hands were warm from outside, and rough at the palms.

"You're sitting in the hallway," he said.

"It's the production desk."

"My building doesn't have a production desk, Sasha."

"It's a lateral move."

"It's a hallway."

He kept his thumb on the inside of my wrist, over the pulse, while the handkerchief soaked through.

I could feel my heart under his thumb, and I looked at the floor.

He was holding my hand a good deal longer than a cut needed.

I told myself it was the handkerchief, and the blood, and the day I'd had.

"It stopped," I said.

"Not yet."

He didn't let go.

Down the hall, the conference room door opened, and Dylan said, "Kirk! You came early."

Kirk let go of my hand. He folded the bloody handkerchief into my fingers, and I held it there.

"I came for the Beacon sheets," he said. "Sasha has them."

"Janie has them, actually."

"I'll wait for Sasha."

He sat down on the stool at my production desk and looked at me.

I wrapped my hand in the handkerchief and pulled the next sheet into the plotter.

My phone buzzed against the table.

It was Kirk's name. He was sitting three feet from me.

He had forwarded an email, and above it he had typed one line.

Did you write this?

The email was addressed to his whole project team. It changed the Tuesday walk to Janie's schedule, and the sign-off underneath read: Janie Lang, Lead Designer, Beacon House.

I hadn't written any of it.

Janie had copied the schedule I sent her last week and signed it with a title I had never given anyone.

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