My Holiday Bonus Was a $5 Million IOU! I Quit and Their Company Collapsed novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Locked Out

Her company apartment's key fails at midnight and Luther is parked outside filming. Hattie takes her in. Ends: the intern's cut clip has three million views by morning.

My apartment was on the third floor of a brick building six minutes from the office.

The company leased it for me, and my mother called it a perk.

At ten forty I put my key in the lock, and it went in and wouldn't turn.

I tried it again with both hands.

Nothing.

A new brass lock was gleaming under the hall light, and the old one was in a plastic bag hanging off the knob.

On the bag, in my mother's handwriting, was a sticky note.

It said: "Come see me when you're ready to talk. Love, Mom."

I stood there and read that three times.

My laptop was inside.

So were my clothes, my passport, and the heating pad I used every night.

Down on the street an engine revved.

I went to the stairwell window and looked out.

A new red sports car was parked at the curb with its headlights on, and my brother was leaning against the door with his phone held up.

I went down.

"Look who's here," Luther said, without lowering the phone.

"Are you filming me?"

"It's for the company page. We want people to see how you're handling this."

"Handling what?"

"Being fired," he said, and smiled into the lens. "Mom changed the locks at nine forty. I came to watch."

"I quit, Luther. Nobody fired me."

"Semantics. Here's how it goes, Mar. Give me the Sunday Table password, tonight, and I'll talk Mom into letting you in."

"You want the login to my own account."

"It's the company's brand," he said. "Do you know how hard I worked on Strandberg? I took their people to dinner for three years. That deal is mine."

I hadn't known that.

I had never once seen him at a Strandberg meeting, and I had never been at one either.

"You took them to dinner," I said.

"Dinners. Plural."

"What's the name of the man you took?"

For a moment he looked at the phone, and then at me.

"That's not the point," he said. "Password."

"No."

"You'll sleep in your car, then."

"Then I'll sleep in my car."

"It's twenty degrees, Mara."

"I know what it is."

He laughed and turned the camera to himself.

"Ladies and gentlemen, my sister," he said.

I put my hand flat against my left side, where it hurt.

A pair of headlights swung around the corner and stopped behind his car.

It was a brown station wagon with one dented door, and the woman who got out was in a cardigan and slippers.

"Hattie," I said.

"I told you to call me tonight," she said. "You didn't, so I drove."

She marched up the sidewalk with a quilt over her arm and her reading glasses swinging from their cord.

"Hattie Lund," Luther said. "You're not supposed to be here. You're an employee."

"I'm an employee who's older than your car, Luther."

"Then you're fired."

"You can't fire me from a sidewalk. Ask your mother who signs the payroll." She put the quilt over my shoulders and looked at the phone in his hand. "And turn that off, honey. Nobody needs to see this."

He lowered it, for exactly as long as it took her to look away.

"You'll want this back," he said, holding up my building fob.

"Why would I want that?"

"Because you're not getting in," he said, and dropped it down a storm drain.

I heard it clink.

Hattie took my arm.

"Come on," she said. "Hand me your bag."

"It's a lunch bag. I'm fine."

"Your hand is shaking. Give it to me."

I gave it to her.

She put me in the wagon, and the heater smelled of cinnamon gum.

At her little house on Dayton Street she made me tea I didn't drink and put a hot-water bottle against my side without asking what for.

"I won't ask what that's for," she said. "I never have."

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me. Sleep on the couch, and tomorrow do whatever you're going to do awake."

I lay on a plaid couch under her quilt and looked at the email on my phone again.

Is this finally you?

I didn't answer it.

I fell asleep with the screen lit up on my chest.

At six, Hattie was shaking my shoulder.

"Mara."

She held her tablet in front of my face.

It was the company page, and the post was already three million views deep.

It was the party video, cut down to forty seconds.

It showed my mother's voice saying "Mara, sign that paper," and me setting a page on the cheese tray and walking out with my face set hard.

It didn't show the page.

It didn't show the number.

The caption said: "Daughter wrecks her family's company at the holiday party."

Under it, forty thousand strangers had already commented, and the top one said: "Imagine doing that to your mom."

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