Chapter 9: Ask Me to My Face

The administrator's office smelled of burnt coffee and old carpet.

She was a small woman in her sixties with reading glasses pushed up into grey hair.

She read the voicemail transcript aloud, flat, and set it face down on her desk.

"I called your manager in Portland on Friday night," she said. "I woke her up."

My stomach dropped.

"She said, and I'm quoting, that if Bethany Holzer ever pocketed so much as a saline flush she would eat her own badge."

The administrator took off her glasses.

"She also said you worked five of someone else's shifts this year without being thanked once."

I didn't know what to say.

"I'll keep the transcript in your file," she said. "I'll also write down who I think made the call."

"If a board letter arrives, it goes straight to our attorney, and I will be the one who answers it."

"Thank you," I said.

"Don't thank me yet." She pointed her glasses at the door. "The caller isn't done. Go look at the town page."

I looked on my phone in the hallway.

Harlow Creek Neighbors had four thousand members, every one of them nosy.

At six that morning someone had posted under a name made of numbers.

It said the new ER nurse had been fired from her old job for stealing.

It said families should ask who was handling their pain medication.

There were already ninety comments.

I went to the diner at eight thirty, the middle of the breakfast rush, because there was nowhere else to be.

The room went quiet when I came through the door.

Every booth was full. Twenty faces turned toward me, and a fork stopped halfway up.

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