She Plans My Promotion, I'm Planning Divorce novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: Grandma's Birthday

The next day I was at my new desk by eight, and by noon I had three hundred unread emails and a smile I could not remove.

Nobody at Rowan Group checked on me. They just handed me work and trusted me with it.

My phone lit up at ten past one.

Where are you? You skipped work without permission. I'm cutting your pay in half this month.

It was Claire.

I read it and put the phone face down.

I had resigned in front of two hundred people, and she had been standing a foot away.

At six I was reaching for my coat when the phone lit up again.

It's Grandma's birthday today. She insisted I invite you. Come if you want.

I held the phone for a while.

Claire had a grandmother, and the grandmother was the one person in her family who had never treated me as the help.

Edith Eberhart was seventy-eight and had raised Claire through the bad years, after her parents stopped coming home. She baked her own birthday cake every year and made everyone eat a slice.

She had once told me that I was the best thing to ever happen to her granddaughter.

I typed back: Okay.

Edith's house was in Oak Park, a tall old place with a porch and a grandfather clock in the front hall that had not been wrong in forty years.

I had a bag of lemon cookies in my hand from the corner bakery, because Edith liked lemon.

The front door stood open, and the hall was full of people in dark suits and expensive shoes.

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