I blink at the words staring back at me on the screen: Private Meeting.

I blink again, and then again, faster each time, barely able to believe my eyes. I keep thinking that maybe if I blink just one more time, I’ll open them to find that something has changed.

Nope.

Asher Marks’ Google calendar, which is open in front of me on my computer monitor, still says “Private Meeting” in a time slot slated for tomorrow. But it might as well say “Meeting with ‘Shhhhh, don’t tell Monique— it’s top secret.’” Because, to me, that’s what it means.

I’m the office manager and head human resource manager at Marks, Sanchez, and Reed. (The firm has gone through many name additions but it remains the original three in my mind). As part of my job duties, I facilitate the calendars of the three founding partners— of whom Asher is one— and the staff. 

This is Asher’s private calendar, which he only shares with me. So, the only reason to put ‘private meeting’ in the entry would be if he doesn’t want me to know the person with whom he’s meeting.

My dad used to have an old saying: “Something smells rotten in Denmark.” As a child, I never understood it, and always wondered why we would care what it smelled like in a far away country.

But now, I’m beginning to get the drift of the phrase. Because this isn’t Denmark but something sure smells rotten in here, and it’s not just the smell of someone’s old hardboiled eggs wafting over from the cafeteria, which is right next to my office.

I’ve worked at this firm for five years, first as an intern for the position of office manager. A lot of things have changed around here, but my position has never lost importance— in fact, the opposite is true. As the firm merged with new lawyers and law firms, my title has continually improved. Currently, it’s Lead Human Resources Manager and Head Office Manager, and that’s about as far up as I can get.

Not bad, for someone who was the first in my family to graduate from high school. I still remember the day I left my small town for college. My father was driving our old station wagon, loaded up with all my earthly possessions— or at least those I could manage to cram into the car, and those I thought I would have room for in a small, shared dormitory room. He beamed proudly as he nodded at me and asked, “Ready, Moni? For your new beginning?”

It was his special nickname for me— everyone else has always called me by my full name, “Monique,” but my dad has always called me “Moni”— and I’d smiled back, both because I liked the nickname and also because I was ready to head off to college and for my new beginning. More than ready, in fact. I felt I had been ready since I was about thirteen.

It wasn’t living with my dad that had been a problem. He’d always encouraged and supported me. It was more that I wasn’t much of a small town girl. And I didn’t have much in common with most of the kids at my high school who were.

So, I couldn’t wait to try out new places and meet new people. Sure, there was my boyfriend, Cal, who didn’t like our hometown, either. But he was headed to Harvard, while I was off to Oberlin, in Ohio.

The fact that my boyfriend and I we were headed in two different directions which was less than ideal, but we’d promised to keep seeing each other despite being separated geographically, and to visit each other as often as we could, and see each other while we were home on breaks, of course. And I knew deep down that I probably didn’t need the distraction to my studies that having a serious boyfriend who was close by would have brought.

On average, then, the benefits of leaving my hometown greatly outweighed the drawbacks.  Plus, speaking of drawbacks, there was the small problem of…

“Monique! Don’t leave me!”

As if she could read my thoughts— which, wouldn’t surprise me and would in fact explain a lot— my mom ran out to the car and rapped her knuckles on the window until I rolled it down, using the old fashioned manual lever. As soon as I’d done that, she gripped the rubber padding in the slit where the window had just been, in her typically over dramatic style.

“You can’t leave,” she wailed, her lower lip trembling.

“I have to, Mom,” I’d said, placing one of my hand on top of hers. When she was in one of these moods, it was best to treat her as if she was a child, making sure to coddle her and explain things to her in easy to understand ways. “If I don’t leave now, I’ll be late for orientation.”

“I don’t see why you have to go at all,” she’d said, snapping into one of her more mean-spirited moods.

It might have seemed random and unpredictable to a bystander looking in on our family, but none of it surprised me because I had lived with it for eighteen years. If Mom’s sugary sweet ploy didn’t work, she always jumped to cruelty next.

“A woman is meant to raise children and tend house,” she’d said, harkening back to one of her favorite topics as if this time it might convince me. “Why do you even need college, anyway?”

I’d rolled my eyes. In my mother’s world, the year is always 1953. Or maybe more like 1853.

“Mom, I’ll make sure to come home to visit often,” I’d promised her, for the millionth time. “And I packed the monkey stuffed animal you crocheted me, as well as the cookies you made me, for the car trip.”

“Thanks for those,” my dad had said with a grin.

“They’re not for you,” she’d shot back at him. Her mood with my dad was always set to cruel. She had stopped the sugary sweet act with him long ago. “You’ve been absolutely no help. Parading our daughter all over the country to visit colleges, encouraging her dreams of going to some fancy liberal arts college where she’ll get a useless degree she won’t be able to use.”

“That’s not true, Mom,” I’d told her.

It was true that my dad had taken me to visit a lot of colleges. He was excited at my prospects for higher education and vowed to help me achieve the opportunities that he said he had never had when he was my age. And I think he liked all the time on the road, away from my mother and the stifling house where she liked to hurl insults at him and change from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde and back again with me. But the second part of what she’d said wasn’t true.

“Women are breaking the glass ceiling more and more now,” I’d informed her.

“Yeah, and then looking down and wondering why they were ever interested in climbing up that high.”

I rolled my eyes again. One of my mother’s favorite topics was why feminism was bad for women. She liked to talk about how women couldn’t find true emotional fulfillment if they weren’t domestic. And she enjoyed pointing out studies about women who had focused on their career over their personal relationships or family goals until it was too late, and they ended up loveless, lonely and miserable.

Which was pretty ironic considering that my mom was all three of those things. She had had my siblings and me when she was quite young, and had devoted her whole life to us. She seemed bitter about that fact, while simultaneously encouraging me to follow in her footsteps. I’d spent the greater part of my teenage years confused by this strange paradox, until I’d finally decided I’d never be able to figure it out and I should just focus on myself.

I had listened to my father’s advice over my mother’s. I’d headed to college and focused on my career. And now, I’m reaping the rewards, as the person who keeps this law firm humming. I’m paid well for what I do, and I’ve earned all the partners’ trust and respect.

Which is why I’m quite surprised to see that Asher Marks is meeting with someone and not telling me. In my entire history here at the firm, that’s never been the case. His wife, Madilyn, works here as a senior associate— they’d fallen in love when he was her mentor and she was a brand new employee— but even when he schedules a meeting with her, he puts “Meeting with Madilyn” on the calendar.

If he was meeting with Cameron or one of the other partners, he usually puts that down, too. He’ll often even note what the meeting is about, or invite me to it if it concerns firm-wide or employee matters.

My “spidey senses” are heightened, which is another of my dad’s favorite phrases. I know I should mind my own business but I can’t help but worry that the meeting is about me, or that my job is in jeaopardy.

Asher had never before not put who he was meeting with on the calendar.

So why now?

It’s a mystery that simply must be solved.