Chapter 9
Grace
My alarm went off at five the next morning, as usual. After breakfast, I took Maisie for a walk, said hello to Sunny and Z, the homeless couple who lived in the next block, and patted their dog, Kujo, on the head. In the days since my encounter with Luke, I was trying to be more outgoing. It had been a little embarrassing, walking up and introducing myself, but Sunny and Z were very friendly. Why had I waited so long to speak to them?
After changing into my work clothes, I went to Landsdowne to see Jamie. The nursing shift changes at seven, so it was a good time to check in with them. Then I drove to the office, arriving just in time for the monthly companywide meeting.
Those meetings were usually pretty boring and a waste of time. They started with announcements from HR—reminders to clean old lunches out of the break room refrigerator, pitches to sign up for the 401(k) plan, that sort of thing. Then the higher-ups gave the previous month’s performance numbers and a speech on doing better in the month to come. After that, they announced the employee of the month and everybody ate bagels.
Theoretically, it was a mandatory meeting, but about a third of the office usually didn’t bother to show, or only came in at the end for bagels. This Tuesday, everybody was there. Everybody. And they were dead silent. Something wasn’t right.
The chairs were nearly full. My four bosses—Jack Shapiro, Pete Ryan, Mark DeLoitte, and Ava Goddard—were sitting together in the sixth row, but there were no seats with them, so I walked to the back of the room. I found a spot against the wall and stood next to Denise Fine, who worked in accounting.
“What’s going on?” I whispered.
“Not sure,” she said, talking out of the side of her mouth. “But something. There’ve been rumors.”
“What kind of rumors?”
Denise shifted her eyes to the front of the room and a chair on the far left, occupied by a tall man with a long, thin face. I’d never seen him before. He was sitting next to Mert Hanson, president of the company.
“See that guy? His name is Gavin Nutting. I overheard somebody from HR say that he’s going—”
Before Denise could finish the sentence, Mert Hanson went to the front of the room and thanked everyone for coming.
“Judging from the turnout, I can see that the rumor mill has been working overtime.” He smiled, as if expecting people to chuckle, but nobody really did. “Well, the rumors are true. After twenty-two years, I’m stepping down as president of Hewlett and Hanson. It’s been a great privilege to—”
Mr. Hanson stopped in midsentence, sniffed, cleared his throat, and looked down at his shoes.
“Sorry. I . . . uh . . . sorry. I didn’t mean to get so emotional.” He let out a short, awkward laugh, then looked to the front row of chairs and the tall, thin man sitting on the left. “You know, I think it might be better to just let your new boss, Gavin Nutting, take it from here. Gavin?”
Gavin stood up. The two men shook hands and changed places. After a few words of praise for Mr. Hanson and his leadership, Gavin cut to the chase.
“Yesterday, Hewlett and Hanson was purchased by Spector Partners, a division of Carmond-Fox International. As you probably know, Spector is one of the largest commercial real-estate companies in the nation, with offices in twenty-four states.”
Gavin smiled, moving his eyes from left to right across the room, as though he was trying to make eye contact with everyone present.
“I’m sure you’re all worried about changes that might be coming. Anytime a company is purchased there must be a merging of cultures. But the good news for all of you is that you’re now part of the Spector family. As part of that family, you’ll be eligible for our generous benefits package and bonus program, and have greater opportunities for advancement.
“Now, I am sure you all have questions and concerns, but believe me when I say there is nothing to worry about. Spector purchased Hewlett and Hanson because we liked what we saw. We have no immediate plans to make any sweeping changes, so the best thing for all of you is . . .”
No immediate plans?
That’s when I stopped listening and started worrying. I’d been down this road before, back in Minnesota when the bank I worked for was bought by another bank, and half the teller jobs were eliminated, including mine. There wasn’t much work in our little town. I’d had to take a waitressing job with terrible hours and worse pay.
My fingers clenched into fists so tight I could feel my nails pressing into the flesh of my palms. My heart started racing and, for a moment, it felt like I’d forgotten to breathe. I needed this job. I didn’t like it, but I needed it. More importantly, Jamie needed it. The salary I earned at Hewlett and Hanson paid for groceries, the mortgage, my car payment, and twenty percent of the cost of Jamie’s care at Landsdowne. The remaining eighty percent was picked up by company insurance.
If I lost my job . . .
The meeting was over. Everybody got up and started milling around, talking nervously. Denise Fine was wiping away tears. She’d been with the company since the very beginning. I wanted to comfort her, but I was ten seconds away from a full-blown panic attack. I knew I had to get out of there before I lost it.
The aisles were jammed with bodies and there was no easy path to the door. Pushing my way through the crowd, I accidentally bumped into somebody and muttered an apology. Gavin Nutting turned around.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, and introduced himself, even though there wasn’t a person in the room who didn’t know who he was. “And you are?”
“I’m Grace. Grace Saunders.”
I took his outstretched hand. His grip wasn’t viselike, but close.
“Oh, yes,” he said, nodding. “Your husband had a fall, hiking accident. I’ve heard about you.”
The way he said it told me there was plenty to worry about.
* * *
“Grace? Grace, are you in there?”
Ava Goddard knocked on the door of the bathroom stall. I was leaning with my forehead resting against the wall, my heart racing. I felt too breathless to answer. She pounded the door again so hard that I could feel the vibration through the wall.
“I know you’re in there, Grace. Open up.”
I extended my right arm and released the lock. Ava opened the door.
“Oh, crap. Look at you,” she said, her voice a mixture of pity and disgust. “Hang on a second, Grace. I’ll be right back.”
I didn’t care if she came back or not. I was too busy trying to quell the stampede of panic flooding my body to care. I heard a metallic thunk as she locked the bathroom’s outer door, then the rustling of paper and the running of water.
“Sit down.” She grasped my shoulder, guiding me toward the toilet, then helped me sit down on the lid. “Put your head down and breathe into this, slowly.”
Ava handed me a small white paper bag. I held it to my mouth and breathed. When the danger of hyperventilation passed, I realized the bag was meant for sanitary disposal.
“Very resourceful,” I said when I could breathe again.
“I’m good in an emergency. I used to be a nurse.” She frowned. “You still look terrible. Here. Put this on the back of your neck.”
She handed me some wet paper towels and I laid them on my neck as instructed. The threat of nausea ebbed, as did the sense of panic and impending doom.
“You were a nurse?” I asked.
Ava was one of my four bosses, the one who hired me, actually, the same week Jamie and I moved to Portland so he could begin his paramedic training. I’d worked for her close to two years, but the only thing I knew about her personal life was that she was single, liked to vacation in Kauai, shop in the Collectors section at Nordstrom—the department with all the designer stuff—owned a penthouse in the Pearl District, drove a Lexus, and took soy milk in her coffee. That was it.
It wasn’t that she was a cold person or a bad boss—in fact, she was a pretty good boss. She’d never treated me unfairly or talked down to me. But she was very focused. She worked hard, kept her private life private, and held her cards close.
“I was,” she said. “A long time ago and only for three years.”
“Why’d you stop?”
She handed me another wet paper towel. I pressed it to my forehead.
“Because I got tired of working all the hours on God’s green earth and having absolutely nothing to show for it. Because I like being in control of my life. And because I like having money,” she said.
“Women aren’t supposed to say that out loud. But I don’t know why. We eat, too, don’t we? We have mortgages and car payments. And very expensive handbags.” She smiled at me. “Better?”
I squashed the paper towels into a soggy ball in my fist and nodded.
“Ava. Do you think they’re going to fire people?”
Her smile fled.
“Yes.”
“Me?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “The truth is, you’re expensive to keep around, Grace. And you missed a lot of work at first, took a lot of personal days—”
“But that wasn’t my fault,” I protested. “Jamie’s accident was . . . an accident. My husband nearly died! He was in a coma for weeks. What was I supposed to do? Yes, I know his care has been expensive. But the insurance—”
“Goes up every single year,” Ava said. “Like clockwork. When a company has an employee with extraordinarily expensive and ongoing medical bills, then the clockwork moves even faster and the rates climb even higher for the whole company.”
The nausea returned. I pressed the ball of soggy paper towels to my neck.
“But Mr. Hanson never said—”
Ava tilted her head to the side. She wouldn’t divulge private conversations within management, but she didn’t have to. Her face said it all. I’d been a topic of conversation in the past and it was likely that I would be again in the future. The reason I so desperately needed this job, the good insurance coverage that provided for Jamie’s care, was the thing that jeopardized my chances of keeping it.
“You really think they’d fire me?”
“I think they’d fire anybody who doesn’t add to the bottom line. Including me.”
“What should I do?”
She gave me that same look, the deciding-how-much-to-say look.
“The only thing you can do, Grace. Become indispensable.”