Kelly

 

I slammed my foot on the gas, my tiny car leaped forward, and I merged onto the highway. I only had five minutes to make it to work on time, and I had at least an eight-minute drive there. Crap. I was never late until my mom’s diagnosis, and I hated being late. It was unprofessional, and I held myself to a higher standard…at least I tried to.

 

Luckily, traffic wasn’t too bad, and I didn’t see a cop anywhere, so I just kept my foot down on the gas, the needle climbing and climbing, driving fast but not recklessly. I merged at the last second onto the exit ramp. The driver behind me honked, and I waved at him. “Yeah, yeah,” I muttered. “Running late. So sue me.”

 

Okay, so maybe driving a little recklessly.

 

Somehow, I parked right at eight on the nose. I grabbed my purse and dashed inside. Not late after all. Amazing.

 

I normally wasn’t like this — so behind the ball. I was the kind of girl who did everything right, did everything by the books. I never had a speeding ticket, never broke the law. Keeping order was the only way I could try to make sense of the chaos of the rest of the world. So many things were going wrong lately and I just couldn’t handle it all. At least when I was here, in the office, I felt like I had a little bit of control, like I could make a difference, like I could affect the outcome.

 

So unlike how things were back home with Mom and her damned diagnosis.

 

Maybe I needed to cut loose some. Should call my best friend and go out for drinks.

 

With what money?

 

I wondered if we still had some from that bottle of rum. I needed to try to release some of my stress. Yeah, I played by the rules, but I was still alive. I still had fun. It had just been a little while since I last had any. And I knew how to party, how to have fun. Work hard, play harder. That had always been my mantra. That was until my mom got sick, though. That changed everything. She had stage three breast cancer.

 

Head down, I started toward my cubicle, mentally preparing myself for the day, when a throat cleared behind me. “Kelly.”

 

Shoulders slumping, I grimaced. Matt Warner. My boss. The last person I wanted to talk to today. He was always a miserable thing.

 

After screwing my lips into a semblance of a smile, I turned around to face him. “Hi, Matt. What can I do for you?”

 

“Can we talk?” He didn’t wait for an answer, just stalked off toward his large office, leaving me no choice but to follow him.

 

Uh-oh. The bagel I’d shoved into my mouth as I had raced to the car from my house wasn’t sitting well in my stomach. I swallowed hard and suppressed a cough. It was my imagination, I knew, but I felt like a piece of bagel was caught in my throat. Or maybe that was just a ball of worry. I was so stressed lately.

 

I’d only been in Matt’s office one other time — when he had interviewed me five years ago. His father had been sick, so Matt stepped in, even though he hadn’t been the big boss yet.

 

An office job wasn’t that great of a position, but I was good at what I did. I worked hard and never complained. And, boy, were there complainers employed here. A bunch of women worked here, and so there was a ton of cattiness, too. I never bothered with any of that. Just did my work and left. Didn’t have a lot of friends here, but I wasn’t here for fun and games. That was after hours with my best friend, Stacy. We’d go shopping or out to eat or go to the bar. Of course, with my mom needing my help taking care of her, I hadn’t had much time for fun with Stacy either. Just work and Mom, rinse and repeat.

 

Matt entered his office first. He walked around his huge desk but didn’t sit down. I moved to stand in front of one of the two chairs in front of his desk but didn’t sit down either. I still felt uneasy, and I wasn’t going to be the one to break the awkward silence.

 

He cleared his throat, bent down, and fiddled with some of the papers on his desk. He wouldn’t look me in the eye, and that stress level of mine skyrocketed. “It’s not always easy to do what is best for a company.”

 

I couldn’t breathe. This couldn’t be happening. I was a damned good employee! He had no grounds for this! He knew about my mom, about the bills. My mom couldn’t work anymore, her health was too poor, which meant she had had no choice but to quit and, of course, that meant she no longer had health insurance. All of her bills for her appointments and for treatment, and she had a ton of bills and many more to come yet, were out of pocket, and the bills were steep and never ending.

 

“I hate that it’s come down to this,” Matt said, still not looking at me, “but downsizing is a part of the business, and unfortunately—”

 

I couldn’t listen to another word. “I’m the fastest typist out of everyone. I work hard. I don’t slack off or make excuses or take a cigarette break every two minutes.” So I was throwing Molly under the bus. It pissed off everyone how often she would take them and for how long, too. And so what if I was rambling? I was pissed and had every right to be. “I am the longest tenured—”

 

“You’ve been late to work a lot recently,” he pointed out. He glanced up, but he was staring over my head instead of at me.

 

“I am not,” I said hotly, putting my hands on my hips. Cutting in majorly close, yes. Actually late, nope. Not even once. Somehow.

 

He raised his bushy eyebrows. I never realized it before, but they definitely look like hairy worms. “You’ve been taking a lot of time off.” Matt held up a piece of paper that I assumed had a list of my time off. I didn’t bother to look at it. I knew how much time I had taken. Just about all of my sick days and all but two of my vacation days.

 

I winced. That I couldn’t deny. “My vacation time—”

 

“Has all been used up.”

 

What? I was sure I still had two days yet! It was possible I made a miscalculation, and I hadn’t figured out what I would do once my paid time ran out. Matt didn’t care to give people time off without pay.

 

“Your sick days, too,” he continued. He laid the paper on his desk and tapped at certain spots. I didn’t care what he was trying to point out. I was too busy glowering at him. “And I heard from Ashley that you wanted to take a few mornings off without pay, too.”

 

I winced again and dropped my gaze from his face to his desk, no longer scowling, more apologetic than anything. No. More defensive than anything. “You know why—”

 

“Why doesn’t matter. Why doesn’t get the job done.” He shook his head. “You are a good worker, and I value everything you’ve done for us this past few years, but—”

 

“You can’t,” I whispered. I needed this job. I had to have it! How could he do this to me? To my mom? I was doing everything I could to keep everything together, both at home and here. I wasn’t sleeping well, between having to care for Mom and worrying about her, but I hadn’t failed Mom, and I hadn’t made any mistakes here at work. Yeah, okay, so sometimes I took naps in my car during my lunch break, and I might have gone over by five minutes here and there, and twice I had left to take Mom to the hospital and had to rush back to work and been a little late getting back then, too, but I really was trying to juggle everything as best as I could. I wasn’t Wonder Woman. I wasn’t perfect.

 

“I’m afraid I don’t have a choice in the matter, Kelly.” Matt shook his head again. I never realized what a huge melon of a head he had before. “You are the fastest typist, but you’ve been careless lately.”

 

“I…” I hung my head. I didn’t want to make excuses, and I didn’t want to cry. I blinked rapidly, my eyes burning. If he thought I was careless, that my work was slipping, he was right to fire me. But he was wrong, and I had to fight this. For Mom. “Careless?” I challenged. I wasn’t that out of it. I would’ve known if I had screwed up!

 

“Can you deny that your work has been compromised as of late?”

 

“I’m doing my best—”

 

“Your best today is not the same best it had been when you were first hired. I’m sorry, Kelly.”

 

Yeah, sure, he was sorry. He didn’t give a rat’s ass about me or my mom. All he cared about was his stupid company. There was a reason why he had to downsize, and it had nothing to do with how hard his employees were or weren’t working. He had inherited the company from his father, and he just plain wasn’t as savvy a businessman as his father had been. This wasn’t sour grapes talking. This was the truth.

 

“Under the circumstances,” he added, “I can give you a two-week severance package—”

 

“Two weeks,” I said sourly. That was it? All I was getting? What a cheapskate! His father had been the one to hire me, and he’d let go of a few people before he had stepped down two years ago, and I had learned that he always gave a four-week severance package. Not a miserly two!

 

“I wish things were different,” he continued. He rubbed the back of his neck, his gaze on his desk. You would think he was the one getting fired, given how uncomfortable he looked. I knew I wasn’t the first person he had fired, but maybe I was the only one with a sick and possibly dying mother who he had canned.

 

Matt hadn’t looked at me once the entire time he had been firing me, and it just struck such a nerve that I couldn’t handle this final slap in the face. Two-week severance package. He wished things were different. Like hell he did! He was lower than pond scum!

 

“How would you feel,” I asked, fuming mad, “if you were running yourself ragged all day at work while staying up half the night taking care of your mother or worrying about her or trying to find time to run her to her appointments, to sit with her some during chemo, and—”

 

“Personal life—” he started to say to cut me off, but I interrupted him right back.

 

“It can’t just be left at the door,” I said firmly. Was I shouting? Maybe. Did I care if I was? Not a bit. “Not something like this. Don’t do this to me, Matt. I…just give me another chance. I can do this. I can juggle it all, and—”

 

Now he did glance up, and he was staring at my buttoned-down shirt. Odd. He was in his late forties and never once hit on me or any of the other female workers. I didn’t take him for a pig. An ass maybe.

 

Oh. He wasn’t staring at my chest. He was staring at my buttons and how I hadn’t even been able to button my shirt correctly today. Wow. Okay, so maybe I was a mess, and I couldn’t handle everything.

 

“Damn it, Matt. This isn’t fair.” I didn’t sound like I was whiney. All right. Maybe a little. Whatever it took to get through and crack his shell to his humanity. There had to be a way to get him to see what a dick move this was.

 

“You think I should fire someone else? Who?” he demanded, finally sitting and calmly folding his hands on his desk. “Tell me. I’ll call him or her in, and you can tell him or her that he or she is fired and why they deserve to be fired over you.”

 

I opened and closed my mouth. Molly the chain smoker? She had three kids. A single mom. She needed the job as badly as I did, and the others were all decent workers. And that he wanted to push the actual firing onto me wasn’t fair either. What a dick.

 

“None of us should be let go,” I countered, lifting my chin into the air. I made no move to sit. I would stare him down until he caved.

 

If he caved.

 

“I’ve been over the numbers, and someone has to go, and I picked you.” He made it sound so cold and matter of fact. “There will be other firings in other departments. It’s not just you.”

 

That didn’t make me feel any better. Nothing would. Not even rum or an entire bottle of wine or all the chocolate in the world.

 

“You’ve been making the most mistakes lately. Small ones, yes, but I just…” He shook his head. What was he, part dog? I never saw someone shake their head so much before.

 

“What mistakes?” I ground out. Prove it.

 

He sighed and rubbed his forehead. “Do you really want me to go through the last few reports you’ve typed up?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Wasting time,” he muttered. “Time equals money.” Still muttering, he started typing on his computer. A few minutes later, he shifted the monitor toward me. “Your last report…”

 

Arms crossed, I leaned forward and started to skim. “Where’s an error?”

 

Matt huffed and looked through it himself. “Right…um…this is ridiculous.”

 

“You’re right,” I fumed. “My work has not suffered, so don’t claim that’s why you’re firing me. Be honest about it. Maybe you’re afraid I will start to make mistakes, but it’s because—”

 

“With the time you want to take off and will want to take off in the future combined with your lack of focus, you might be able to claim you haven’t made any mistakes, but even you can’t deny that the amount of work you get done each day is less than it had been previous to…” He turned off his computer. “I just can’t see how I can keep you on when the company is hurting. I’m sorry, Kelly. I am.”

 

I kept staring at his desk, unwilling to look him in the eye, not wanting to see if he had pity in his eyes. I didn’t need pity. I needed this freaking job. And two-weeks' severance? “A joke, right?” I mumbled.

 

He made a sound like a grunt. “Three-weeks' severance,” he said. “That’s the most I can do.”

 

Yippee. That’s so much better. Cheapskates.

 

“Will you need a box to gather your things?” he offered.

 

So this was it. I was just being laid off from my office job. No second chances. Just kicked to the curb. Left to rot. Left without a pot to piss in. I picked up my chin, squared my shoulders, and stared him down as best I could. I wanted to slug him, but I wasn’t about to stoop that low. “I don’t need anything from you.”

 

His jaw dropped. I whirled around and stalked out of his office, my heels clicking on the tile, before he could say anything. I so didn’t want to hear any more of his bullshit.

 

Ignoring everyone around me, I continued marching to my cubicle. It was small with a few funny memes tacked up to give me something to look at and break the monotony of the day. From the top drawer I removed my calendar. So many red markings: Mom’s doctor’s appointments or reminders to call specialists for their opinions. Next I pulled out a worn library book: a romance. The only action I was seeing nowadays. I’d broken up with my last boyfriend a few days before Mom had been diagnosed, and I hadn’t had time since to find another one. Not that I needed a guy. I wasn’t ready to settle down yet. I enjoyed my freedom too much to get married anytime soon, which was why I broke up with Ryan. He had wanted more of a commitment than I had been willing to give him.

 

Right now, I didn’t want to kiss a guy. I wanted to punch someone out. I never felt this furious before. Normally, I was a much happier person. I’d been called happy-go-lucky once or twice. But that had been before. Before Mom. Before cancer.

 

I really did need a drink or some time out or something. I didn’t like who I was becoming. Miserable. Depressed. Pessimistic. I needed something to turn my life around, but I had no idea what it could be.

 

I had to leave here place as soon as possible. It felt like the walls were closing in on me.

 

Quickly as I could, I began packing up my things. I was just starting to grab my magnets from my computer tower when a redheaded mop popped over the top from the next cubicle over.

 

“You’re here!” Charlotte darted around and gave me a quick hug, so quick I couldn’t even return it. “When you showed up late,” she added, “I thought something might’ve gone wrong with your mom.”

 

“Not with her.” I forced a smile and removed a magnet about hump day. I just wanted to get away from this place, leave it behind. Charlotte wasn’t really a friend. She wasn’t anything more than the workplace gossip. If I told her about my being fired, everyone would know about it by the time I reached the parking lot. “And I wasn’t late,” I grumbled under my breath.

 

“Wanna talk about it?” she asked eagerly. She had way too much energy this morning. Did she have a triple shot in her coffee?

 

“Not really.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. Already I could feel it: the start of a bad headache. I had been getting a lot of them lately, and I figured stress was the reason for it. Too bad the likelihood of my stress levels going down was zilch. Ignoring Charlotte as best as I could, I sat down on my chair and pretended to settle into work, hoping, praying even, that she would get the hint. Sometimes, she could be a little slow, although I had a feeling that might just be her way to try to get more gossip, or maybe to avoid work. Whichever the case, I wished she would find someone else to pry gossip out of or that a supervisor would see her slacking and yell at her to get to work.

 

Should’ve said her name to Matt. But no. One, I wasn’t that person, and two, Charlotte was Matt’s second cousin or something like that. They were somehow distantly related. I doubted he would fire her. Which was why she had such a long leash.

 

“You sure?” Charlotte pouted, her purple-painted lips tugging downward.

 

“Sure,” I muttered, staring at the computer screen, sending her telepathic messages. Get to work. Leave Kelly alone.

 

Reluctantly, she straightened, still frowning. “Did you hear about—”

 

I grabbed my phone and put it to my ear, pretending it had vibrated. “Hello? Yes. Dr. Franklin, it’s Kelly.” I looked up at her and shrugged as if to say I was sorry. She’d have to leave now, right?

 

Charlotte waved and backed away a step or two. Unreal. She still wanted gossip!

 

I pretended to continue the conversation for a few minutes, with long stretches of silence to act like I was listening until, finally, I heard her footsteps retreat. Unbelievable.

 

Breathing out a sigh, I resumed gathering my things. No way had I wanted to continue packing while she was there. She was smart. She’d put two and two together and realize what was up, and I didn’t need more grief.

 

The last items I gathered were the few pictures I had. One was of my father and me. We were playing tag at the park. Mom had taken the picture. A nice candid shot. My mouth was wide open, probably from laughing, and my dad had just grabbed me for a hug instead of just tapping my shoulder to tag me. It had been taken a week before he died. I had been ten. Massive heart attack. If Mom died, I’d be all alone. Neither had any siblings, so I had no aunts or uncles. I’d be the only Greene left. It was a sobering thought, especially when I considered how young my parents would be when they died.

 

The other two pictures were of Mom. In the first, she was smiling at someone off screen. She hated having her picture taken so this one was my favorite. The last picture was of the two of us. We had gone to a mother-daughter dance back when I had been in high school. We’d dressed up in poodle skirts, really fifties style. So much fun. She was kind of smiling in this picture, too. Happy times. Now she never smiled, and I couldn’t blame her, even though I still tried to get her to.

 

With a grimace, I gathered everything up and laid it all gently in a large pile. It was a little hard to carry everything without a box, but I wasn’t about to go back to Matt and ask for one, and I sure as heck wasn’t going to ask anyone else if they could find me one either.

 

As soon as I got back to the parking lot — without dropping anything by some miracle — my phone really was vibrating from a call. I performed a juggling act of shifting everything to one arm, braced my loaded arm against the car, finagled my keys from my purse, unlocked the door, dumped everything onto the backseat where it scattered like crazy, and then got out my phone. But before I could answer, the caller hung up. Of course. Just my luck.

 

I checked to see who had called. It was Stacy Powers, my best friend since, well, forever. We met in the second grade and had been inseparable ever since. Now she, unlike Charlotte, I actually wanted to talk to.

 

I climbed inside my car and pulled out of the lot and drove down the street and parked in the back of another random office building, just so no one from my former employer could look out on the parking lot and see me. Didn’t need an audience for what might be a breakdown, which was why I figured it was better to park than to talk and drive at the same time.

 

Stacy answered on the first ring. “Hey, girl!” she yelled. “I can’t believe you called me back. I know how you never answer when you’re working unless you’re on lunch. I was leaving you a message.”

 

Must be a heck of a long message, then, unless I didn’t feel the vibration from when she left it.

 

“Anyhow, the reason why I called was because I thought you and I—”

 

“Whatever you’re planning, I can’t.” My shoulders slumped. Hadn’t had much time for fun with her before this, and now all of my new free time would have to be split between taking care of my mom and finding a new job.

 

“But you don’t even know the date or what I’m planning,” she whined.

 

“Don’t need to. Can’t afford it.” Can’t afford fun.

 

“I can spot you.” I could just picture her waving her hand to brush my words aside. “No worries. It’s this amazing new band—”

 

I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose. I loved listening to live music. But it wasn’t the band I’d have to miss that had me wanting to break down. It was all the weight and the worry about the future and what it would hold. For too long, I had been juggling eggs, and a large one had just cracked. I couldn’t let any more drop, and I had to add another one back into the mix.

 

“Oh.” Stacy quieted a moment, which was saying something because she normally never stopped talking. “Is it your mom?”

 

“I…” I could hardly get the word out. My throat was so tight I could hardly swallow.

 

“What happened?” Stacy cracked her knuckles, the sound grating me over the line. “Do you need me to beat someone up for you? I might know a guy…”

 

Despite myself, I snorted with laughter, but then I started to cry. Just a few tears. How could I have let this happened? I should’ve fought harder for my position. Should’ve asked for a pay cut so long as I kept the position. But a pay cut would’ve been almost as terrible as being outright fired.

 

“Talk to me,” Stacy said quietly. “What’s going on?”

 

“Just got laid off.” My only source of income gone. Three weeks wouldn’t last. Not when I didn’t just need to support myself. I had to pay for all of my mother’s mounting medical bills. And food. And Mom had taken out a home equity loan shortly a few years ago, so even though there wasn’t a mortgage payment, there was that, and all the other bills, plus food, utilities.

 

“Now listen to me carefully,” Stacy ordered. “Go home. Update your résumé. I’ll find out who’s hiring. You eat all the chocolate in the house. And drink all of the rum, too. I’ll do my best to help find you a new job pronto. Think you can handle that?”

 

I sniffed and rubbed my nose. “Yeah. Sure.”

 

“Good.” She sounded so take charge. Had to love her. “I’ll email you what I find.”

 

Click. The call ended.

 

Refusing to cry any longer, I drove myself home. I wasn’t in a good place at all. Yeah, sure, Stacy was willing to help me, but the economy was terrible. There wasn’t going to be another job for me most likely. I had to face facts. My mom had stage three breast cancer and she needed chemotherapy, but if I had no money, I didn’t know if she’d still be able to continue treatments. The hospital was already giving us a payment plan at least, but I wouldn’t even be able to afford the smaller payments soon. And even with treatment, there was no guarantee she would make it. I couldn’t risk losing her. I had to do everything to help her. It was all on me.

 

Soon, I pulled up to our house. I had moved out after college, but once Mom was diagnosed, I moved back home. Twenty-five and living with Mom. And unemployed, too. Can’t forget that. The house was bigger than we needed, but there wasn’t a point in trying to sell it. Not with the home equity loan still out on it.

 

I fixed a smile onto my face and walked inside. I’d left most everything in the backseat of my car. Except for the pictures. Those I placed on the coffee table. “Mom?” I called.

 

“In here,” she said quietly.

 

I winced. Her voice came from her bedroom. She hadn’t even gotten out of bed yet. This morning couldn’t get any worse — for me or for her.

 

Still wearing that faux smile, I helped her wash up and even blow-dried her hair as a kind of bonus treat. Her body tended to be weak, and I did whatever I could for her. She was all the family I had left.

 

It wasn’t until I offered to make Mom something to eat that she noticed the time. “Why aren’t you at work?” she asked, trying to glare at me. When I had been a kid, her glare had me shaping up real fast, but it had lost its punch with her being sick.

 

I slowly straightened from having bent down to see what was left in the pantry. The cabinet was looking a little sparse. It would be time for a grocery run soon with money I didn’t have to spend.

 

I faced Mom. “I thought I would check in on you. That’s all.”

 

No way was I going to tell her I lost my job. Mom had more than enough to worry about as it was. I didn’t want to cause her more stress, more worry. But I couldn’t help feeling helpless. Helpless and worthless. Like I was a failure. Like I was going to be the reason why she might not be able to beat her cancer.

 

And when Stacy emailed me later that night to say she would keep looking, that she hadn’t even found one lead for me, combined with my own fruitless search, I felt even more helpless.

 

What was I going to do?