Chapter 4
The yellow boots were on the wrong feet again, and the rubber made a squeak every time I stepped off the school sidewalk.
I stood beside the blue gate with my white rabbit tucked under my chin. One of his ears had been repaired with careful stitches, and I pressed my thumb over them whenever I felt nervous. Snow had melted into gray puddles along the curb. Cars rolled past slowly while parents checked the pickup line and watched for their children.
Mom was late.
I saw her before she saw me. She came from the corner with her coat buttoned wrong and her bag held tightly against her side. She kept looking over her shoulder, not like she was lost, but like she expected someone to be behind her.
“Mom,” I called.
Her face changed when she found me. She smiled, but it arrived a second too late.
She hugged me and touched my hat. “I’m sorry, baby. The train was delayed.”
While she fixed my scarf, the top of her bag opened. I saw a cream-colored office envelope inside. It had dark writing across the front and a black mark near the corner.
“What’s that?” I asked.
Mom moved the bag behind her leg. “Nothing for you.”
“I can read some words.”
“I know.” She pulled the envelope out and slid it beneath her coat. “It’s grown-up paperwork.”
Her fingers shook while she zipped the bag.
We walked toward our apartment. I held her hand, but she kept squeezing and letting go, squeezing and letting go. At the crosswalk, she stopped before the light changed and stared at the windows of the buildings across the street.
“What did it say?” I asked.
Mom looked down at me. For a moment, she seemed too tired to pretend.
“It said I have to return some things to the company.”
“Are they going to take your rabbit?”
“No.” She crouched in front of me. “No one is taking anything from you. You’re safe.”
She said it carefully, as if safety were something she had to place between us like a glass cup.
At home, she opened the envelope at the kitchen table. I stayed on the floor with my rabbit, listening to the paper slide against paper.
“They want the company laptop, files, notes, and anything copied from work,” Mom said quietly. “They also say that if I make public accusations, I could damage my reputation.”
“Does that mean people will think you did something bad?”
Her mouth tightened. “That’s what they want me to worry about.”
She read the letter again. The apartment was small enough that I could hear the refrigerator click on. Mom folded the pages and placed them beside the termination letter, not on top of it.
Then she called Dominic.
I couldn't hear his first words. Mom put the phone on the table but kept her hand over it.
“He offered a meeting room at Moretti Plaza,” she said. “A private one. He said security could watch the entrances if I wanted.”
I hugged my rabbit tighter.
“No,” Mom said. “I’m not moving Lily. I’m not putting her under company security. Her school routine stays the same.”
She listened.
“I understand that you’re trying to help. But you don’t get to decide where we live or who watches my daughter.”
Her voice was quiet, but it didn’t bend.
After the call, she sat without moving. I watched a snowflake melt against the window.
“Was he angry?” I asked.
“Not at me.”
That answer made me think of his face in the lobby, the way his eyes had changed when he saw the signature.
The next morning, a dark car waited across from the school, but it left before the bell rang. Mom noticed it too. She didn’t point it out. She only held my hand more firmly until we reached the gate.
That afternoon, Marco came to our apartment building. He stayed in the hallway instead of stepping inside. He wore a formal suit and carried a thin folder.
“I checked the demand,” he told Mom. “It was sent through Legal Operations.”
Mom’s face went still.
Marco opened the folder. “That department handled the vendor payment review.”
The room seemed to get smaller.
“Are you saying the same people connected to those payments sent this?” Mom asked.
“I’m saying the routing came through their office.”
Mom looked at the folded termination letter on the table. Then she looked at the envelope.
“I left a notebook in my old desk,” she said.
Marco’s eyes sharpened. “What kind of notebook?”
“Personal notes. Dates. Payment references. I didn’t bring it home because I thought they were only firing me.”
Mom stood and reached for her coat.
I stood too. “Where are we going?”
“Nowhere tonight.” She knelt and fastened my boots, switching them to the correct feet before I could complain. “Tomorrow, I’m going back for it.”
May you like
She kissed my forehead, but her eyes stayed on the table.
The letter had tried to make her disappear. The new envelope was trying to make everyone believe she deserved it. And now Mom had chosen to walk back into the place where both of them had started.
