Chapter 3: I Don't Know Her
1286 Words
Nora's POV
She was thinner than she had been even at the burial, her face drawn, her eyes swollen and red at the rims. Her hair, which she had always kept neat and pressed, was loosely tied and escaping at the sides. She held the cart with both hands, frozen midway down the aisle. She was staring directly at me.
Her lips parted slightly.
Her eyes moved slowly across my face, the expression of someone trying to solve something that refused to make sense. Her fingers tightened around the cart handle.
Then tears gathered quietly in her eyes.
I turned my face away.
"I don't know her," I said. My voice came out flat and steady and cost me more than anything I had paid all my life.
But I could still feel her eyes on me.
And then, from the corner of my vision, a hand landed on her shoulder.
My blood went cold.
Uncle Clems.
He had appeared from the adjacent aisle, his expression arranged into gentle concern as he turned my mother slightly away from me.
"Remember what the elders say, Hannah," he said quietly. "Ghosts can be anywhere, but they can't speak to you."
My mother's shoulders dropped. The small flame of hope in her eyes went out like a candle in a closed room.
"You're right," she whispered. "I'm just tired."
‘He was everywhere. Even here.’
I gripped the cart handle and looked straight ahead.
"Let's go," I said to Doren.
Each step away from my mother felt like walking through wet concrete.
But I kept walking.
Because that was the only thing left that I could do for her.
By the time Doren and I walked back through the revolving doors of Clinton's Media Tech, my chest felt like someone had wrung it out and left it to dry.
My mother's face stayed with me, the way hope had moved across her eyes for that brief, fragile moment before Uncle Clems extinguished it with seven quiet words.
I pressed the elevator button and stared at my own reflection in the silver doors.
‘Lock it away. Not here. Not now.’
The doors opened. I stepped in.
Doren wheeled the trolley of materials toward the storage section and glanced back at me over her shoulder.
"You should get back to your desk before Mr. Clinton starts wondering where his new star employee disappeared to."
"Star employee," I repeated flatly.
She shrugged with a grin. "Please. The way you cleared that backlog last week? Even Olivia was asking questions and Olivia does not ask questions about people she isn't impressed by."
I said nothing and moved toward my desk.
I sat down, opened my screen, and pulled up the active task queue.
There was a new item at the top, flagged urgent, assigned to no one, with a note attached from the systems team that read: ‘Critical error in the integrated media upload platform. Server response collapsing at authentication stage. Three senior developers have reviewed. No resolution. Escalate immediately.’
I clicked it open.
It took me eleven minutes. A single authentication token with a timestamp set forty-eight hours off from where it needed to be. I fixed it, updated the status, and moved on.
I didn't look up. I didn't notice the silence spreading across the floor until Doren appeared at my desk.
"Three senior developers spent two days on that," she said.
"The timestamp was wrong," I replied.
She stared at me for a moment. Then walked away without another word.
Twenty minutes later, Mr. Thompson, Clinton's personal assistant, appeared beside my desk.
"Mira Josh."
I looked up.
"Mr. Clinton asked you to come to his office."
The words landed quietly but I felt the ripple move through the nearby desks. Several heads lifted. Keyboards paused. Being summoned directly to the CEO's office was not a routine occurrence on this floor and everyone within earshot knew it.
"Now?" I asked.
"Immediately."
I closed my screen, straightened my clothes, and stood.
Doren caught my eye as I moved past her desk. She raised both eyebrows slowly, a look that managed to communicate both ‘I told you so’ and ‘please don't do anything alarming’ simultaneously.
I walked the corridor to the executive offices alone.
At the far end stood a large dark door with a brass nameplate.
‘Clinton Moore, CEO’
I paused for one breath. Then knocked.
"Come in."
I pushed the door open and stepped inside.
The office was exactly as the company's internal reputation described it, two distinct halves occupying the same large room. The first half was the formal executive space: wide glass windows overlooking the city, a massive desk of dark wood, organized and deliberate, a leather sofa set arranged near a low coffee table.
The other part of his office lined with giant monitors glowed with layered streams of code. Cables ran across the floor in dark lines connecting system to system.
Clinton Moore sat behind the main desk.
He looked up as I entered. His eyes moved over me briefly before settling.
"Sit."
I sat on the sofa across from him.
For a moment he said nothing, just reviewing something on his laptop.
I kept my hands still in my lap and my eyes at a neutral point slightly left of his face.
Then he pressed the small bell on his desk.
His secretary appeared at the inner door within seconds.
"Two glasses of orange juice."
"Yes, Sir."
She left. He returned to the document in front of him. The room was quiet except for the low hum of the servers on the far wall.
I used the silence to steady myself.
The secretary returned, placed the glasses on the coffee table, pushing one towards me, and withdrew without sound.
“Drink,” he said, sipping from his cup.
“Thanks, but I'm okay.”
“I didn't ask if you're okay or not, so you can't possibly reject what I gave you.”
I grabbed the cup and sipped from it.
“Good,” he said and pushed a document across the desk toward me.
"Fill this."
I leaned forward and picked it up.
At the top, the company logo sat above a clean header:
‘Clinton's Media Tech, Sponsored Tech Certification Program. Entrance Examination Form’
"The company sponsors employees for this exam every year," he said, his tone brief and professional. "Your performance this past week caught my attention. I realized you hadn't been enrolled yet." He paused. "We select two candidates out of five thousand registered participants. The company sponsors them abroad for specialized coding systems training."
I read the form carefully.
Abroad.
The word moved through me with a complicated warmth.
But only if I passed.
I picked up the pen and began filling the form.
I noticed the way Mr. Clinton had been staring at me as if I were a puzzle he had almost solved before, one that had resurfaced with more contradicting pieces.
Just then, his phone rang on the desk.
The screen lit up briefly and from where I sat the name was visible.
Juliana.
I dropped my eyes back to the form immediately.
He picked up.
"Yes." His voice shifted, a degree less formal. "Okay, babe. I'm in the office." A short pause. "Alright."
He ended the call.
I placed the completed form on the table.
"I'm done, sir."
He glanced at it briefly. "Leave it there."
I stood. "Thank you for the opportunity, sir."
"The exam is on the 24th of next month," he said, his eyes already back on his laptop. "It's open to everyone. The exam selects the best."
I nodded, bent slightly in acknowledgment, and turned toward the door.
- Writer
