Between Love Passion and Power

4 Fired and New Job

The morning began ordinarily enough. Olivia woke at seven, made herself a cup of tea she did not finish, pulled on her cardigan and her one pair of decent shoes, and walked the eleven blocks to the Denver Public Library with her head down against the wind.

She had spent half the night staring at her ceiling, reliving the moment in the third-floor aisle, the spear, the silver-eyed young man, the empty patch of floor on the security camera. She had decided, somewhere around four in the morning, that the only sensible thing to do was to go to work and pretend none of it had happened.

She did not get the chance.

Mr. Halberstam, the head librarian, was waiting for her by the front desk with a slim white envelope in his hand and a look on his face that already said everything before he opened his mouth.

"Olivia," he said, gently, the way people speak to small animals they are about to put down. "Could I see you in my office for a moment."

The conversation lasted eleven minutes. He used phrases like difficult decision and best for everyone and we cannot have incidents of this kind. He said the police had filed an internal report.

He said the board had been informed. He said the library wished her every success in her future endeavors and would of course provide a positive reference if asked, although he hoped she understood that the reference would not mention any of recent events.

Olivia listened with her hands folded in her lap, her face perfectly still. She did not cry. She did not argue. When he finished, she stood up, took the envelope from him without looking at it, and said only, "Thank you for the year."

She walked the eleven blocks home in a daze. The wind had not changed. The sky was the same flat colorless grey. Somehow it felt as though the entire city had been replaced overnight with a perfect copy of itself, and only she could tell the difference.

Margareth was at the kitchen table when Olivia walked in, peeling an orange very slowly. She looked up, and her face went through several expressions in the space of a second.

"You are home early."

"They fired me."

The peel of the orange snapped between Margareth's fingers.

"Sit down, sweetheart."

"I do not want to sit down. I want to know why my boss looked at me this morning the way he did." Olivia's voice was thin, brittle. "I want to know why the police looked at me last night the way they did. I want to know why you and William looked at the detective and told him I was prone to delusions when you both know that I am not."

Margareth set the orange aside.

"Olivia."

"I saw what I saw."

"Olivia, please." Margareth reached across the table, but Olivia stepped back. "Please sit down. I have something for you."

Margareth pulled a cream-colored envelope from beneath the placemat. It was thick, heavy, the sort of envelope that people send when they want the weight of the paper to do half the work for them. The flap was sealed with embossed wax. A single word had been printed on the front in dark green ink.

PARAGON.

Olivia stared at it.

"What is that."

"It came this morning," Margareth said quietly. "By courier. While you were on your way to the library. Open it."

Olivia took the envelope, broke the seal, slid out a single sheet of stiff cream paper. Her eyes moved down the page and her lips parted slightly.

The letter was brief and very formal. It congratulated Miss Olivia Whitmore on her successful application to the position of Executive Secretary to the Chief Executive Officer of Paragon Company, Denver Branch. It informed her that her start date was today, the twenty-third of April, and that she was expected at the Paragon Tower no later than ten o'clock. Her starting salary was listed near the bottom. Olivia read the figure twice.

It was nine times what she had been earning at the library.

"Mom."

Margareth said nothing.

"Mom, I never applied to Paragon. I have never even been inside that building. I do not know anyone who works there. I do not know how they got my address. I do not know how they know my name."

"Perhaps you applied and forgot."

"I did not forget. I have not applied to a single job in the last year. The library was the only one."

Margareth's eyes flickered down to the orange peel on the table.

"Sweetheart," she said, very softly. "Sometimes people do things and then they do not remember they have done them. Sometimes there are gaps. The mind is a strange thing. Especially when it is under stress. Last night you were"

"Stop."

"Olivia."

"Stop saying that to me." Olivia's voice cracked in a way that she had never heard it crack before. It came out raw and wet and furious. "Stop telling me I am imagining things. Stop telling me my own mind is lying to me. I know what I saw at the library. I know I have never applied to this company. I am not crazy. I am not sick. I am not whatever you and William keep pretending I am. Why are you doing this to me."

Margareth flinched. For a single second, something passed across her face that was not patience or worry or careful concern. It was guilt. It was the deep, exhausted guilt of a woman who has been carrying something far too heavy for far too long.

Then she smoothed it away.

"Go to the interview, Olivia."

"There is no interview. The letter says I am already hired."

"Then go and find out if it is real. Go and stand in front of someone and ask them whether they sent you this letter. If it is a mistake, then it is a mistake and we will laugh about it tonight. If it is real, then you have a job that pays nine times what the library paid, and you can move out of this house if you want to, you can have your own life, and you will not have to look at me and William every day and wonder what we are hiding from you."

Olivia went very still.

"What are you hiding from me."