The next second, Gareth’s phone rang.
He looked at the screen and immediately turned it off.
The phone rang again.
“Answer it,” I said.
“This is no longer your business.”
“It is already everyone’s business.”
On the third call, he answered.
“Yes?”
The voice on the other side was so clear that everyone in the room heard it.
“Mr. Hales, the board’s emergency decision has come into force. Until the investigation is complete, you are forbidden to enter the company building and contact employees.”
Gareth looked around.
“This is absurd. I am the executive director.”
“You are no longer.”
The call ended.
Gareth stood motionless for several seconds. Then he turned toward Mark.
“Do something.”
Mark took off his glasses and put them on the table.
“At this stage I cannot protect you beyond what the law allows.”
“I pay you.”
“Not today.”
It was the first time Gareth had lost his own power through someone else’s mouth.
Troy took out his phone.
“Gareth, I am ready to say that I knew nothing.”
Gareth looked at him.
“You were a participant in my meeting.”
“You told me everything was happening within the rules.”
“No one forced you to participate in my plan.”
At these words, Isa touched the phone and played the audio recording once again.
Gareth’s voice returned to the room.
“On the day she returns, let’s offer her the new position so that, if she refuses, she leaves on her own.”
Gareth was listening to his own voice.
At first he tried to maintain his composure.
Then his jaw tightened.
On the third listening, he lowered his eyes.
“This is edited,” he said.
“No,” Isa replied. “You said it yourself.”
Gareth covered his ears with his hands.
“Turn it off.”
“Why?” I asked. “Don’t you want everyone to remember every word exactly now?”
I did not want to humiliate him. Nor was I happy about his fall. I simply was no longer trying to protect him from the consequences he himself had created.
The inspector gathered the documents.
“The investigation begins today. The statements of employees and clients will be recorded. The company archive will be sealed.”
Gareth took a step toward me.
“Paige, let’s speak separately.”
“We have already spoken.”
“You don’t understand what may follow from this.”
“I understand very well.”
“Your career may be damaged.”
“You damaged my career when you lied to clients in my name.”
Meredith opened the door. The clients were still waiting in the corridor.
Mr. Hall looked at Gareth.
“We needed your company, but our adviser was Paige. Today we will transfer the accounts elsewhere.”
One client nodded.
“Me too.”
Another one did too.
Gareth looked over their faces and realized that the people remaining in the room no longer belonged to him.
I handed Elena to Meredith so that I could collect my things.
My old room was empty.
The four square marks were still visible on the carpet. A bright rectangle from the diploma remained on the wall. In place of the shelves there was only a thin line of dust.
The lemon tree lay in the box. Its leaves had drooped, but one small green bud had appeared on the stem.
I picked up the pot with both hands.
On the desk I found the plate with my old name. They had taken it out of the trash bin, but a coffee stain was still visible on the edge.
I put the plate in my bag.
That day I did not get my job back. Isa and the inspector agreed that the company faced an official lawsuit and an investigation. Several weeks later Gareth left his position. Troy admitted cooperation and received a sanction for his own responsibility. Philip began looking for another job, but his letters had already been seen by everyone.
I did not pursue their punishment.
I only got my name back.
Two weeks later I rented a small office in the city’s old district, on the fifth floor. Tram lines could be seen from the window. I met clients myself, boiled coffee in a small pot in the morning, and really turned off the computer at the end of the workday.
Meredith moved in with me.
Isa came once a week and said that I had to read every new agreement to the end.
“Now I know,” I would tell her.
“No,” she would answer. “Now you also have to trust yourself.”
Three months later the first snow came.
Elena was six months old. She sat on the floor and drew lines on a sheet with colored pencils. She held a yellow pencil in her hand, exactly the color of what she had been wearing that day.
“Mom, look,” she said in her still-uncertain voice.
She had drawn three figures on the paper. One large, one small, and the sun between them.
“Who is this?”
Elena placed her small finger on the large figure.
“You.”
Then she touched the small figure.
“Me.”
When I returned home that evening, I found a letter from Gareth in the mailbox.
In the very first sentence he wrote that everything was a misunderstanding. Then he promised that if I withdrew the complaint, he would return me to my old position and restore my salary.
At the end it said: “We both know that this company cannot operate without you.”
I read the letter several times.
Then I wrote a reply.
“I already work where the birth of my child is not considered an argument against me. I am not going back to your company.”
Nothing more.
No anger.
No explanation.
No second chance for the person who used my absence against me at the first opportunity.
I put the letter in an envelope and sent it back.
That same night I hung the diploma on the wall of my new office. I placed the lemon tree beneath it. The bud had already opened and a small white flower had appeared.
And I did not keep the old nameplate in the desk drawer anymore.
I attached it to the wall, by the entrance.
The coffee stain was still visible.
I did not clean it.
When I brought Elena to the office the following week, she went to the plate, touched the stain with her finger, and then looked at her yellow drawing.
“Why is this dirty?”
I knelt beside her.
“Because once someone thought that my place was in the trash.”
“And now?”
Snow was slowly falling outside the window. The scent of lemon blossom filled the room.
“Now I chose my place myself.”
Elena nodded, as if this were the simplest answer in the world.
Then she took the yellow pencil and drew a small sun beneath my name.
The stain remained.
But my name was no longer erased.
Missed the beginning?
