“Good choice,” I said and she handed me my messages.
“Oh, and your mother called, about five minutes ago. She said she tried your cell, but it went to voicemail.” What? I pulled out my phone only to find that my battery was completely dead. I’d forgotten to charge it last night. I really needed to stop drinking so much wine on weeknights.
“Okay, thanks Lilia.” I took the messages and went to my office, closing the door. My mother calling me in the morning could be a catastrophe, or it could just be her STILL trying to set me up with Fin Herald. I happened to know, from Marisol, that he was currently in Japan, so it probably wouldn’t be that.
I dialed out and she picked up after the second ring.
“Hi Mom, everything okay?” I kept my voice light, but my heart was pounding and my hands shook a tiny bit.
“Oh, Rory. I’m glad you called. You really ought to remember to charge your phone.” Yes, yes, get to the point.
“I know, Mom. I’m sorry.” I waited and she sighed.
“I’m worried about your father. He’s spending too much time at work, and it’s not healthy. I’ve talked to him over and over about it, but he won’t listen to me. Have you talked to him?”
“Of course I have, but he won’t listen to me either. Yesterday I tried to tell him to take the rest of the day off and play golf, but I know he didn’t.”
Mom sighed again. I couldn’t blame her. There really was nothing else to do.
“Well, I made an appointment for him to go see Dr. Hale, and he’s going whether he likes it or not. I’m sure his blood pressure is through the roof.” And then my mother did something she didn’t do very often. She burst into tears.
My mother was a composed woman. The only times I’d ever really seen her lose it was when I was young and would eavesdrop when I was supposed to be in my room.
“I’m sorry, Rory, I just don’t know what to do. I’m scared I’m going to lose him.” Dad wasn’t old, but he wasn’t young either, and he’d had problems with blood pressure before. His job was high stress, but he’d always managed it. But he’d never had anything happen like this.
“It’s going to be okay, Mom. Do you need me to come over?” I had no idea how to console my crying mother. This had never happened before. It made me feel like a scared child again, with no control.
“No, no. Don’t be silly. I’m just having a little emotional moment. It will pass. But if you could talk to him again, or maybe talk to the Board? See if Hal, or someone could do something.” That wouldn’t do any good, and would probably just make Dad look like he couldn’t handle running his company. The last thing he needed right now was to look weak. We had to keep this on the down-low as much as possible.
“I’ll talk to him again, okay? And why don’t you go have a spa day today. You know that always makes you feel better and you can flirt with the cute guy who hands out the towels.” That made her laugh, just a little. She blew her nose and cleared her throat.
“Thank you, sweetheart. I don’t know what I would do without you. I’ll see you on Sunday.” Her regular voice was back, and I was sure within moments it would look as if she hadn’t been crying at all. My mother was magical like that.
“Okay, I’ll see you on Sunday. But you call me if you need anything.”
“Charge your phone, Rory.”
“I will. Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
I hung up and had to sit in my chair and stare into space for a minute. Now I was the one who felt like crying. I tried not to dwell on the crisis, but sometimes I thought about it and it made me so angry my hands shook.
Did those people who took that money have any idea what they’d done? What they’d destroyed? The money wasn’t all that important. It was everything else that went with it. I wished I could personally line them all up and give them throat punches. But they were all in jail and awaiting the trial. Their bail had been set so high that none of them could pay it, which was a little bit of a relief.
I allowed myself a few tears, but I wiped them away as quick as I could, blew my nose and then ate my strawberry frosted donut. The sugar helped with the heartache and the remnants of the hangover, but I still didn’t know what to do.
Lucah. I wished Lucah were here. I mean, he was, but not across from me. We couldn’t sneak off to the soundproofed conference room for a tryst like we could not that long ago.
Now we couldn’t so much as have a conversation without drawing suspicion. I missed him.
I allowed myself a few minutes of moping before I wiped my eyes, checked my mascara, turned my computer on and opened my door. I could feel Lilia watching me, wondering if something bad had happened, so I just nodded and mouthed, I’m fine. I wasn’t, but she didn’t need to know that. I wasn’t going to let anyone else know that things weren’t going well.
So I threw myself into work, and tried to focus so I could get as much done as possible. I sent Lilia out to get me lunch so I could work straight through. I was so immersed that when the reminder for the Board meeting popped up on my screen I kicked myself for forgetting about it. We were having Board meetings more frequently now, just to try to get the company back on track, and make sure that no other shenanigans were going on. It was a pain in the ass, and it almost felt like a violation.
They had ordered a review of nearly each and every piece of paper, every file and more background checks on employees that probed deeper than the initial checks. I called it the Inquisition in my head. It had to be done, but it was such an invasive process. They’d even looked into me, though they didn’t tell me about it until after the fact.
There was a list of questionable employees that they wanted to get rid of, but they didn’t want to do it all at once, so as not to make it look bad. Instead they had been doing it gradually, and replacing those people with ones they had handpicked. In addition to the people they’d hired to do the investigation, they’d hired a headhunter and had spent plenty of company dollars wooing (stealing) rising stars from other tech companies.