Ellen looked at a photograph of herself and Jamal, taken when he was nine, both of them laughing beside a toy truck with its wheels removed. The boy's face was bright and open, his hands dark with grease. He had been proud to show her something he had fixed.
"What happened to you, baby?" she asked the silent photograph.
Her telephone lit up with another message from the auditors. A list of vendors associated with SM Creative had been linked to overlapping addresses and banking instructions. The amount of questionable billing exposure had reached four hundred thousand dollars. Another message followed: access records showed activity on Maya's account at a time when her badge had not entered the building and her home computer had not connected through the company's network.
Ellen put the phone down. An old lesson returned to her, one she had learned before she had enough employees to fill a lunchroom: when a business lost the ability to tell who did the work and who authorized the money, somebody always paid. Usually it was the person with the least room to argue.
She looked again at Jamal's photograph. "Friday," she said. "We are going to have a difficult conversation."
Thursday began with a different kind of humiliation. Maya returned to Hail House carrying her reinstatement email in a folder and found that her badge opened the outer doors but not the elevator to accounting. The guard at the desk consulted a screen, frowned, and called somebody upstairs. While Maya waited, Shenine came through the revolving doors, saw her, and stopped in front of the security counter.
"Back already?" Shenine said. "I thought they finally got rid of you."
"The termination was put on hold pending review."
"Probation, then." Shenine smiled. "Good. Maybe you can make yourself useful by getting coffee for the whole marketing floor. Oat milk, extra hot, and please don't spill it like your friend with the mop."
Maya felt her face warm. There were people in line behind her, and the security guard was watching the ceiling as though something interesting had appeared there. A week earlier she might have responded immediately. Today she remembered her attorney's warning to separate the evidence of retaliation from the emotion Shenine wanted to create.
"I'm assigned to accounting," she said. "If you need coffee for a meeting, the hospitality team can arrange it."
"Today you're whatever I need."
"No," Maya answered. "Today I'm an accountant."
Shenine stepped closer. "You think that little review means anybody trusts you? Jamal signed the original termination. The only reason you're here is somebody at corporate likes paperwork."
Maya held out the email to the guard. "Can you please call human resources? The message says my access was restored last night."
The guard made the call. Shenine stood close enough for Maya to smell her perfume, waiting for the young woman to become angry or embarrassed. Instead Maya stared straight ahead. The seconds stretched until a facilities representative came down with a temporary access card and apologized for the delay.
"Your badge will be corrected this morning," he said. "Please go to the finance annex. Your assignments have been moved away from the marketing approval chain while the investigation is underway."