Chapter 5
Garrett remained in the doorway until Owen finished eating. He did not answer the second vibration downstairs, and Miranda did not ask him to explain it. By the time she settled the baby against her shoulder, the argument had passed beyond anything either of them could improve before breakfast.
“I’m taking a shower,” Garrett said. He looked at Owen rather than Miranda when he added, “I’ll be downstairs afterward.”
Miranda nodded without promising to join him. She listened to the bathroom door close, then carried Owen to the changing table and opened the drawer where she kept his daytime clothes.
The weather had turned unexpectedly warm, and she chose a pale green romper Claire had bought because the embroidered ducks looked, in Claire’s words, appropriately judgmental.
Owen kicked while Miranda worked his legs through the openings, then caught the fabric over his stomach and pulled it toward his mouth.
She freed it from his fist, fastened the snaps, and kissed the soft place beneath his chin until he gave her the brief, startled laugh she had waited for all morning.
The sound loosened something in her chest. Whatever else had changed, Owen still received the whole of her attention without questioning what it cost.
She carried him downstairs after Garrett’s shower began. His phone remained facedown beside the fruit bowl, but the television had been turned off and the bottle rinsed in the sink. The toast Garrett had made sat untouched on the plate, its butter absorbed into the dry surface.
Miranda threw it away, then immediately resented herself for doing so. Garrett would have eaten it cold if she left it there, and she had spent years removing minor unpleasantness from his path before he encountered it. The habit survived anger more easily than affection.
She put Owen beneath the activity gym and opened her laptop at the dining table. Halcyon’s website loaded to the page she had searched the previous afternoon, with Willa’s polished headshot still occupying the space where Miranda expected to find herself.
In daylight, the omission looked less like a social slight and more like a business decision.
Miranda opened her email. She had not used her Halcyon account regularly since Owen’s birth, but the password still worked, and several hundred unread messages appeared beneath an automatic notice about updated security settings.
Most were company announcements, client newsletters, and calendar changes from meetings she no longer attended.
She searched her own name first.
The results filled the screen with old project threads, presentation notes, approval requests, and emails from clients who had once copied her on every decision.
Miranda clicked through them slowly, not because she needed the information but because seeing her name repeated in ordinary professional language restored something she had not known was missing.
Miranda recommends we revise the rollout schedule.
Miranda has the final client notes.
Please confirm with Miranda before sending.
The sentences were procedural and unremarkable. No one praised her intelligence or thanked her for existing, yet each message assumed her judgment mattered enough to alter what happened next.
Owen struck the hanging fox with one fist and made a pleased, breathless sound. Miranda looked over, smiled, and returned to the search.
She changed the date range to the months since her leave began.
Her name appeared less often. At first, people referenced her training files and copied her on handoff notes. Then Willa began answering questions that had been directed to Miranda, explaining that Miranda was unavailable and offering to take care of whatever the client needed.
The phrasing changed gradually.
While Miranda is out.
During Miranda’s leave.
Willa is managing this account.
Please route future questions to Willa.
Miranda opened a thread from three weeks earlier.
A client she had worked with for nearly four years had asked whether she planned to return before the holiday campaign.
Dennis had replied that Halcyon was still evaluating staffing needs for the coming year and would ensure the account received consistent leadership.
Miranda read the sentence twice.
There was no mention of her approved return date. No reassurance that she remained the senior account manager responsible for the account. Dennis had answered a direct question about Miranda by promising consistency without her.
The shower stopped upstairs.
Miranda forwarded the thread to her personal email, then searched for messages containing Willa’s title. The earliest references called her interim account manager. In May, interim disappeared from Dennis’s internal announcements. By June, Willa’s signature read Senior Account Manager.
No one had copied Miranda on the change.
Garrett entered the kitchen in khaki shorts and a navy polo, dressed more carefully than the morning required. He paused when he saw the laptop open, and his attention moved from Miranda’s face to the company logo at the top of the screen.
“What are you doing?” he asked. He crossed to the coffee maker and reached for the pot, though it had been sitting long enough for the last inch of coffee to turn nearly black.
“Looking at my email.”
“I thought you weren’t supposed to work during leave.”
“I’m not working.” Miranda clicked into another message and found a June client update that identified Willa as the strategic lead on an account Miranda had brought to Halcyon herself. “I’m trying to find out whether I still have a job.”
Garrett set down the coffee pot. “You do.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know you signed an agreement.”
“So did I. The agreement protects my employment, not necessarily the role I left.”
Garrett came closer, stopping beside the table rather than behind her. He glanced at the screen, and Miranda watched him recognize the client’s name before he read the rest.
“What is that?” he asked.
“Dennis told Marianne Porter that Halcyon was evaluating staffing needs for next year.” Miranda turned the laptop enough for him to see the date. “She asked when I was coming back, and he answered as though my return was hypothetical.”
Garrett bent over the table and read the message. His forehead tightened, but he straightened too quickly.
“That could mean anything,” he said. “They evaluate staffing every year.”
“She asked about me.”
“And he gave her a general answer because he probably didn’t want to discuss your leave with a client.”
“He discussed Willa’s role.”
“Because Willa is handling the account now.”
Miranda closed the laptop. The small click made Owen look toward them from the rug.
“I’m calling HR tomorrow,” she said. “I’m also calling Dennis.”
Garrett pulled out the chair opposite her but did not sit. “You should wait until you’re calmer.”
Miranda looked at him, and the rest of whatever he intended to say stopped in his throat.
“I mean until you’ve had time to review everything,” he corrected. “You don’t want to go into a conversation assuming they’ve done something illegal.”
“I didn’t say anything about illegal.”
“You’re talking about whether your job exists.”
“Because I would like to know.”
“And you should know.” Garrett finally sat, placing both hands flat on the table. “I’m saying you’ll get a better answer if you approach it professionally instead of making it about Willa.”
The insult was buried beneath enough reasonableness that Miranda nearly missed it. She looked at Garrett’s clean shirt, his damp hair combed into place, and the guarded patience he had apparently decided to wear for the rest of the day.
“Do you think I’ve forgotten how to speak to my employer?” she asked.
“No.”
“Do you think I need you to coach me before I call HR?”
“That is not what I’m doing.”
“You just warned me not to make the conversation emotional.”
“I warned you not to make it about Willa.”
“It is about Willa. She has my title and my accounts.”
“Then ask about your title and your accounts.” Garrett leaned back, frustration breaking through the calm he had arranged. “Do not call Dennis and accuse him of replacing you because you saw a biography online.”
Miranda held his gaze for several seconds. Garrett believed he was protecting her from an impulsive mistake. He had managed to turn withholding support into another form of care.
“I won’t ask you to join the call,” she said.
“I didn’t say I wouldn’t join.”
“You work for the same company. I need to know what they say when you are not in the room.”
His expression shifted. “You think I would influence the answer.”
“I think they already discuss me with you instead of with me.”
Garrett looked away first. He reached for the cold coffee, drank it, and grimaced as though the bitterness had surprised him.
Owen began to fuss on the rug. Miranda moved to pick him up, but Garrett rose at the same time and reached him first.
“I’ll take him,” he said. His voice held the stubbornness of someone determined not to have even a useful action interpreted incorrectly.
Miranda returned to the laptop instead of arguing. She opened a new message addressed to Halcyon’s human resources director, then stopped with her fingers over the keys.
The words she wanted were too sharp. The words Garrett would approve of sounded bloodless and apologetic, as though she were requesting a favor rather than asking whether the company still intended to honor its agreement.
She closed the blank message and opened the contact list on her phone.
Claire answered on the fourth ring with traffic noise behind her. “I’m driving, so this needs to be either short or interesting.”
“Can you come over?”
Claire’s tone changed immediately. “When?”
“Today.” Miranda watched Garrett carry Owen toward the living room, one hand supporting the baby’s head while he bent to retrieve the cloth book from beneath the coffee table. “And bring your laptop.”
There was a brief pause before Claire said, “I’ll be there in forty minutes.”
Garrett looked back from the sofa. “Why does she need her laptop?”