Chapter 5 #2
Miranda ended the call and placed her phone beside the computer. “Because I’m going to review every document Halcyon gave me before I went on leave, and I want someone here who doesn’t begin from the assumption that I’m overreacting.”
He flinched, then looked down at Owen before the reaction could become an answer. Miranda reopened the email thread and began saving copies to a personal folder.
For the first time since the basket appeared on her screen, she was doing something that did not require Garrett to understand.
Claire arrived forty-six minutes later carrying her laptop, a legal pad, two iced coffees, and a paper bag from the bakery near her apartment.
She let herself in without knocking, called out a greeting she did not wait for anyone to answer, and found Miranda at the dining table surrounded by printed emails, old leave documents, and the blue accordion folder that had once held every piece of paperwork connected to Owen’s birth.
“You look like you’re preparing to depose someone,” Claire said.
She set the coffees beside the printer and placed the bakery bag just beyond Miranda’s reach, apparently anticipating that sugar would become necessary but should not yet be used as a distraction.
“Is Garrett the defendant, a hostile witness, or both?”
“He’s upstairs putting Owen down.” Miranda slid the leave agreement across the table. “I need you to read this and tell me whether I’m imagining what it says.”
Claire took off her jacket, folded it over the back of a chair, and sat without offering reassurance. That was one of the things Miranda had always valued about her. Claire believed comfort given before evidence was merely another way of asking someone to stop making you uncomfortable.
She read the first page silently, moving one finger beneath each paragraph.
The agreement had seemed straightforward when Miranda signed it: twelve months of leave, a guaranteed return to employment, benefits maintained through a combination of company contribution and payroll deductions, and language about reinstatement to the same or an equivalent position.
At the time, equivalent had sounded generous, a protection broad enough to cover restructuring or client changes.
Now the word looked loose enough to hide a disappearance.
“What exactly did Dennis say?” Claire asked after several minutes. She uncapped a pen and wrote the date at the top of the legal pad before turning the document over to examine the signature page.
“He hasn’t said anything to me. He told a client they were evaluating staffing needs for next year, and Willa has been using my title since May.
” Miranda opened the laptop and pulled up the email thread she had forwarded.
“My name is gone from the website, two of my accounts are listed in her biography, and no one has contacted me about my return.”
Claire read the message once, then again more slowly. “When are you officially due back?”
“March.”
“That’s eight months away.”
“I know.” Miranda hated how defensive the answer sounded, as though distance from the return date made the rest of it less real. “But they changed her title three months into a temporary contract and removed me from every public-facing page.”
Claire leaned back and looked toward the staircase. The house had gone quiet after Owen’s brief protest, and the silence held the particular tension of two adults aware of each other in separate rooms.
“Does Garrett know whether they intend to keep her?” Claire asked.
“He says no.”
“You believe him?”
Miranda looked down at the email printouts. She had believed Garrett yesterday when he said the title change was merely cosmetic, and she still believed he had not participated in a plan to replace her. The more difficult question was whether his ignorance deserved the same trust it once had.
“I believe he didn’t ask,” she said.
Claire’s expression sharpened, but she did not comment. She reached for one of the iced coffees and pushed the other toward Miranda.
They worked for nearly an hour. Miranda searched her inbox for references to her accounts, while Claire built a timeline in neat block letters: leave approved, Willa hired, title altered, website revised, client language changed.
Each fact looked manageable alone. Written in sequence, they showed a steady transfer of ownership.
Garrett came downstairs while Claire was reading a message in which Dennis praised Willa for stabilizing an account Miranda had spent two years winning.
He carried the baby monitor in one hand and had changed into a faded gray T-shirt, the kind he wore only at home because a bleach mark near the hem resembled a cloud.
“Owen’s asleep,” he said. His attention moved over the papers before settling on Claire. “How bad is it?”
Claire turned the legal pad toward herself before he could read it. “We don’t know yet.”
Garrett pulled out the chair beside Miranda and sat, close enough that his knee brushed hers beneath the table. Miranda shifted slightly, not enough to make the movement dramatic but enough that the contact ended.
“I can look at the HR system tomorrow,” he said. “There might be notes about staffing or title changes.”
“No,” Miranda replied. She kept her eyes on the message she was saving. “I don’t want you accessing anything you aren’t supposed to.”
“I’m not talking about confidential files. I mean the internal directory, planning documents, whatever I’m already authorized to see.”
“And then what?” Claire asked. Her tone remained neutral, though Miranda knew the neutrality was deliberate. “You tell Miranda what the company has decided about her because they still haven’t spoken to her directly?”
Garrett looked at her. “I’m trying to help.”
“I know. I’m asking what the help would accomplish.”
“It would give us information.”