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Jia closed out of her Zoom call and sat staring at the now-blank screen.
She wasn’t sure what to make of it. When she had come home from being fired from Bakerson’s Group, she’d started to allow
herself to believe that maybe, just maybe, they’d been wrong. In fact, the more she played it back in her head, made sense
of the situation, she was certain that she had been terminated for something that was not her fault.
Maybe she was a bit much, a little too flashy for the finance company. But was that a fireable offense? Other than that, she
could not think of one error she was told she’d made except . . . the expense report.
“Mr. Wainwright, you listed here a two-thousand-dollar dinner at Le Bernadin, but I don’t see the receipt for it. Can I get
that from you?”
“Look it up on my credit card statement,” he’d said, visibly annoyed by her question.
“Yes, but sir, anything over one thousand dollars needs a detailed itemized receipt plus a list of all attendees. I’m so sorry to bother you, but can you get that to me?
If not, would you like me to hold off processing this expense until you can?
” She’d tried to say it with a smile. She’d tried to remove any tone that might sound accusatory or set him off. She’d clearly failed.
“Useless. Pain in my ass,” he muttered as he walked away, her questions unanswered.
The entire exchange had ruined her night. But she swore to come back the next day in a better mood.
She should have asked Genevieve for more details. She should have demanded to see proof. But Jia was not a fighter. She hated
confrontation. And was it worth it to even try?
She wouldn’t even know where to start if she wanted to fight it. And the thought of doing so was just too daunting for her
to consider. She considered her termination a favor, truthfully. She didn’t want to work there and, for now, it had brought
her here.
Plus, what would she gain by it? A chance to go back to that same job that made her miserable? Or maybe redemption and reclamation
of her self-confidence?
But when she received the request for a Zoom call from Stephanie Novak and Taylor Ann Graff, she had been thrown for a loop.
In fact, she’d deleted the previous attempts to contact her by the legal group representing them, unaware of what the messages
were even about. This one, however, came directly from the women, whose names Jia had recognized. So she accepted their invitation
to talk, despite the fact that with time zones, it would be an early morning for Jia.
She’d seen them on old reports, previous files, on various documents in her computer history.
They were the ones who had been in the role before her.
They were the women that Mr. Wainwright often referred to as dummies, incompetents, and failures, reduced to simply being known as the girls before and, ultimately, that he had also fired like he had Jia.
And apparently now, after their own time to consider and gather
evidence, they were ready. They were taking Bakerson’s Group, along with a long list of names, to court.
And they wanted Jia to join them.
But it all felt like too much, too over Jia’s head.
Or, if she would admit to herself, too much a Pandora’s box she wasn’t sure she wanted to open. Because if she went to court
and lost, her parents would most definitely have her ass for shaming them and being so irresponsible and ill-prepared. But
if they won? She’d have to face the real possibility that, despite proving she was capable and competent at her job and not
the screwup, once again, everyone thought she was, it still might not bring her the respect, or the life’s satisfaction, and
definitely not the joy, she wanted for herself.
What good would it do to even try to get her story and the real facts out in the open? She didn’t have a need for a redemption
arc. She really just preferred to move on.
Jia looked over at the clock: 6:58 a.m. Shit.
She would review the details in their follow-up email more closely and think it through later. Maybe she’d ask Henry his thoughts
on the matter. He knew Bakerson’s Group better than she did. And she couldn’t imagine him signing off on something that wasn’t
valid and justified. He’d tell her if she should pursue the lawsuit or not, if she asked his professional opinion.
Right now, she was late and had to go.
Jia waited on the corner as she did every Friday morning at seven for the rest of the crew to arrive.
When she’d first arrived at Sunset Hills, she’d noticed a lot of the residents taking their daily walks around the block,
all at their own pace, some with dogs on leashes, some pushing walkers to assist them. But all were alone. And that felt kind
of sad to her.
Surrounding yourself with others doing the same thing as you provided accountability—we all could use some of that, she thought.
So she’d suggested a walking club. It was the first thing she’d organized for the residents here. She limited the official
meetup to twice a week so as not to overwhelm them. The group would meet at the corner at seven, and they’d walk exactly one
mile.
For some it was a stretch and pushed them a little harder and farther than they’d gone before. And for others it motivated
them to walk up to two miles on the other days when the club didn’t go together. It was their third week now and still one
of Jia’s favorite group activities.
“Hello, fellas,” she said as Eugene, a retired salesman who had lived at Sunset Hills going on twenty years now, and Louis,
a retired school teacher and newish to the neighborhood, walked up. “Hi, Jia. Looking good today in the stripes,” Gordon said.
Jia had on another one of her grandmother’s outfits, a striped jogging suit possibly from the eighties that she’d cut into shorts.
It was soft and comfy and colorful, and Jia loved it.
“Thanks,” she said with a wink. Eugene blushed, and Louis elbowed him.
Jia held back an assessing gaze, but she got the sense that maybe something romantic was brewing between the two.
Go, Eugene. Louis was only sixty, a good fifteen years or so younger. Nice. Jia loved a good age-gap romance.
The bark of a small dog caught Jia’s attention. Gladys had her terrier, Elizabeth Taylor, strapped into her doggy stroller
and pushed her along to meet up with the rest of them. As the others arrived, they had a nice group of about twenty people
and at least eight dogs of all shapes and sizes.
“Okay, everyone got their fanny packs clipped? Water bottles filled and secured at your hips? Sunscreen, anyone?”
“Let’s get this show on the road,” someone growled.
Jia smiled. Like any of them had anywhere else to go.
Just as she was about to turn around to lead the way, she caught sight of the sun glistening off the very nice chest of a
shirtless Henry Shin. He was like clockwork when it came to his morning run, and it wasn’t the first time Jia had seen him
looking nice and sweaty and only half-clothed. His T-shirt was tucked into the pocket of his shorts. Heroic effort to be a
runner in the desert during off-season.
He looked up and caught her eye.
She lifted her hand and waved.
The others took notice and all waved as well.
“Hi, Henry!”
“Hey there, Hank!”
“Looking good there, handsome!”
Henry’s smile could not be helped, and it completely transformed his face. Jia had seen that smile more and more these days,
and she liked it.
Henry walked over to greet the group, taking the shirt and pulling it back on over his head.
Shame.
“Walking Club?” he asked as he reached them.
“Yup, and we’re late. Are we leaving anytime soon?” Gerty growled.
“Shush, you big grouch. Not like we’re in some kind of race or anything.”
“Wanna join us?” Jia asked.
“I’m almost done with my run. I should go take a shower and get some breakfast ready for Dennis,” he said.
Jia nodded. “Hey, ask Dennis if he wants to join Walking Club next week.” She bent her head toward a couple of the folks with
their walkers, trying to put Henry’s worries at ease if Dennis could keep up or not. She knew he was super protective.
“I’ll bring it up to him,” he said.
Jia’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. She hadn’t expected it to be that easy.
“Hey.” Henry took a step toward her.
“Watch out, Henry, there’s some dog—”
Jia looked down just as Henry stepped in a fresh pile of . . .
“Poop right there.”
“What the heck? Right here? In the middle of the sidewalk? Why don’t people pick up after their dogs? I thought that was common
practice and courtesy,” Henry said.
“Sorry, Henry, it was probably Chewbacca here. He’s had some stomach issues the last couple days,” Harold said.
“Yeah, well, if you knew that, you should have prepared to pick up after him,” Henry replied.
“Hey, I get it. It’s disgusting,” Jia replied.
Henry was scraping the side of his shoe on the curb.
“But maybe just consider that some of the residents here aren’t as mobile as others and might not be physically able to bend down and pick up after their dogs.
We’re a little more flexible with the rules here.
And common courtesy means different things sometimes,” she said.
She tempered her voice not to show her own frustration at Henry’s outburst.
Not in front of the crowd.
She understood. In fact, she felt the same way when she’d first arrived. But as she paid attention and noticed limitations
and best intentions, she’d stopped harping over things that weren’t that big of a deal. Not in the grand scheme of life here
at The Sunset. She could relate to needing some extra grace and empathy more than she admitted.
Henry closed his eyes and shook his head trying to gather his composure.
Jia didn’t know why she bothered. She liked him. But he could be so uptight.
“Okay, everyone, let’s go,” she said. And she didn’t bother to look back. And she didn’t bother to offer him the Kleenex she
had in her pack. He could figure out his own shit. Pun intended.
She started off faster than she should have. She was just annoyed by Henry’s lack of empathy. She understood he had a thing
about following rules. But sometimes he had to understand that rules could and should be bent and broken. It frustrated her . . .
“Hey there, speedy. Wanna wait for the rest of us?”
Jia looked back over her shoulder and saw the Walking Club at least twenty feet behind her. “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry. I was
lost in thought,” she said.
“Honestly, Jia. Feel free to go on and walk ahead of us. It can’t be fun slowing yourself down to a snail’s pace just because
the rest of us can’t keep up. You’re young and strong and flexible. Don’t let us hold you back,” Eugene said.
He’d meant it as encouragement . . . to push forward at her own pace .
. . to get something out of this time for herself as well.
But what he didn’t realize, none of them did, maybe she hadn’t either until this very moment, was that the pace Jia had been living life was too fast for her.
That the pace life was moving right here at The Sunset was just right.
At least for now. And she loved it. She loved the lack of judgment.
She needed the freedom to figure stuff out for herself. And maybe what she was figuring out there was that slower worked better
for her.
“I like walking alongside you all. That pace is just right,” she told the group. “Let’s take a water break at the corner,”
she suggested. “Humans and furry friends all hydrate at the halfway point.”
“One of us will have to remember about stopping to hydrate once Jia’s gone.”
The words hit her like a ton of bricks. Of course Jia had thought about eventually having to leave the desert and go back
to New York. But she didn’t realize that maybe her friends, the residents there, were also thinking about it. Her chest felt
tight, and the sudden pressure of a timeline made it feel like she was carrying fifty pounds of stress on her shoulders.
“You guys can’t get rid of me that quick,” she said. She tried to keep her voice light, joking.
“We’d keep you here forever if we could,” Gladys said.
A chorus of yeses and yups and you betchas followed. Tears welled up in Jia’s eyes. She’d never felt like she belonged anywhere. And suddenly, after living among a
bunch of seniors in a retirement community, she’d felt like she’d found a home.
But this couldn’t be her home, could it? Jia needed a job. She needed a place to live. She needed a life. And none of those things were available to her here at Sunset Hills, what with age restrictions, financial burdens, and overbearing parents with their own expectations of her.
And the sense of loss weighed the heaviest on her of all.
“Hey, Dennis? Do you remember where we put the toolbox?” Henry rummaged through the garage looking for where he’d put the
stuff he didn’t think Dennis would need on the regular.
“Yeah, it’s out in the garage. What do you need it for?” Dennis asked.
“Thought I might try to make something, an instrument of some kind. Wanna help me figure it out?” Henry asked.
Dennis’s eyes lit up at the offer. “You betcha, I do,” he said. He came and sat next to Henry at the kitchen table. Henry
had a pen and paper and began drawing.
“Okay, so this is what I was thinking . . .”