Page 4 of Buried in the Woods Below

The wheel shifts; her weight wavers. Her grin vanishes.

My mouth drops open, and my breathing stops.

Her arms pinwheel.

She reaches for me.

I reach for her, but my limbs won’t move. I’m frozen, as though outside my body.

All I can do is watch.

Watch as her arms flail, and then…darkness.

A gap in the film.

The next thing I remember is the flicker of ambulance lights.

Chapter 2

August 29

The walls are closing in on me.

Not literally, of course—I’m not crazy. But my career? Yeah, that’s on life support.

I pace the ocean-blue hallway outside Tim Colby’s office. Overpriced abstract paintings lit by gold lamps line the wall. The sounds of keyboards tapping and computer mice clicking vibrate through the air, accompanied by the scent of warm copier paper. My tan leather flats tap against the granite floor as I walk.

One, two, three, four.

I count each stride, an old habit I’ve never been able to shake. Forty paces from one end of the hallway to the other.

This is where the partners of Winthrop & Co. play masters of the universe. Each office boasts floor-to-ceiling windows and jaw-dropping views of Lake Michigan. I’ve been busting my ass for the last five years, hoping to make partner, a goal that seems to slip further away by the second.

My gaze snags on the view of Navy Pier. To the families weaving their way down the promenade. To the vacation crowd sipping from mugs at the beer garden.

To the Ferris wheel.

For an instant, buried memories of Olivia skitter through my brain. Her fall. The two weeks she spent in a coma. Wondering if she’d ever be the same. I shove it back underground and return my attention to the here and now.

Normally, I love it here.

But not today.

Today, this hallway feels like the plank of a ship, and I’m about to be tossed overboard. I pick a small piece of lint off my navy-checked pants and tug at the sleeves of my white silk blouse. Kelly from the tech practice breezes past me, eyes down, as if I’m radioactive. She’s heard the whispers, knows something happened, knows I’m in trouble. But she doesn’t know what. No one does.

I’m not sure I do.

The front-desk phone rings, each chime like a doomsday clock. I drift into memory, but not fully—just flashes. The conference room. Vivek’s expression. The scent of sweat, the moment everything changed. Watching, losing control, the blur.

I play out the scenarios that await me in Tim’s office, but there are too many variables. Too many unknown factors that could influence his approach.

People. Are. The. Worst.

When I’m on a consulting project, everything is controllable. I can dig through the spreadsheets, swim in the numbers, identify a company’s problems, plan for how to fix them, and then cobble it all together into an eye-popping PowerPoint presentation. You need this many new customers. This is your cost per new customer. These are the sales channels. This is your strategy.

That’s what I do. I eliminate problems.

But people? People are irrational, unpredictable. They make decisions based on feelings and fears, not cold, hard facts. I watch Pete, our front-desk assistant, take a bite of a Twinkie, and I’m reminded that people often do the exact opposite of what’s good for them. And that’s how you get yourself into trouble.