Page 224 of Twins for Three Bad Boys

Same bright overhead lights. Same too-clean table. Same tissue box in the middle, though now they look less like a preparation and more like an insult.

Mrs. Kline closes the door behind us. She doesn’t sit right away. Neither do I.

She just stands there, collecting herself.

Then she says, “It appears there were… significant failures in how this matter was originally handled.”

Such tidy little words for setting a match to someone’s life.

“Yes,” I say.

She winces.

“I did not know,” she says carefully, “that a staff member had personal ties to your partner.”

“Ex-partner,” I correct.

Her eyes flicker. “Yes. Of course.”

The silence that follows is thick enough to touch.

Then she exhales and continues.

“What happened this morning makes it clear that the original complaints against you were not properly scrutinized. In light of that, and in light of what was just admitted in the hallway…” She pauses. “I owe you an apology, June.”

I just look at her.

Maybe months ago I would have been grateful to hear her say that. Desperate for it, even.

Now it feels too small.

Too late.

“I don’t know what you want me to say to that,” I tell her honestly.

She looks almost ashamed. “You don’t have to say anything. But you should know that I recognize the harm done here.”

Wayne makes a low sound that says recognition is not the same as repair.

Mrs. Kline glances at him, then back at me.

“There will be a formal review,” she says. “And a written correction placed in your employment file stating that the allegations were unsubstantiated and that your termination was procedurally flawed.”

A written correction.

A clean record.

A thing on paper that says I wasn’t what they made me into.

My throat tightens. “Okay.”

Mrs. Kline nods once, then says the one thing I never expected to hear. “If you wanted it, your position here could be reinstated immediately.”

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Rex

The thing about absolute insanity is that once it’s over, once everybody’s accounted for and nobody’s bleeding too badly and the worst thing anyone has to carry out of the building is emotional damage, it has a way of turning funny at the edges.