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I consider trying it twice just for the satisfaction, but there are limits to how much emotional fulfillment one should expect from building security.
The receptionist looks up.
“Emma.”
“Okay if I walk today? I’d hate to make you chase me in those shoes twice.”
Her smile is cautious. Probably wise. “Of course.”
I take the elevator to the fourth floor.
One of the senior partners is waiting in the conference room. There are papers on the table and a pen beside them.
I’m surprised it’s just him. I expected half the department to have developed urgent business near the conference room. Apparently, getting fired and rehired in twenty-four hours is not the draw it used to be.
He asks me to sit.
“We terminated you on information that was incomplete,” he says. “That should not have happened.”
That is remarkably close to an apology from a man who bills by the hour.
I wait.
“We would like you to come back.”
“To the job I had yesterday?”
He gives me a look.
Fair question.
“The partnership committee met this morning.”
That gets my attention.
“We moved the vote forward.”
“And?”
“It was unanimous.”
I let him keep going.
“We were always going to vote yes, Emma.”
That is almost certainly not true.
Or maybe it is.
Yesterday, I would have cared enough to find out.
Today, wrong is wrong, and I am willing to let the correction work in my favor.
He pushes the papers toward me.
The first page has my name on it.
Underneath that:
