Chapter 4 - THE THINGS I HAD NOTICED
I was sent home with pay for the rest of the day.
That should have felt like relief.
Instead, I drove back through the damp gray streets with a knot in my stomach and Derek’s face replaying in my head—not the angry version from disciplinary meetings, but the one I had seen after Catherine stepped into his office. Pale. Tight. Cornered.
Lily was already home by the time I got there, sitting cross-legged on the living-room rug doing spelling homework.
She looked up. “Did you get in trouble?”
Kids hear things adults never say out loud.
I set my keys on the kitchen counter and forced a smile. “Not exactly.”
I made grilled cheese for her, then stood at the sink staring at the unpaid electric notice half-hidden under a stack of grocery coupons. My hand still hurt from the tire iron. My job had not disappeared—but it had come close enough that I could still feel the edge of it.
After Lily went to bed, I sat at the kitchen table and made a list.
Every time Derek had singled me out.
Every time something “off” had happened in the warehouse.
Every time he had seemed more interested in documentation than in solving the actual problem.
Three weeks earlier, he had told me not to log a crushed shipment seal because “the vendor would make it a headache.”
Two weeks earlier, he had personally taken my badge to “reprogram” it after the time clock failed to scan me.
Nine days earlier, he had asked whether I was still struggling with child-care expenses, which had seemed weirdly personal at the time.
And last Thursday, he had questioned me twice about whether I had stayed late on a medical supply load I had never even touched.
The more I wrote, the more the pattern stopped looking like a strict supervisor managing a messy employee.
It started looking like a file.
A file built around me.
I was still staring at the page when my phone rang.
Unknown number.
For a second I expected Derek.
Instead, it was Catherine.
“I’m sorry to disturb you at home,” she said.
“No, it’s okay.”
“I have a direct question. Did you ever give anyone your badge PIN?”
“No.”
“Did anyone ever have access to your badge besides you and Derek when it was reprogrammed?”
“No.”
She exhaled slowly.
“That helps.”
“What is going on?” I asked.
May you like
There was a pause.
Then she answered carefully. “I believe your attendance problems may not be the only record Mr. Collins has been using.”
