The Woman Outside Her Office

By late August, Damian had developed an unnecessary morning routine.

He drank coffee he hadn't liked before meeting Clara, ate breakfast he had once considered optional, and rode to her office even when his first appointment was in the opposite direction.

Vince drove.

Clara pretended not to know what it meant.

One warm morning, she unfolded a photograph of the old house on Bennett Row.

"We should fix this," she said.

Damian leaned closer.

"The roof?"

"The whole thing. Roof first, obviously. The courtyard wall needs work, and I don't know what state the wiring's in."

"I'll look."

"I'd like to live there. Eventually."

He turned toward her so quickly she laughed.

"Really?"

"It's a house, Damian. People live in them."

He took the photograph from her.

"Anything else?"

"Roses along the fence. Climbing ones. The sort that look as though they're trying to escape."

"Like you."

"I stay remarkably close to the person who pays for breakfast."

He smiled and kissed her cheek before she could turn away.

Outside the office, he walked her to the entrance.

He was still asking about a wedding reception when somebody shouted her name.

Clara turned.

Lorraine came across the pavement carrying a plastic basin.

For one absurd second, Clara thought she had brought laundry.

Then her aunt lifted it.

Damian moved before Clara understood.

He shoved her behind him, caught Lorraine's arm, and drove the basin aside. Liquid slapped the pavement.

The smell reached Clara at once.

Gasoline.

Lorraine stumbled, dropped the basin, and reached into her pocket.

"Damian!"

He had seen it.

A lighter skittered across the sidewalk. Lorraine cried out as he pinned her wrist against the ground.

People poured out of the building.

"Call the police," somebody said.

Clara could hear her own name repeated behind her.

Damian stood, pulling her close.

"Did it get on you?"

"A little. My skirt."

He turned her gently, checking the fabric.

"Go change."

Lorraine began screaming.

Not about the lighter. Not about what she had almost done.

About Clara.

Ungrateful. Money-hungry. A girl raised out of charity who had used a man to throw her family away.

After the Reed house, Damian had arranged for Lorraine, Shelby, and Raymond to stay outside town while the investigation and disputes were handled. Clara hadn't asked many questions. She had wanted distance more than explanations.

Now Lorraine was back, and everyone at work was listening.

"I fed her!" she shouted. "I kept her alive, and this is how she treats us!"

Clara stood with Damian's hand at her back and gasoline soaking the hem of her skirt.

She couldn't make the two things fit.

Shelby ran through the gathering crowd.

"Mom!"

She helped Lorraine sit up, then saw Damian's arm around Clara.

Her face changed.

"What are you doing?"

Damian looked at her.

"Get your mother out of the sun."

Shelby wasn't looking at him anymore.

"Clara. You knew."

Every conversation seemed to stop.

"Knew what?"

"He was mine."

Clara felt the heat leave her face.

"Shelby."

"You were going to marry Julian. You had everything. Why did you have to take him too?"

Damian stepped between them.

"Enough."

"Tell her!" Shelby caught his sleeve. "Tell her how good you were to me. The room. The job. Everything I asked for."

"Because Clara asked me to help you."

"You can't say that."

"I just did."

Clara looked at Shelby's hand on his sleeve.

She remembered the family dinner, her cousin bringing him inside with a shy smile. The call when they were locked out. Shelby defending him in the staff room.

All those small pieces shifted into another shape.

Had she been blind?

Was she now the woman who had taken somebody else's place?

Damian turned.

"Clara. Go upstairs."

She couldn't move.

He touched her face, making her look at him.

"My wife," he said distinctly. "Go upstairs and change. I'll deal with this."

Shelby made a sound Clara had never heard from her.

"Wife?"

Vince arrived with two men from the hotel.

The police came a few minutes later.

By then, Clara was in the restroom, washing her hands even though the gasoline hadn't touched them.

***

Lorraine had visited three departments before coming outside.

Clara learned that after she returned to her desk.

A broken plant pot stood beside the stairwell. Somebody had pushed the reception furniture back into place. Her supervisor was waiting near the meeting room with a face full of sympathy and discomfort.

He let her explain.

He believed her.

Then he spoke about the disruption, the public nature of the office, the anxiety among staff. Her temporary appointment was due for review. There were other applicants. Perhaps it would be best if she took some time away while matters settled.

Clara listened without crying.

She signed what she needed to sign.

Her coworkers hugged her. One woman slipped the spare sweater from Clara's chair into the box with her notebooks.

"Keep it. You'll need it somewhere."

That was when her eyes stung.

At her desk, she opened the bottom drawer and found the mug somebody had given her on her second day. It had a chip near the handle. She wrapped it in the spare sweater.

Her colleague Beth stood beside her without trying to hurry her.

"Do you need help carrying anything?"

"No. Thank you."

Beth looked at the drawings sticking out of the box.

"You did those?"

Clara nodded.

"Then maybe this place was never going to keep you."

It was a kind thing to say. Clara knew that. She also knew Beth would return to the same chair tomorrow, with the same problems on her screen, while Clara had lost something she had worked hard to make ordinary.

She stood and looked around once. The printer jammed as if in farewell. Somebody swore at it.

Clara almost smiled.

"There's a torn sheet behind the second tray," she said. "Pull the blue lever first."

For one last moment, she was the person who knew how something worked here. Then she picked up the box.

She thanked them, carried the box downstairs, and found Damian waiting by the car.

He took it from her immediately.

"What happened?"

"I don't work here anymore."

His face hardened.

"Give me a minute."

She caught his arm before he could turn toward the building.

"No."

"They can't—"

"They can make my life very difficult if they want to. They haven't. Please don't make me regret leaving quietly."

He looked at the office doors.

Then at her.

He put the box in the car.

***

At the hotel, Clara laid her new unemployment paperwork beside the drawings she had been doing at night.

Damian stood near the door.

"There's nothing between me and Shelby."

She kept arranging the papers.

"Was there?"

"No."

"You seem very certain."

"It's my life. I ought to know."

She looked up.

"Does she?"

He dragged a hand over his face.

"Clara, I gave her a job. I gave half the town jobs. I'm not sleeping with all of them."

"That's a wonderful reassurance."

"I wasn't sleeping with any of them."

She looked at him for a long moment.

He looked back, increasingly desperate to be believed and increasingly angry about having to ask.

"You're the only woman I've had in my bed."

Clara's eyebrows rose.

"You're thirty-two."

"I'm aware."

"And you run a nightclub."

"Also aware."

"And you expect me to believe that?"

"I'd appreciate the attempt."

She couldn't. Not yet.

He went to take her hand. She stepped away.

The hurt in his face was brief and unmistakable.

He hid it behind irritation.

"Fine. Ask me tomorrow. The answer won't change."

He slept on the sofa that night.

Clara lay awake in the bedroom, looking at the ceiling and hearing her cousin's voice.

You had everything.

She wondered what kind of person could look at her life and think that.