One
Charlotte Taylor sat in her boss’s office Friday morning and wondered where all the oxygen in Chicago had just gone.
“I’m sorry to let you go, Charlotte, I really am.” Alice Warren, Charlotte’s superior at Monarch Textiles, looked genuinely upset at having to deliver such news. “I know you just lost your grandmother, so I tried to put this off as long as I could.”
A layoff? Her? Charlotte felt the shock give way to a sickening recognition. She’d seen the financial statements; she’d written several of the sales reports. Sure, she was no analyst wiz, but she was smart enough to know Monarch wasn’t in great financial shape and a downsize was likely. She was also emotionally tied enough to Monarch and torn enough over losing Mima that she’d successfully denied the company’s fiscal health for months. As she watched her grandmother’s decline, Charlotte told herself she was finally settled into a good life. She’d boasted to a failing Mima—not entirely truthfully, she knew even then on some level—about feeling “established.”
She’d patted Mima’s weakening hands, those hands that had first taught her to knit and launched the textile career she had enjoyed until five minutes ago, and she’d assured her grandmother that there was no reason to worry about her. She was at a place in life where she could do things, buy things, experience things and get all the joy out of life just as Mima taught her. How hollow all that crowing she had done about becoming “successful” and “indispensable” at Monarch now rang. Who was she fooling? In this economy, did anyone really have the luxury of being indispensable?
Except maybe Mima. Mima could never be replaced. Charlotte and her mother were just barely figuring out how to carry on without the vivacious, adventurous old woman who’d now left such a gaping hole in their lives. It had been hard enough when Grandpa had lost his battle to Alzheimer’s—the end of that long, hard decline could almost be counted as a blessing. Mima’s all-too-quick exit had left Charlotte reeling, fabricating stability and extravagance that were never really there. Hadn’t today just proved that?
Charlotte grappled for a response to her boss’s pained eyes. “It’s not your fault, I suppose.” She was Monarch’s problem solver, the go-to girl who never got rattled. She should say something mature and wise, something unsinkably optimistic, something Mima would say. Nothing came but a silent, slack jaw that broadcast to Alice how the news had knocked the wind out of her.
Alice sighed. “You know it’s not your performance. It’s just budgetary. I’m so sorry.”
“The online sales haven’t been growing as fast as we projected. I’d guessed the layoffs were coming eventually. I just didn’t think it’d be—” she forced back the lump in her throat “—me, you know?”
Alice pulled two tissues from the box on her desk, handing one to Charlotte. “It’s not just you.” She sniffed. “You’re the first of four.” She pushed an envelope across the desk to Charlotte. “I fought for a severance package, but it’s not much.”
A severance package. Charlotte didn’t even want to open it. Whatever it included, the look on Alice’s face told Charlotte it wasn’t going to make much of a difference. Mima, did you see this coming? Of course that couldn’t be possible, but Charlotte felt her grandmother’s eyes on her anyway, watching her from the all-knowing viewpoint of eternity. It wasn’t that much of a stretch, if one believed in premonitions. Or the Holy Spirit, which Mima claimed to listen to carefully.
In true Mima style, Charlotte’s grandmother had left both her and her mother a sizable sum of money and with instructions to “do something really worth doing.” A world traveler after Grandpa died, Mima squeezed every joy out of life and was always encouraging others to do the same. Mima bought herself beautiful jewelry but never cried when a piece got lost. Mima owned a ten-year-old car but had visited five continents. She bought art—real art—but had creaky old furniture. Her apartment was small but stuffed with fabulous souvenirs and wonderful crafts. Mima truly knew what money was for and what really mattered in life.
That was how Charlotte knew the funds she’d inherited weren’t intended for living—rent and groceries and such—they were for dreams and art and life. Having to use Mima’s money to survive a layoff would feel like an insult to her grandmother’s memory.
Alice sniffled, bringing Charlotte back to the horrible conversation at hand. Alice was so distressed she seemed to fold in on herself. “I wasn’t allowed to tip anyone off. I’m so sorry.”
She was sorry—even Charlotte could see that—but it changed nothing. Charlotte was leaving Monarch. She’d been laid off from the job she’d expected to solidify her career. It felt as if she’d spent her four years at Monarch knitting up some complicated, beautiful pattern and someone had come and ripped all the stitches out and told her to start over.
Over? How does a person start over when they suddenly doubt they ever really started at all?
Charlotte picked up the envelope but set it in her lap unopened.
“You’ve got two weeks of salaried work still to go.” Alice was trying—unsuccessfully—to brighten her voice. “But you’ve also got six days of vacation accrued so...you don’t have to stay the whole two weeks if you don’t want to.” The woman actually winced. Was this Alice’s kinder, gentler version of “clean out your desk”?
The compulsion to flee roared up from some dark corner of her stomach Charlotte didn’t even know she had. She didn’t want to stay another minute. The fierce response surprised her—Monarch had been so much of a daily home to her she often didn’t think of it as work. “And what about sick days?”
It bothered Charlotte that Alice had evidently anticipated that question; she didn’t even have to look it up. “Two.”
She was better than this. She couldn’t control that she was leaving, but she could control when she left. And that was going to be now. “I don’t think I’m feeling so well all of a sudden.” Sure, it was a tad unreasonable, but so was having your job yanked out from underneath you. She had eight covered days out of her two-week notice. What was the point of staying two more days? Two more hours? Her files were meticulous, her sales contact software completely up to date, and next season’s catalogue was ahead of schedule. There wasn’t a single thing keeping her here except the time it would take to sweep all the personal decorations from her desk.
Alice nodded. “I’ll write you a glowing recommendation.”
It felt like such a weak compensation. Charlotte stood up, needing to get out of this office where she’d been told so many times—and believed—she was a gifted marketing coordinator and a key employee. “Thanks.” She couldn’t even look Alice in the eye, waving goodbye with the offending manila envelope as she walked out the door.
Monarch only had two dozen or so employees, and every eye in the small office now stared at her as she packed up her desk. Charlotte was grateful each item she stuffed into one of the popular Monarch tote bags—and oh, the irony of that—transformed the damp surge of impending tears into a churning burst of anger. Suddenly the sweet fresh-out-of-college intern she’d been training looked like the enemy. Inexperience meant lower salaries, so it wouldn’t surprise Charlotte at all if adorable little Mackenzie got to keep her job. She probably still lived at home with her parents and didn’t even need money for rent, Charlotte thought bitterly.
She reached into her file drawer for personal papers, her hand stilling on the thick file labeled “Cottage.” The file was years old, a collection of photos and swatches and magazine articles for a dream house. Apartment living had
