Page 32 of Her Boss

I didn’t really know what on earth Rick was up to, but my spidey senses said it wasn’t anything good. As we dashed along a wooded, winding road through the exurbs well outside the city limits, I couldn’t help the unease ratcheting slowly higher. Where was he taking us?

Keep your shit together, Genie.

Looking out the window at the admittedly beautiful scenery, I took a deep breath, enjoying the soaring evergreens. The green, meticulously groomed lawns of houses we passed grew further and further apart as we drove, until there wasn’t much around us but woods and the occasional hobby farm or sprawling mansion on several acres.

When I was a little girl, Uncle Chester would sometimes take me fishing. Not because I liked fishing, or because he was any good at it. Rather, it had been a time of quiet, of thinking. Or something.

I’d observe him stabbing a squirming worm onto a sharp, glinting hook, then dumping it into the lazy, muddy ribbon of the Lowen River. Then I’d watch either him, or the water, hoping for something—anything—to happen.

Nothing ever did, of course. Uncle Chester was a man of many talents, but fishing didn’t count as one of them.

But what he was good at was showing me the truth of things—and not just how to subject a poor innocent worm to a skewering, followed by a drowning, sacrificed upon the altar of man’s need to effectively bait a fishhook.

Uncle Chester understood life in a way I’d never encountered before, or since. What he also liked to show me was something a little girl of scarcely eight understood—and certainly saw little value in. After having gone through half a dozen worm souls in a futile bid to coax even one of the Lowen River’s surprisingly wily, finned denizens onto his waiting hook, he showed me what patience meant. And calmness.

“You see, little Genie. I’ve been sitting in this hot, humid boat for how long now?”

“Too long, Uncle Chest.”

He’d nod along sagely, of course. “And in that long while have you seen me get frustrated? Or cross? Even once?”

While I had heard him mutter something that rhymed with ‘buck’ under his breath a time or two as he struggled with the elusiveness of the Lowen River’s fish, I gamely shook my head. “No, Uncle.”

“Precisely. Life tests a man.” He’d winked at me graciously. “Or a little girl, as the case may be.”

I’d smiled at that.

“And when life throws a test at a man, a man must do one thing, above all else. Do you know what that is?”

“What, Uncle?”

“Stay calm. No matter what happens. Cool as a cucumber in November.”

I’d always wrinkled my nose and giggled when he’d said that. I hated cucumbers, but it never failed to make me laugh when my uncle reeled off that phrase, being careful to pronounce the month ‘Novumber’ to ensure the playful, amusing rhyme.

“Do you know why that is?” he asked, withdrawing his hook from the water, the worm magically gone but without a fish to replace it. “Why calm is so important?”

“No, Uncle.”

“Because if you’re calm, you’ll keep your head. You’ll solve the problem, while everyone around you is too panicked to do anything but panic some more.” He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “You might even save your life.”

I nodded along, giving him my most serious of faces but not really understanding why.

“Do you promise to remember that, Genie? For when life decides to test you?”

“Yes, Uncle. Cool as a cucumber in Novumber.”

He’d touched the end of my nose with a fingertip, his smile warm. “A very smart girl, you are. You make your uncle proud.”

“Genie…”

“What, Unc—” I bit my tongue, forgetting for a moment where I was. “Sorry—what did you say?”

Rick glanced at me, a muscle twitching at the corner of his much too square jaw. “Listen to me, and listen good.”

“Okay.” I hated the blush warming my cheeks at the demeaning tone in his voice, but it did something else to me I liked even less. I squeezed my thighs together, scowling as I tried to ignore the heat there too. “Fine.”

“What I’m going to show you is something you can’t tell anyone about. Not anyone. Not your uncle, not a fucking soul.”

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