Page 85 of A Lesson for Laurel

“I’m learning that. I’ve done it before.” She started to scroll through her phone and got Patty’s number who was one of the other three supervisors and called her. Patty answered on the third ring. “I’m so sorry to bother you, Patty. There are several people sick at the plant and they are trying to reach Denise who isn’t returning their calls.”

“Oh,” Patty said. “I didn’t know Denise was on call this weekend. She told someone she had a family reunion to go to.”

Which didn’t matter. Being on call didn’t mean you had to go into work, just you had to be available for phone calls and to deal with emergencies like this if they arose.

“She is on call this weekend,” she said. Laurel knew who was on call every week as she did the schedule. “Are you able to make some calls and get shifts covered? I’m not sure exactly how many people. I’m out of town right now and don’t have numbers with me.”

“Absolutely,” Patty said. “I’ll go over to the plant now and find out what is going on and get it covered.”

“Thank you so much, Patty. I appreciate it and I’m so sorry. We’ll get this all sorted out and make sure you’ve got this marked in payroll.”

She hung up and turned to Easton. “At least that is taken care of,” he said.

“Yep. One less thing to worry about. Patty is older and on top of things. She’ll get the shifts covered.”

“Before you were hired, the sisters dealt with this?”

“They have the supervisors and only called one of the sisters if necessary, but they are getting so big that my position was needed to oversee it all.”

She loved her job, but this was the second time this had happened to her on the weekend when Denise was on call.

“Looks like you might have to deal with this when you get back,” he said.

“I will,” she said. “Let me just send this text to Patty and then we can go.”

She texted Patty to let her know if all the shifts were covered and if she heard anything from Denise.

She and Easton left and drove to the park. They walked the trails and went to lunch and still no response from Denise.

“You’re distracted,” he said. “What is going on? I thought everything was set at work.”

“It is,” she said. Patty had texted her within twenty minutes that everything was set at the plant and not to worry. “Sorry. I’m just thinking that I can’t believe I haven’t heard from Denise and now I wonder if something happened to her.”

“Do you believe that?” he asked.

“Unfortunately, no. But I don’t want to be that bitch that was getting worked up over being blown off.”

“Which is what makes you a good person on top of a great employee,” he said.

“Sorry that this is ruining our day.”

“It’s not,” he said. “Not sure why you think that.”

“You noticed I was distracted,” she said.

“Just now you were, but you weren’t fifteen minutes ago. Really, it’s all good.”

“Thanks,” she said. “I appreciate your understanding.”

“But in the past other people haven’t?” he asked.

It was so hard to break away from talking about their pasts, but she felt at times they almost needed to.

“No. Philip never understood. To him, at the end of the day, I should be done working.”

“Did his father stop working at five each day, or any other attorney in their firm?”

She laughed. “I doubt it, but Philip ended each day at four and didn’t do much more until he went in at nine the next day.”

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