Page 45 of Work with Me

The setting sun streamed through the still-open door behind me, lighting up the bright colors inside. As they hustled me through the small foyer—really only a few squares of tile set into the carpet of the living room—and skirted the living room to enter the kitchen, I glimpsed walls painted yellow, orange, and turquoise; a red velvet sofa; and books double-stacked in bookcases with bowed shelves, piled onto tables, even towering in corners.

A tiny bell jingled as an orange cat jumped off the back of the red sofa and trailed us into the kitchen, where Alicia’s older double carved through the crackling skin of a roast chicken.

I had to be stuck in the “Mirror, Mirror” episode ofStar Trek.Because only mirror-Alicia would wear fuckingsweatpant shortsthat barely covered her ass. And have a kid. The Alicia I knew pretended like her life didn’t exist outside Synergy Analytics’ office.

Or was Ithe one who pretended herlife didn’t exist outside the office? I’d made a fuck-ton of assumptions. I was sure of that.

While I was trying to get my bearings, we’d all packed into the tiny kitchen. Seriously, my apartment’s kitchen, the one I never used except to store a few six-packs of local beer, was bigger than this.

“Jackson.” Alicia’s eyes squinched up like she was in physical pain. “Meet my mother, Diane. Her wife, Esmy. And Noah. Everyone, this is Jackson Jones, whom I’ve mentioned before.” She spoke very slowly and clearly when she added, “Heowns the companywhere I work.”

My presumed power didn’t seem to have a lot of weight in the Weber household. Diane set her carving knife to the side but tented her fingers over it, ready to grab and stab. Esmy extended her hand to me, and when I automatically clasped it, crushed my hand. Noah stared at me, eyes narrowed just like Alicia’s.

The cat sniffed the toe of my Converse, puffed up like a fluffy basketball, and hissed, baring its sharp teeth and flattening its ears. No one admonished it. Maybe it was the family’s spokesman.

Someone had to break the tension. I said, “I can’t remember the last time I had home-cooked food. I guess it was Easter, when my friend Cooper’s mom cooked for us.” I gulped down the saliva that filled my mouth at the savory scent filling the kitchen. “Thank you for inviting me.”

Esmy, at least, cracked a sympathetic smile. “We’re glad to have you.”

Alicia didn’t seem to feel the same. A steel band encircled my upper arm. “Dinner’s ready. I’ll show you where to clean up,” she said.

She marched me back through the living room and into a dark hallway, past an open bedroom door, which she closed before I could peek inside, and into a narrow bathroom decorated in bright blue-greens with orange clownfish on the shower curtain.

Alicia followed me into the bathroom, shut the door, and turned on the water. She leaned in close and said in a low voice I had to bend to hear, “Listen to me. I keep my home life and professional life separate. Only a very few people I’ve worked with have been to my home. We will not be talking about any of this at the office tomorrow. Or ever. Do you understand me?”

“I guess? I mean, I don’t talk about my family at work, but that’s because everyone knows all about them. They’re all over the business pages. And Coop—”

No, I couldn’t tell her about Cooper’s family. Not about his abusive father, at least. They hadn’t spoken since we were in college, and Cooper mostly pretended he was dead.

“Your family seems…not terrible? You’re not…embarrassed of them?” My gaze fell on the blue cup on the counter that held two toothbrushes, one red and the other shaped like Superman.

“No, of course not.”

“Then why—”

“Look. I’m a woman in technology. Where we work, people have certain preconceived notions of women with families. If we say we can’t work late, we’re more committed to our families than we are to the company. Same if we have to take a long lunch to take a kid to the pediatrician or work from home when he’s sick and can’t go to school. Men—and childless women—get promoted because they’re dedicated to their careers. Women with families don’t.”

“That’s not—”

She shook her head. “Don’t even say it. You might not think your company does it, but they do. It starts the moment a woman asks for maternity leave, and it follows her throughout her career. Did you know women with children earn fifteen percent less than women without? And don’t even get me started on the pay gap between women and men. Or people of color and white men.”

I shook my head. The second she’d said “maternity leave,” my brain had stalled out, circling that concept. While I’d had her HR file open to get her address, of course I’d glanced through it. Anyone would’ve done that. No husband or domestic partner listed. Assuming Noah was eight, she’d been twenty-two when she’d had him. Practically a child herself. Starting a family didn’t seem like the type of thing a twenty-two-year-old, fresh out of college, would do. Unless…

“Are you divorced? Widowed?”

Alicia blinked and took a step back. “What?That’swhat you took away from what I said?”

“No, no, I followed you. No talking about your family at work. I get it. But I don’t understand where Noah came from.”

She rolled her eyes. “You mean, where’s the sperm donor?”

Wow, it was hot in the bathroom. I turned the tap to cold.

“We don’t know. My sister never told us who Noah’s dad was. And I think we’ve done just fine raising him in a household of working women. So don’t start with your caveman ideas.”

My jaw dropped. Noah was her nephew. Where was the sister now? But I couldn’t ask that. Not yet. So I pulled out classic Jackson Jones. “Caveman? Me?”

“That’s what I said. Wash up. We’ve been gone too long.”

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