Page 3 of A Touch of Spring Magic

Jessica made a face. No that was dumb. The book wasn’t magic. She could almost imagine Father Pierre’s dark brows rising toward his receding hairline if she revealed that in confession this week.

Jessica worried her bottom lip—eating off her lipstick. The book didn’t feel like a mistake. It had felt like a…like an omen. A harbinger of change. Her stomach churned, and she sipped a little of her tea, hoping to settle herself. Her anxiety, something she’d effectively dealt with in high school and college by working harder than anyone, by not even letting the fear of failure stick a toe in the door, had ballooned over the past couple of years. Her nerves were harder to hide from her sisters, even though she knew she was behaving what her father would call overtly femininely hysterical. Reacting instead of acting, and letting her imagination run riot over sense.

“And he wouldn’t be that far off about the book,” she muttered, turning up the podcast.

She needed to calm down. Stop thinking of the book. It was just old—a collection of recipes—nothing special. Initially she’d been, like her sisters, caught up in the mystery. Goodness, she’d actually used it, had followed a recipe to the minute instructions, including walking a circle in her garden and three times around a large tree, fingers trailing along the ‘sturdy, thrumming trunk like how you would touch a lover.’

She’d been so caught up with the mystery of it all, the sense of expectation, and yes, a hope of magic as if she were still seventeen.

Dumb. Her tummy cramped and burned, and she swallowed the pain. She wouldn’t go back to the doctor, who’d run test after test and found nothing. She’d suggested a therapist, but no way would Jessica do that—show weakness and a selfish focus on her own problems to her parents. She could handle herself and her life even though for the past couple of years she’d had trouble falling asleep. Her mind had raced and her body had been jumpy, and all the yoga and breathing hadn’t helped. Only exhaustion had.

But she had thought of a solution—though it was long term. She’d never loved her job. She’d liked numbers okay in college. Her father had pushed her into economics and business and accounting, and she’d dutifully followed and had been good at it. The firm she’d been hired by had been a prestigious get, but Jessica never felt like she belonged. And now her father talked about when she joined his company, and she’d felt like what was left of her independence would be swallowed up.

“Again with the melodrama.” She gave up on the podcast. It was just going to be one of those days, and she needed to focus on her to-do list for her clients today. The phone calls. Zoom meetings, and the associate meeting later this morning in the conference call—that email had hit her inbox last night as she did her mandatory last check of her business account.

She exited the road, mentally shimmied her body, shaking off her anxiety about the book, her career, her father’s beginning moves to suck her into SRP Maye Development Inc. She always needed to put her game face on to walk into the office. And she’d need to fix her lipstick.

She could play it cool. She had skills. A will of iron. And as of a little more than a year ago, the beginnings of an escape plan and new career and life plan.

By the time she’d parked in the parking structure and keyed herself into the building’s tower, she had her confidence and cool back.

*

Less than thirtyminutes later, Jessica—stunned—collapsed against the passenger door of her Acura RDX and tried to catch her breath. The two security guards who’d escorted her out of the building stood on either side of her, arms crossed and faces carefully blank. They’d had the same expression after they’d watched her clear off her desk, and deposit her work laptop, cell and tablet along with her ID and key card into an official-looking lock box.

Then they’d escorted her out of the building like she was a felon. A few people had arrived in the few minutes it had taken Drew Whittaker III, one of the founding partner’s grandsons, to fire her.

Fired.

Jessica could barely comprehend the word. It buzzed and shouted in her brain like wasps disturbed from their nests and infuriated, looking for someone to blame and sting.

Fired.

For doing her job. For trying to help a colleague. None of it made sense. No more salary. No after-tax-season bonus that she’d been especially counting on this year.

“Get in the car, miss,” Daniel, one of the security guards said, gruffly.

She looked at him, feeling totally lost. She knew his wife’s name—Heather. His kids. She’d chatted with them at company picnics.

He took the fob from her limp fingers, popped the locks and put her cardboard box on the floor of her front seat.

“Don’t make this harder on yourself. It’s still early. More and more associates will be arriving.”

Bile rose to her throat along with acid, and the few sips of tea and one of protein drink burned.

Do not cry. Do not.

He closed the door. The thud sounded like a bell of doom.

She had to move. She had to go. She had to get away from the disaster that was swamping her. Jessica had never once considered that she’d ever be fired. She’d never once had less than a stellar review on anything including the time she’d run a food bank drive as a church service project as an eighth grader.

“Miss Maye, please, this is a gift.”

“A gift?” She stared at the security guard, not comprehending the word.

“Could be the cops instead of us, and you wouldn’t be heading to your cushy home,” Bill, the other security guard, chimed in.

“What?” Her body started to shake even though she told it not to. “I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t…”

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