Page 67 of Unbelonging
Loretta gave a loud sigh. "Fine. Excuse me for trying to offer some constructive criticism."
I clenched my fist around the phone. "So, did you call for another reason, or just to offer the criticism?"
"Constructivecriticism," she corrected. "Oh never mind. I don't know why I bother." With another loud sigh, she said, "I called to see what you're bringing."
"Bringing? What do you mean?"
"Don't be dense," she said. "For Thanksgiving. Are you bringing a side dish, a dessert, what?"
"A dessert," I answered automatically.
"Sorry. Lauren's bringing the dessert."
Oh for Pete's sake. Then why'd Loretta mention dessert in the first place? And besides, since when did it become illegal to have more than one dessert at Thanksgiving? "What kind is she bringing?" I said. "I'll bring something different. You know, for variety."
"Chloe," she said in tone of infinite patience, "I'm not going to have you trying to upstage her."
"What?"
"This is Thanksgiving," she said, "not some bake-off. Now, pick something else so I can finalize the menu. This whole thing is a lot of work, and you're not making it easier on me."
"Fine," I snapped. "Just tell me what to bring, and I'll bring it."
"In the interest of keeping family peace," she said, "I'm going to ignore your snippy tone."
In the interest of keeping family peace, I refrained from pointing out that since she'd mentioned my snippy tone, she couldn’t actually take credit for ignoring it.
"I'll bring a salad," I said.
"Now, was that so hard?" she said, then hung up without saying goodbye.
And I was the one with bad phone manners? With a sigh of disgust, I tossed the phone onto the passenger's seat and returned my attention to the burned warehouse.
While talking to Loretta, another question had been creeping slowly into my brain. Did I still have a job here? Or had that gone up in flames along with the warehouse? I felt guilty for even thinking about something so small as a job when lives might've been lost. But still, the question persisted.
Even if they did rebuild, how long would that take? Could the company survive until then? And if so, did they really need a junior accountant to invoice stuff that wasn't even available for delivery, from a distribution center that was no longer functioning?
The cold forgotten, I took a deep breath and got out of my car. There was only one way to find out.
Chapter 37
A half hour later, I was back in the Fiesta. I took a moment to give the car a good, long look, sparing myself nothing – the broken window, the faded upholstery, the cigarette burn on the dashboard. The burn wasn't mine. I'd inherited it from a previous owner, whoever that was.
I'd gotten the car for a steal, and I'd been happy to get it at the time. Of course, that was over five years ago, during my senior year in high school. According to the fantasy life I'd scripted out for myself, I would've ditched the car a long time ago in favor of something better.
Now, it looked like I'd be driving it a while. As it turned out, the company didn't need an accounting clerk, new or otherwise, when they had almost no inventory remaining and no way to process it if they did.
"If you're still looking, come back in a couple of months," the hiring manager had told me. "Depending on how things go, we might be looking to fill the position again."
Again? The way I saw it, the position had never been filled in the first place, except by that woman about to retire. Turns out, she'd been let go that morning. Happy early retirement, huh?
As for me, I needed a new job now, not in a couple months. But I didn't tell the guy any of these things. It wasn't his fault that some freak electrical accident had burned their warehouse to the ground. Thankfully, no one had gotten hurt, but the way it looked, the business was in serious trouble.
Here, I was worried about not getting a new job, while others were losing jobs they'd had for years. That had to be worse, right?
Still, there was no denying that for me personally, it sucked. What was I going to do? Waitress the rest of my life? Or maybe, I needed to move out of state. Our local economy wasn't exactly booming. If I broadened my job search to other areas, I'd probably have better luck.
But what about Josh? And Grandma? Would they be alright? It wasn't like I lived with either one of them, but I hated the thought of moving away.
