Page 20 of The Delivery

“Don’t worry, Veronica,” Rebecca says. “We’re not gonna sue you.”

Principal de La Rosa visibly exhales.

“But,” Rebecca continues, through clenched teeth, “I want a meeting with Sydney’s parents.”

Chapter 16

Exiting the conference room, Mark hurries back to his office. A fast-moving competitor has swanned into their area code of the market, picking off client accounts, so projections are down even further, stock price is bleeding, and he is behind schedule for the product-upgrade launch. His team is integrating AI chatbots into the customer-service modules, but they’d run into a rat’s nest of problems dealing with data integration, about 20 percent of which are of his team’s making. The other 80 percent rests squarely on the shoulders of Derek, whose micro-mismanagement is typical of a business guy overseeing tech.

Derek has become increasingly ill tempered and tyrannical, his frustrations finding the best target in Mark, and Mark has had little choice but to keep his head down, work harder, and take it.

He has been managing the corporate turbulence as best he can, trying not to dump additional stress on Rebecca, given everything she and her body have been through in the past year, but he fears he is bottling up more than he can handle. His acid reflux is up again, his patience down, nerves worn thin.

He closes his office door, thumps his shoulders against it, tilts his head to the ceiling, and exhales. When he fishes his muted phone from his pocket, he sees seven missed calls from his wife.

Panic flares.

Getting dressed down in front of his team had taken enough of his focus that he’d forgotten about Mr. Man.

He dials.

Rebecca picks up on a half ring.

“Are you okay?” Mark says. “Did he do something?”

“What? No. I’m at school.”

Rebecca rattles off enough details for him to understand what happened. He sinks into his Aeron, which heaves gently back, catching his weight. Rubbing his forehead, he listens and listens some more.

Across his computer monitor is the schedule for the launch, pushed back for the third time in as many weeks after Derek threw out the product road map and changed direction yet again.

Mark’s unread email count is bolded at 289. A pall of despondency descends on him. What is he doing with this job, his life? Why is he here in this sterile office instead of with his family? Studying computer engineering and dating Beccs, he’d had expansive hopes for himself. They’d planned on having a passel of kids, bunk beds in each room, crowded Christmas card photos. The internet boom had been all about prosperity and flourishing, making the world a better place.

And yet, somehow he’s found himself tasked with replacing human workers with AI, putting people out of jobs. The free market would correct that with its brutal expediency, as it always did. Workers would be retrained to fix AI until AI could be trained to fix AI, then humans would have to be trained to do . . . what? He thinks of the thing-man in his house right now, filling some void he hadn’t realized he and Rebecca needed filled.

He stares at the framed photo on his desk, him and Rebecca at the beach, Maddy on his shoulders smeared with zinc sunscreen and wearing only a swim diaper. She was two years old, a few months before the diagnosis. They are all laughing, a happy family of three. He wishes he was there in the photo on that beach before diagnoses and miscarriages, when the tracks had still led to a future that made sense.

When Rebecca pauses to take a breath, he says, “How is she?”

“Exhausted,” Beccs says. “Beyond exhausted. She’s sleeping now. I’m gonna let her rest, then take her home.”

“Good,” he says. “Good.”

“When can you get here?”

Mark catches himself rubbing his forehead some more. “I don’t know.”

“She was crying for you, Mark.” Her voice wobbles and then cracks. “She wouldn’t stop crying for you. You need to get here. You need to make her smile.”

“Okay,” Mark says. “Okay. Gimme a sec. Call right back.”

With apprehension mounting, he exits his office, strolls across the floor past rows of cubicles, and knuckle-taps the open door to Derek’s office.

Behind his desk, Derek looks up at Mark and resumes typing on his computer. No acknowledgment, no gesture.

Mark walks in and stands awkwardly before the desk. The view is vast, overlooking a swath of the Westside and the rise of the Santa Monicas, the Hollywood sign visible in the distance.

Two minutes pass.