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With that, I turned to leave.
“Wait,” Fiona called out as I walked away. “Where are you going?”
I stopped in place and turned to face her once again. “What do you mean, Fiona? Back to the office. Where else?”
Fiona’s shoulders slumped. “Oh, okay.”
“So that’s it then?” I replied in disbelief. “You’re just going to give up? Not fight for any of this?”
She shook her head with a listless rhythm. “I’m not sure I can anymore.”
“Well, then I’ve heard all I need to hear. Goodbye Fiona. And good luck. You’re gonna need it.”
I’d made a few steps closer to the front door when I heard Fiona close on me from behind. “Gabe, wait. Please.”
With my fingers wrapped around the dented, cold brass knob, I paused. “What?”
“Promise me you won’t be upset.”
“No, Fiona. I won’t promise that,” I began, as I released the knob from my grasp and turned around to face her. I gestured with both arms, spreading them wide. “Is this how you want to live your life? Look at this place… What is it you’re so afraid of you aren’t willing to take whatever risk you must to get out of here?”
“It’s not that simple, Gabe. You don’t understand.”
“Well, then you need to explain it to me, Fiona because you’re right. At this point, I absolutely do not understand. I’m giving you an opportunity that one hundred percent of people in your position would kill to have. But, seemingly every time I turn around, you give in to the pressure with unexplained illness. Tell me, what would you think if you were me? How would you act?”
Fiona broke her gaze upon me and as she did, I noticed her eyes glaze over with a tell-tale sign.
“You’re right, okay?” she said with a nod. Her tone carried genuine sadness. “The stress of all of it. The position of team leader, the presentation, us…”
I had to admit, seeing her like that didn’t sit well with me. Not one bit. But pressure is something that everyone deals with in one form or another. It’s part of life. How I felt about it, one way or the other, didn’t really matter.
“Fiona,” I said, as I stepped towards her and cradled her upper arms with my hands. “You know I want to help you and see you succeed. You do believe me don’t you?”
Fiona nodded in agreement. “Yes.”
“Some of what I do probably seems a bit excessive at times, but it’s only because I have such high standards for you. I believe in you and I think you have an awful lot to contribute to the company.”
“Thank you. I’m sorry.”
I waved her off. I had no time or use for self-pity.
“I need you back at the office, Fiona. You need to find the strength from somewhere to go back. And I don’t mean a week from now, I mean this afternoon. Is that clear?”
She nodded.
FIONA
Just as I closed the front door, my grandmother called for me from her bedroom. I made my way down the hall, and as I entered, I looked in her direction.
“I think the battery died,” she grumbled. Clutching a pair of noise cancelling headphones I recently purchased for her in her hand, she held them up, pointing them in my direction. “Can you see if there’s something wrong with them? I’m missing my show. I unplugged them but I can’t hear a darn thing.”
In recent months it had become more and more difficult for her to hear the television, unless I turned the volume up to a level far too loud for my liking. As a compromise, I’d purchased the headphones for her a couple of weeks earlier.
After taking them from her hand, I turned them to one side and noticed the battery indicator light was indeed off. I stifled a lump in my throat. Hard of hearing though she was, I couldn’t be certain she hadn’t heard Gabe and me. After all, he’d heard the television after she’d unplugged the headphones. I wasn’t concerned she would have heard the details of the conversation but the sound of a man’s voice would result in questions.
“It’s the battery, Grandmother,” I said, as I pointed at the indicator light. “Do you remember? If it’s not blue, then the battery needs to be replaced.”
She nodded. “Oh yes, that’s right. I’m sorry about that, dear.”
“It’s okay, I’ll get some more batteries from the kitchen and bring them in here so you can keep them next to your bed.”
“Thank you, Fiona.”
I smiled and turned to walk away, thankful that my concerns about whether or not she heard us were wrong. I made it almost all the way across the room but just as I reached the threshold of the doorway, she spoke once more.
“Oh and dear, when you come back, you can tell me all about it.”
I stopped and did a half-turn in her direction. Frowning, I replied, “All about what?”
“The man you were talking to by the front door. It wasn’t Charlie’s voice—that much is for certain.”
Charlie was the maintenance man for the apartment complex. The building was so old that hardly a week or two went by without him coming by to repair something. I swallowed, but did my best not to seem bothered by her demand. “Oh, that. It was nothing.”
My grandmother cocked her head and staring at me beneath a wrinkled brow she said, “Now Fiona, you know full well I’m not going to accept that from you.”
I pinched the inside of my cheek between my teeth for a moment. “Well… what did you want to know?”
“For starters? Who was it?”
“Grandmother, I’ve got to get back to the office. Now, let me get your batteries and I’ll be right back.”
“No, Fiona,” she said, as she lifted her arm and wagged her index finger at me. “Who was it?”
Clutching the headphones, I traced my index finger along the soft leather earcups. “It was my boss, Gabe.”
She paused for a moment and looked at me in confusion. Before she had a chance to say anything, I turned to leave as fast as I could.
“Look, I’m gonna go get a battery for your headphones and…”
“No!” she exclaimed. “Fiona Matthews, you will do no such thing!”
I shook my head as I backed away. “I don’t want to talk about this, okay? I have to get back to the office, Grandmother. Please.”
She ignored me, and before I realized it, the questioning began in earnest. “So that’s why he came here? To get you back to work?”
I looked down, tugging my shirt down around my curves. Afterward, I drew my hands together in front of my body, holding the headphones as I did.
“Fiona?”
“What?” I began, as I locked eyes with her. “What do you want me to say? Yes, he came to find out what was going on and to get me back into the office. All right?”
“There’s no need to get snippy with me, Fiona,” she said, as she placed her hands in her lap.
“I’m sorry.”
She nodded, but I could tell her line of questioning was far from complete. My grandmother narrowed her eyes at me. “Tell me this. Since when does the CEO of a big company make a personal visit to an employee’s house to check on their well-being?”
I exhaled. “What do you want me to tell you, Grandmother?”
“The truth, Fiona. You’ve been vague and mysterious about him all along. But now this man is coming into our home. There’s more to this, and I want you to tell me now. I deserve that much from you.”
“Grandmother, believe me. I’m not trying to keep anything from you. It’s just… I don’t want you to worry. I can handle it okay?”
“Well, now I am worried, Fiona. This is a disaster in the making. You should stop whatever is happening before it’s too late and it affects your career. Heaven forbid you get involved with him. That would be a dreadful mistake.”
“What do you mean?”
“Fiona, don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean. You know exactly what I’m talking about. You’re a grown woman now. A man only does things like he’s doing when he’s interested in one thing and one thing only.”
I looked away from her for a moment, curling the sleeves of my shirt in my fingers.
“You weren’t honest with me about the dinner you had with him, Fiona. I have to tell you that hurts my feelings.”
“I know, I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to keep it from you. You’ve not been well. That’s all.”
“No. I know you don’t like it when I tell you this, but you’re young and there’s some things in life you don’t know about yet. This is one of those things. It’s really for the best if you end this Fiona, before it goes any further.”
What could I say? There was no way I could tell her what was going on. Even worse, what she said made a lot of sense. It was hard to disagree with her logic.
Nodding, I looked at her once more. “You’re right, Grandmother. I’d have to be a fool not to see it.”
Her face brightened a bit at my agreement. “I’m sorry to be the one to have to tell you this, Fiona. It really is for the best though.”
“Okay,” I began with a solemn nod. “All right. I’ll do something about it. I promise. I’m going to go get your batteries now.”
