by Renee Hart
“I know it sounds cliche,” Terry said, watching her carefully. “But honesty really is the best policy. Lies always catch up to you, in the end.”
Tessa set down her tea. She nodded, keeping her eyes lowered. “You're right. You're definitely right.”
When her friend arrived, Tessa thanked Terry for the tea, and for the company. “You should come out and join us sometime,” she said. “It'd be nice to see you out in the gardens. There's a couple of unclaimed plots, if you want one of your own.”
“Oh, I have my little garden,” he said, nodding out the window.
Tessa looked outside and followed his gaze. He was looking right at the Mystery Plot. “That...that one's yours?” She laughed, shaking her head. “We could never figure out who it belonged to! It's so beautiful. Why don't I ever see you tending it?”
He shrugged. “After so many years in isolation, I tend to get nervous around crowds. I go out early in the mornings, before the rest of you are up. Or check in on things at night. It's my way.”
“Well, if you ever change your mind,” Tessa said, “just know you've got a friend out there.”
She gave him a hug, then left his apartment, buried deep in thoughts about the things he'd said.
Chapter 12
Tessa knocked on Samson's door, rehearsing in her head what she was about to say. He answered wearing only a pair of sweatpants, his bare chest glistening with moisture and his hair damp. He was rubbing a towel along the back of his hair, sopping up the dampness from his pony tail. “Hey there,” he said, stepping back to invite her in. “What's up?”
“I think I need to confess.” She walked right past him and sat down on his couch, wringing her hands together.
“Okay.” He shut the door and came over to join her, sitting on the coffee table and taking her hands in his. When she kept fidgeting, he wrapped his hands gently around hers, holding them until she stopped trembling and settled down.
“What do you think?”
“I think it's your choice,” he said. “Do you want me to come with you? I'm a part of this, after all.”
“No,” she said. “No, the worst they can really do is fire me. You, they could possibly press charges against.”
“I'm willing to face that risk if it means supporting you,” he said. “I can't just stand aside and let you take all the blame.”
“But it was my idea.”
“And I helped you with it.” He reached up and caressed her cheek.
She closed her eyes and nuzzled her face against his hand. His touch, his support had meant the world to her while she worked through this crazy situation. But she knew she couldn't risk letting any of the consequences from this fall onto him.
“My mind's made up,” she said. “This was my idea, it was my mistake. And I'm going to go face the music.”
Samson sighed. She looked into his eyes, making sure he knew how serious she was. “All right,” he said. “But is there anything I can do?”
Tessa thought about what she was going to have to face. The likelihood of getting fired. The public humiliation. She imagined being paraded before a board of directors and told she had to explain herself. She wasn't sure she would be able to handle that.
“Just hold me,” she whispered.
Samson moved onto the couch with her and pulled her close against him. She closed her eyes and laid her head against his chest. He stroked her hair and held her tight. his warmth, the comfort of his touch, made her feel like maybe there was a chance that everything could be okay.
* * *
Tessa walked into the office Monday morning wearing her best suit, with her hair done up in a chignon knot. She felt more like she was dressed for a job interview than for the meeting that would end in her termination. But, she figured, if she was going to go down, she would go down in style.
She didn't even bother to go to her desk. She'd stop by later to get the few photographs she kept there, and her coffee mug. But to begin with, she would face her fate and do it with her chin held up high.
She walked right into Mr. Morgan's office and found him waiting there behind his desk. He looked up at her. “Ahh, Tessa. I'm glad you're here, I was about to call you in.”
She froze mid-step. Why had he been about to call her? Had he already discovered what she was about to confess?
She stepped over to the desk and sat down, her confidence wavering. “Yes?” she asked.
“There've been some leads in the situation from the Pennsylvania sorting facility.”
Her heart hammered in her throat. If he already knew, then confessing wouldn't help her. She'd hoped to take the high ground, with the possibility that maybe her honesty would dampen the consequences. But it seemed like it was too late.
“I wanted to get your take on this,” Mr. Morgan said, holding up some papers. “Since you were the one who first brought it to my attention. I'm thinking we might have been set up.”
“Set up?” She took the papers and looked them over. She recognized a few of them immediately. They were the falsified forms that she'd had Samson fill out, signing his forged “Jebediah P. Morgan” signature. Some of the other pages were printouts of emails, including some from people claiming to be environmental activists.
“I...I'm afraid I don't understand,” Tessa said. “What do these emails have to do with it?”
“The company gets ridiculous things emailed to us all the time.” He gestured to the papers. “Most of the time we just sent out form letter responses, unless a complaint has some greater amount of weight. Some of the more preposterous things we get are threats from environmental groups and wacko liberal hippies who claim we're destroying the environment.” He snorted and shook his head. “They threaten to sue, or to expose us as frauds, that sort of thing. Our official company policy is not to bother responding to such threats. They're completely baseless, and responding just encourages these people.”
“I'm still not following,” Tessa said.
“Read this one.” He reached across the desk and pulled out one page from the stack. Tessa took it and read it over. Her throat started to feel tight as she read it.
“This person says they have proof we're selling people contaminated goods,” she said, scanning the page. “But...but I thought we knew everything was clean? There's nothing more than harmless trace amounts of any pesticides.”
“You know that, and I know that,” Mr. Morgan said. “But this nut job obviously doesn't. Probably some college kid with a home chemistry set and no idea how to tell the difference between actual contamination and trace levels that fall within the USDA safety guidelines. I'm betting whoever this guy is, he's the one who snuck into our facility and stole samples of our produce.” He tapped his fingers on the pages with the forged signatures. “Because that sure wasn't me. I've never even been to any of the sorting facilities in person.”
Tessa flipped through the pages. Her head was spinning. “So...what are you going to do?”
“Show these to that reporter,” Mr. Morgan said. “Make him realize that someone is trying to set us up. He'll know that there's no story here once he sees what a whack job this guy is. I mean, just look at those emails.”
Tessa read the emails again. They certainly sounded like they'd been written by someone who was imbalanced. Most of the text was written in all caps, with lots of excessive exclamation marks and plenty of cursing and threats. It didn't sound like anything that someone could ever take seriously.
She could see the scenario playing out in her mind now. Mr. Morgan would show these emails to the reporter. The reporter would realize that his “lead” on the story was probably this same person, someone who looked more like a conspiracy theorist than an actual environmentalist. The story would be dropped when the reporter realized he might be risking his reputation as a journalist. Dunham Enterprises would be safe. And no one would have to lose their jobs.
All Tessa had to do was lie. Say she hadn't been involved. That she agreed with Mr. Morgan's analysis
of the situation. She could encourage him to proceed as he planned, and he'd never be any the wiser.
“So what's your take on this?” Mr. Morgan asked. “You've read up on the inspection reports from that facility. And you've read all of our internal reports on the subject. What do you think?”
Tessa opened her mouth, but no sound came out. She cleared her throat and licked her lips. She didn't know what to say. This was her way out. The universe had handed her the perfect scapegoat. All she had to do was say the words.
“Tessa?”
“I have to tender my resignation.”
Mr. Morgan stared at her, dumbstruck. “What? Tessa, what are you talking about?”
“I...I'm the one who did it. These documents,” she shuffled through the papers in her lap, “I forged them. I snuck into the Pennsylvania facility, and I stole samples to be tested. I...I was wrong. I shouldn't have done it.”
“I don't understand. Tessa, what is this? Are you saying you called this reporter?”
“No...no! Not that.”
“Those emails?” He pointed to the pages. “Are those from you?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Then I don't get it. How are you saying you're involved in this? Why would you steal from the company? What was going through your mind?”
She hung her head, feeling ashamed. She'd started out with such noble intentions. She'd thought she would be exposing the corruption of an evil corporation. Saving people from harmful contaminants. But really, she'd just been a fool, seeing a conspiracy where there was none. And it had cost her everything.
“I have no excuse,” she said. “I'm sorry. I...I'll go clean out my desk.”
She got up and headed for the door.
“Tessa,” Mr. Morgan said. “Wait.”
She stopped, but couldn't turn back to face him.
Mr. Morgan got up and walked over to her. He took the papers from her. She hadn't even realized she was still holding them.
“Sit back down,” he said.
Numb from head to toe, Tessa went back to the chair and sat. Mr. Morgan sat on the edge of his desk, holding the papers in his lap. “Now, I want you to start at the beginning,” he said, “and tell me what happened.”
So she confessed the whole thing, from her first suspicions, to the files she'd taken, to the insane plan to take products from the sorting facility to be used for independent testing. When she finished, she sat there, her shoulders hunched over, her hands folded in her lap. She felt drained. Though at the same time, she felt free. The burden of her lies and her secrets had finally been lifted away.
Mr. Morgan sat there, watching her and rubbing his chin. “So,” he said, “you really thought I was trying to cover something up?”
“I'm sorry, Mr. Morgan. I didn't mean to accuse you of anything. I just thought...”
“You just thought that Dunham was a big, faceless corporation where people try to get away with things?” He chuckled and walked over to his filing cabinet, then pulled out a folder. He handed it to her.
“What's this?” She opened the folder and started looking through it.
“One of the recent reports from QA. About one of our old inspectors, who used to work at that Pennsylvania facility. Have you ever wondered why we have such a high turnover rate on our inspectors?”
“I thought they were getting fired for digging too deep,” she said. “And finding out things the company didn't want them to know.”
“They were fired,” Mr. Morgan said, “for not digging deep enough. Some of them do a good job, and we transfer them to a bigger facility, where their hard work can have the most impact. Other times, though, we have people like that,” he gestured to the file in her hands, “who try to cover up failing reports. See, some of the inspectors think that if their facility gets a failing grade, it looks bad on them. They think they'll be held accountable, so they fudge the reports. Make it look as if everything is fine.”
Tessa skimmed the pages. She recognized the inspector's name. He was one of the inspectors who'd written some of the reports she'd read at the start of this whole mess. One of the ones who had reported nothing at all wrong. When she first read his reports, she'd assumed he was hiding some kind of contamination in order to protect the company from exposure. But according to the internal investigation, he'd been doing it to protect his own job. And he'd been fired once the company had found out what he'd done.
“You see, Tessa,” Mr. Morgan said, stepping behind his desk and sitting down, “there are three kinds of people in this business. Dishonest people like that fellow,” he gestured to the file in her hands, “who do whatever they please without considering the moral issue. Then there's the bulk of our workers,” he gestured out his office window at the rows of cubicles in the main room, “people who keep their heads down, do their work, and never question anything. People who ignore problems that don't affect them directly, because they don't want to rock the boat. Those are the type of people who never get anywhere, because they're too afraid to take risks.”
He folded his hands and leaned forward. “Then there are the risk takers. People who have conviction, and are willing to do what it takes to stand by what they believe in. People like you.”
She stared at him, her mouth dry. She couldn't get her thoughts in order. “What are you saying?”
“I'm saying that you took a big risk, because you thought it was the right thing to do. Oh,” he made a dismissive wave with one hand, “I suppose I should be mad at you for going behind my back. And I am, a bit. But then I think about what might have happened if there really had been a problem, if our products had been making someone sick, and if someone on the inside had been covering it up. That wasn't what happened this time, but that has happened before. And we need people with strong convictions to track down that sort of thing, uncover it, and report the truth.”
Tessa licked her lips. She took a deep breath. “Mr. Morgan, are you saying...?”
“I'm saying I want to transfer you to QA.” He leaned back in his chair. “You've been here, what, six, seven years? I've thought for awhile now that you were being wasted in data entry. You're a talented woman. But I never thought you had the moxie for real advancement. You've always stood in line with everyone else, like you were too afraid to stand out. Too afraid to rock the boat. Until now, that is.”
Tessa shook her head. She couldn't process this. “So...instead of firing me, you're promoting me?”
“It's not a promotion,” he said. “Not really. It's a transfer. But there will be a pay increase. QA has a lot more responsibility than Information Resources. And there's some travel involved. Sometimes you'll need to be flown out to some of our facilities around the country, to help with inspections.”
“But I don't know anything about health inspections.”
“You don't need to,” he said. “What you need is spirit. The ability to stand up to people, to see past their bull and get at the truth. To analyze the data coming in from reports and find the discrepancies and the cover-ups. There's a sub-department in QA that takes care of the actual science, the testing and all that. But most of the staff is responsible for investigating the goings-on around the company and finding anything that needs to be fixed. And that's something I think you can do.”
Tessa sat back in her chair. Her head was spinning so much that she wasn't sure she'd be able to stand. “I can't believe this.”
“Believe it. Oh, there's just one thing.”
She looked up at him, holding her breath. “Yes?”
“This situation?” He gestured between the two of them. “It stays between us. I still have to take care of that reporter, and I don't want word getting out that one of our employees was conducting an unauthorized investigation. It would give the media the wrong idea.”
“Of course,” she said. “I won't say anything.”
“Good.” He got up and walked her to the door, then shook her hand. “Take the rest of the day off. You look frazzled. Tomorrow morn
ing I'll have the paperwork ready for you for the transfer. You'll need to fill out some new forms, so that payroll gets updated on your new position. That sort of thing.”
“Yes. Of course. Thank you.”
“Thank you, Tessa,” he said. “For showing me that you've got moxie.”
Tessa headed for the elevator, still in a daze. Mindy saw her exiting Mr. Morgan's office and she hurried over. “Hey, girl, what's going on?” She looked to Mr. Morgan as he closed his office door. “Are you in trouble or something? You're not getting sent home, are you?”
“No,” Tessa said. “Not really.” A grin spread on her lips.
“Then what happened?”
Tessa laughed. “Apparently, I'm finally moving up. You're looking at Dunham Enterprises' newest Quality Assurance Agent!”
Chapter 13
Tessa went home, changed out of her nice suit and into jeans and a t-shirt, and poured herself a glass of wine. She was suddenly pent up with energy, and she needed an outlet for it. It was a beautiful, sunny day outside, so she grabbed her gardening supplies and headed out to tend her plot.
The seeds she had planted a few weeks ago were just beginning to sprout. She filled her watering can and gave them all a healthy drink, then tended to a few of the seedlings that needed her care. Most of the community was out today, including some people Tessa didn't usually see, since she was normally at work right now.
Mrs. Mackenzie had made some homemade lemonade, and Tessa graciously accepted a glass. And while she stood in the sunshine sipping it, she looked across the way and saw Mr. Jones, out during the day for once, tending to his own little plot. It was no longer a Mystery Plot, though Tessa was still determined to one day solve the mystery of just how he got his crops to grow so beautifully.
The ringing of a bell called Tessa's attention to the other side of the garden, and she saw Samson riding his bike around the corner. He was dressed in his usual jeans, with an indie rock band t-shirt, and a bandana holding back his hair. He pedaled over to her, pulled out his iPod's earbuds, and gave her a concerned look.