by Becky Monson
“Yes, sorry. I overheard someone talking about it. Anyway, that’s not important. How did they figure it out?” I say, trying to get her past my mini-betrayal, and trying not to reveal my source, although at this point, I suppose it doesn’t really matter.
“I’m not sure of the details exactly. Martha only gave me bits and pieces. What I was able to put together was that the daily reports he had you doing were bogus reports. The reports he was sending out to the other VPs and the Board were reports he did himself, fudging the numbers just slightly so he could take some off the top. Again, I’m just putting two and two together from what Martha slurred out.”
“Whoa, that’s crazy! I knew there was something going on with the daily reports! How long had he been doing it?” I try to think back to when I had first noticed that the reports seemed weird to me.
“I’m guessing like six months or something. It wasn’t very long. He wasn’t able to get that much money. Only like several thousand.”
“Wow, Mr. Nguyen was really stealing from the company …” I trail off, thinking of the times he blew me off when I had questions about the reports. He didn’t need to give me answers, they were bogus. At least he had the decency not to implicate me in anything. He just had me doing bum reports. Six months’ worth. I guess Jared was right after all. I’m sure he’ll totally gloat about that.
Just thinking about Jared makes my stomach do a couple of flips, and the butterflies invade. It hasn’t even been a week since I last saw him, since we kissed. Yet it seems like so long ago. So much has happened. I really wish he hadn’t just jetted off like he did. I hate having to wait so long to talk to him again. I’ve been debating whether to call and leave a message giving him my number so it’ll be there when he gets back, but I don’t want to seem desperate, so I’ll wait.
“Jules, there’s more,” she says. Her tone lowers, interrupting my thoughts of Jared. “It’s about the layoffs.”
“Yeah?” I say, coming back to the conversation. “What about the layoffs?”
“Well, it turns out it wasn’t entirely done by the Board of Directors and the VPs as was speculated. There was actually someone inside the company who was doing the snooping to find out which jobs were necessary and which weren’t …” She trails off, going quiet for a second.
“Oh, really? I bet it was Martha. That’s probably how she and Calhoun hooked up in the first place, because she was doing all his dirty work for him. She always was a little snoopy. Plus, she totally hated me, so that would explain why I lost my job.” I nod my head to myself. “Although, that would’ve required Martha to actually work.”
“It wasn’t Martha,” Brown replies, not laughing at my Martha comment like she usually would.
“Well, then who was it?” There really isn’t anyone else I can think of.
“Jules, it was Jared.”
“What? What are you talking about? That doesn’t even make any sense.” My mind starts to race, my heart starts pounding. How could this be true? It’s not true. It doesn’t make sense. Brown must be confused.
“It was Jared. Martha told me. She said something about the Board of Directors hiring him to do consulting, to help them downsize. I didn’t believe her at first. I was sure she got her information mixed up. But then I did some more digging around about Jared on the Internet last night. I was going down the wrong avenues before, but with this new information from Martha I tried a different angle, and I finally found something. A URL name that was purchased by a J.D. Moody five years ago. I looked up the web address, and it’s for a consulting firm. I think he’s a consultant that they fake-hired to do reorganizations.”
“What? How is that even possible? How could he even pull that off? Come on, Brown, it doesn’t make sense,” I say, not intending the angry tone in my voice.
“Think about it, Jules. Just think about it for a while. It makes sense. He was elusive about his past, about what he did for the company. We just assumed what he did. We really had no idea.”
I’m silent. It can’t be true. It just can’t. I don’t want to believe it. But even as I deny it in my head, parts of conversations we had, things he said to me, start to come to mind. The puzzle pieces start to come together.
Suddenly, my stomach starts to turn. My room feels cold and the walls too close to me. No. No. I don’t want to accept it. I can’t.
“Are you there, Jules?” Brown asks quietly.
“I’m here,” I say, barely audible.
“I know it’s hard to believe. I didn’t want to believe it either. But it’s true, Jules. It is.”
“I just can’t … I just don’t know what to think,” I squeak out.
“It’s worse, Jules.”
“How? How could it be worse?” My head is swimming now. My rational and emotional sides are struggling to make sense of it all.
She inhales loudly. “Who did he get so much of his information from?” She pauses, waiting for it to sink in, to hit me. “From us, Jules. He got his info from us. He used us.”
“Oh my gosh, Brown. Oh my gosh …” my voice subsides as sickness pools in my stomach.
“We told him everything about everyone, and he used that information. Of course he did.”
“This can’t be true. It just can’t,” I say quietly, dramatically. I can’t help myself.
“It’s true, Jules. It’s all true. If I saw him right now, I’d punch him in the face,” she says, anger running thick through her voice.
I don’t even know what I feel. Anger would be better than what I’m feeling. It’s a harrowing mixture of emotions. My internal struggle of realization and not wanting to believe make it hard for me to sort anything out.
“People lost their jobs because of us.” The notion comes out of my mouth before I’ve even had a chance to internalize it, and suddenly an even more horrible feeling comes over me. How honest were we when we gave him company information? Did Brown or I ever exaggerate anything? Did he ever take as gospel something that we were just speculating on? What if information we gave him wasn’t entirely true, but it got someone fired anyway? My breathing speeds up, panic taking over.
“No, they lost their jobs because of him.” Brown practically spits out the last word. “We may have given him information to make his job easier, but he would’ve found out anyway. Don’t do that to yourself.” She sounds like she’s trying to convince herself as well.
I breathe deeply, fighting off the panic as best I can.
“You okay?” she asks after she hears my breathing.
“It’s just a lot to take in,” I say between breaths.
“It all makes sense though, Jules. It all fits together. The only thing I can’t figure out is why you got laid off. I mean, it was obvious you didn’t like your job, but you did your work. If they knew Nguyen was gone, then why weren’t you kept around to at least keep that department afloat?”
“I don’t know, Brown. I don’t know.” But even as I say it, Mr. Calhoun’s last words filter through my head: “For what it’s worth, I fought hard to keep you here at Spectraltech. But the powers that be made all the decisions.” The powers that be. Was he talking about Jared? Did Jared insist I be let go even after Calhoun fought for my job? Why would he do that?
The sick feeling in my stomach is almost overwhelming. “I’ve gotta go, Brown. I’ll call you later,” I nearly whisper into the phone, then quickly end the call.
The tears come fast. Conversations I had with Jared run through my head. Some things make more sense now and some make less. I feel weird—almost numb—my head still swimming with all of it.
My life has taken a quick, unchangeable nosedive. Things were starting to look up, starting to happen for me. I had a life. More of a life than I’d ever had. And now it’s all gone, and I’m alone, alone and jobless, with only a cat to snuggle with me right now as I cry. I’ve never felt more like a spinster.
CHAPTER 12
Hurt.
Betrayal.
Loss.
; Dove Chocolate.
These are the things I’m experiencing right now. The chocolate is supposed to cover up the other feelings, but it’s doing a poor job. And when I opened it to read the usually uplifting note on the inside of the wrapper, mine said “Build a bridge and get over it! By- Lori in Fenton, MO.” What kind of uplifting crap is that? Why don’t you come live my life, Lori in Fenton, Missouri? See how you feel. Maybe you won’t be so willing to build that damn bridge.
Here’s what we now know about Jared: he’s an a-hole. That pretty much wraps it up. It’s actually been a week since I found out about what really happened and I have to say, it was a bigger blow than losing my job. Although the two are connected, I seem to be separating them in my head.
To top it off, word got back to Anna about my huge foot-in-mouth-blunder with my parents, and she was livid. She couldn’t believe I’d betray her like that and went on and on about how she trusted me. I just kept telling her I was sorry, and that it was a stupid accident, but she wouldn’t hear it. She eventually hung up on me. I sent her a text saying how sorry I was, but she never replied back. So now I don’t even have Anna to talk to about Jared and everything that has happened. I’ve completely ruined everything with my big, fat mouth.
I really need Anna right now to help me sort things out, to sort my brain out. I need someone to bounce everything off of so I can make sense of it all. As it stands, I just keep replaying everything in my head, trying to sort out the real from the fake. And it’s hard—too hard for me to do alone.
I don’t really know what I’m feeling about Jared. It’s a mixture of emotions. I find myself wondering if maybe everything that happened between us was all just acting on his part. Maybe all of his actions were just to get information from me. I don’t want to believe that, but what other explanation is there?
I tried talking to Brown, but she just doesn’t understand. She always ends up going off on a tirade about how he won’t get away with this, how we’re going to find out where he lives and put sugar in his gas tank, or some other vandalizing thing to get even. While that does sound appealing, it’s not really helpful. She’s just not analytically going to break this all down with me, like I need her to, like Anna would’ve done for me.
The totally pathetic part of all of this is I don’t feel angry. I know I should, but the truth is I feel utterly heartbroken instead. Go ahead and gag at that, but it’s the only way to say what I’m honestly feeling. My heart is broken, and it’s the kind of broken that feels irreparable. I know it’s dramatic and maybe untrue, but so far, it feels true.
So with only myself to try and sort things out, I did what I always do. I avoided. At first I just laid around and slept or tried to find something funny on TV to cheer me up (never worked).
On Monday, when I was supposed to be looking for a job, according to my “plan,” I decided to forget it and bake, taking a chapter from Grey’s Anatomy, when Izzy baked her feelings away after the handsome and wonderful Denny Duquette died (heartbreaking). I went to the store and bought a ridiculous amount of supplies, which probably wasn’t the most prudent thing for me to be doing at this time, but I did it anyway. I needed something to do, something to get my mind off things, and baking was it.
And, boy, did I bake. I made cupcakes—three different flavors—vanilla, chocolate, and red velvet. I was meticulous with the frosting, piping it on with the perfect tip, and then I added sprinkles and edible pearls and Art Deco designs out of chocolate on top.
Then, I made choux dough so I could make cream puffs. Instead of filling them with the traditional sweet cream, I used custard. I tried a new recipe for custard, and it was difficult, but once I got it right, it was some of the best I’ve ever made. Did you know if you don’t accustom the eggs properly to the heat that they’ll actually scramble, leaving you with a gooey, doughy, clumpy mess? Well, I do. I learned it the hard way the first time I made custard. I didn’t make that mistake this time. It was the most perfect custard I’ve ever made. So, I piped the perfect custard into my puffs and dipped some in chocolate and left some plain. They were amazing, some of my best work, really.
Next, I made sugar cookies. I cut them in whimsical shapes and frosted them all with my best butter cream frosting, in different bright colors—yellows, reds, blues, pinks. The colors made me happy, even if only temporarily.
And that was just the first day. It worked, though. I baked away Jared and Spectraltech and Anna. All the things that have gone so horribly wrong in my life. It felt good to be creative and do something I love. Good, not great. But good was enough.
After the first day of baking, I ran out of room in my kitchen, so I went to the restaurant supply store and I bought some cardboard display boxes, and filled them full of all my creations. Then, I took them over to my mom and dad’s and also dropped some off to Brown for her to take to the nerds at Spectraltech. I didn’t have the nerve to drop it off myself.
The next day, I tackled cheesecakes and tarts. I made three different kinds of cheesecake—a berry lemon, a layered chocolate mousse, and a vanilla bean. They looked magnificent, especially the chocolate mousse cheesecake. It was so pretty I almost didn’t want to give it to anyone, knowing they’d eat it and ruin my masterpiece. But if I kept it, I’d eventually eat it, and that would’ve been bad for many reasons, mainly my thighs.
The tarts were a little more tedious, in my opinion. I didn’t have enough small-sized muffin pans, so it was a struggle having to cook the shells in such small batches, but I did it anyway. I made the custard again—the one I used for the cream-puffs. Then, I painstakingly placed different types of fruit on the top of each tart. I glazed them with apricot marmalade, which gave them a perfect sheen. I should have taken pictures. I could have entered them into a contest, they were that perfect.
Once again, I ran into the counter space problem, so I filled up more boxes and then dropped them off to my parents and again to Brown. My dad was particularly excited because he had taken the first day’s goods to work with him and they were received with rave reviews, so he was eager to bring more.
The next day I tackled French pastries. First, I made napoleons. Did you know that in French they’re called mille-feuilles, or thousand leaves? Why do I know this? I have no idea. I read it once and it stuck with me. I decided to make my own puff pastry instead of using the store bought. It was quite tedious, but well worth it. The coloring of the baked pastry was the perfect shade of light brown. I’ve never gotten store-bought to cook that beautifully. I then layered some with just custard, and some I added sliced strawberries in between layers. I used almond flavoring in the glaze, and then drizzled it with melted chocolate. They were complete works of art.
Then, since I had already made the puff pastry, I tried out Pithiviers. Fan-freaking-tastic. Seriously, I highly recommend them. I’ve wanted to make them since I’d tried them at a French patisserie that I went to when I was in my teens. The flavors stuck with me for so long, they were that good.
I kept up the baking the rest of the week, like a mad woman. I also kept up with the nightly deliveries to Brown and my parents. As the week wore on, the greetings I received when I delivered the goods went from total delight to utter concern. My dad did a pretty decent job of not looking too worried, but it was clearly written all over my mother’s face. And also, she literally said, “I’m concerned.” Whatever. She doesn’t understand. No one does.
I really shouldn’t have been surprised when Friday evening I heard a knock on my door. I was working on my third attempt at making a chocolate soufflé (they kept falling during the baking process), and I was getting frustrated. I peeked out my peephole, and there was my family standing outside my door, everyone except Anna, that is.
They’d come over to have an intervention—a baking one. Apparently, I’d been scaring them with my obsessive-compulsive need to bake things. My mom told me she thought I was having some early mid-life crisis and that she wanted me to get some therapy. Jenny didn’t have much to say, but
Lennon made up for it by semi-lecturing me about getting my resumé in order, and how I need to get myself out there rather than sitting in here baking all day. He made me set some goals for the following week and wanted me to report back to him (whatever).
My dad was dragged along for the ride on this one. My mom insisted he come with. He didn’t have much to say at first, but then he told me some of the other partners in the firm were taking the baked goods home to their wives and families. It turns out one of them, Richard, has a wife who owns a little bakery down on Sixteenth Street. She was so taken with my creations that she wants me to come in and talk to her about working at the bakery, the hitch being that the pay is total crap. He didn’t think I’d be interested, but after seeing me in the state I was (still am), he must have had second thoughts.
I said no at first. I needed to focus on finding a real job, not a job to appease me while I looked for one. But then I started to think about it. Why couldn’t I work there in the interim, while I’m looking for my “real” job? I’d be able to keep up with this obsessive baking thing I have going on right now, and isn’t it good to have a little money coming in? Regardless if it’s not that much, anything can help at this point. So, I told my dad I’d meet with her.
My dad gave her husband my contact information that night, and I got a call this morning. Her name is Beth, and I’m going to meet her at the bakery on Monday morning to talk about working there. I can’t say I’m excited to meet with her or to be working there, but I do feel like it’s something I should do whether I’m excited or not.
Tonight, I’m having drinks with Brown. She forced me, told me we needed to hang out and talk. I don’t really want to go, but if I stay home another night without baking (I stopped after the intervention—it was getting ridiculous), well, I think I might lose my sanity, what’s left of it anyway. Without the distraction, I keep replaying the events of the layoff and my hatred for Jared in my mind. So I’ll be going out for drinks with Brown, albeit grudgingly.