“They can talk.”
“He’s just being kind.”
“I’m not worried about them. I’m worried about you. About how it looks. About what it does to your standing here.”
I dismissed her and returned to my desk. But her words clung to me like a burr caught in a sweater.
That afternoon, Harold invited the entire firm to his house for a pool party.
He told me to bring Mia because he knew I didn’t have a sitter.
“I’m worried about you.”
“She’ll love the pool,” my boss had said. “And she loves my kitchen, anyway. She keeps trying to steal Mike’s old travel mug off my counter every time you two visit.”
I laughed because it was true. Harold had kept Mike’s beat-up mug from their college road trip and used it every morning. Mia would toddle over and reach for it as though it were a piece of her dad.
