Chapter 6: What She Had Taken
She stopped in the kitchen doorway.
Aaron and I were both at the table.
She looked at him the way you look at something you were hoping wouldn't be there yet.
"You said two o'clock," she said.
"I said I was catching an earlier flight.
I didn't say which one."
She set her bag down.
Didn't sit.
"I'd like to talk to you alone," she said to Aaron.
"Mum stays."
A beat.
"Aaron—"
"She stays, Janice."
Janice looked at me.
Then back at him.
She pulled out the chair across from Aaron and sat down, and I watched her arrange herself — shoulders back, hands folded, the careful posture of someone preparing to give a performance.
"I know you're upset," she began.
"Tell me about the project," Aaron said.
The posture held for exactly one second.
Then something in it gave.
"What project."
"The Alderton account.
The one you've been presenting for the promotion review."
Silence.
"My colleague had lunch with me last week," Aaron said.
"He mentioned some questions that had been raised.
About the work.
About whose name was on the original documents."
"Colleagues gossip.
It doesn't mean—"
"Whose name was on the original documents, Janice?"
She looked at the table.
"Her name is Priya," Aaron said quietly.
"Twenty-six years old.
Two years at the firm.
He mentioned her specifically."
Janice's hands unfolded.
Refolded.
"I supervised that project," she said.
"I directed the strategy.
I was in every client meeting.
What Priya contributed was—"
"Did she know you were presenting it as yours?"
"I told you, I supervised—"
"Did she know?"
The question sat in the room.
Janice looked up.
"She's junior staff.
That's how it works.
Senior people present the work.
That's the structure."
"That's not what I asked."
"She knew I was leading the review."
"Leading it, or taking credit for it?"
Janice pushed back from the table.
"You don't understand how competitive this environment is.
You don't understand what it takes.
I have given everything to this firm for eight years, and a twenty-six-year-old who has been there for two isn't going to—"
"Is that what was on your phone last night?"
She stopped.
"Her boss's message," I said quietly.
"The one that made you go pale."
Janice looked at me.
For a moment I thought she was going to deny it.
Then her shoulders dropped — not in defeat, exactly, but in the way of someone who has been carrying something very heavy and has finally put it down.
"Priya filed a formal complaint," she said.
"Three days ago.
I didn't know until last night."
Aaron let out a slow breath.
"She had documentation," Janice continued.
Her voice had gone flat.
"Emails.
Draft files with timestamps.
A project outline in her name dated four months before I presented it." She paused.
"Apparently she'd been keeping records for a while."
"She knew," I said.
"She suspected.
She wasn't sure I'd actually go through with it." Janice looked at her hands.
"When the promotion review was announced and my name was the only one submitted, she went to HR."
The kitchen was very still.
"What did your boss say to you last night?" Aaron asked.
"The quiet part.
What did he say?"
Janice was silent for a long moment.
"He said the promotion was on hold pending investigation." She swallowed.
"And that I should consider whether I wanted to retain legal representation."
Aaron stood up from the table.
He walked to the window, the same place he'd stood an hour earlier, and looked out at the garden.
"Aaron." Her voice had changed entirely.
The performance was gone.
What was left was something rawer and smaller.
"I know how this looks.
But I need you to understand — I was never going to let her be pushed out.
I was going to bring her up with me.
I had a plan—"
"You had a plan," he said, without turning around.
"Like you had a plan for Mum's birthday."
The words landed quietly.
That was what made them land so hard.
Janice didn't answer.
I looked at my son's back, at the set of his shoulders, and I thought about all the times over the past three years when I had bitten my tongue.
All the small moments I had let pass.
The Christmas trip.
The March appointment.
The gradual, careful way Janice had managed information — not lying outright, just shaping what people knew and when they knew it.
Aaron turned from the window.
"I need some time to think," he said.
"I'm going to take a walk."
"Aaron—"
"I'll be back." He looked at her steadily.
"We'll talk.
But I need an hour."
He picked up his jacket from the back of the chair.
Paused at the kitchen doorway.
"Mum," he said.
"There's a birthday cake on the stairs.
It should probably go in the fridge."
Then he was gone.
Janice and I were alone in the kitchen.
She didn't look at me for a long time.
When she finally did, what I saw in her face wasn't the Janice who had popped my balloons with a fork.
It wasn't the Janice who had told her colleagues she'd cooked the food herself.
It was someone younger.
Someone tired.
May you like
"I don't know how to fix this," she said.
It was the first honest thing she'd said all day.
