The Price of Inertia (The Seven Sins #4) - Lily Zante Page 0,19
jerks up. Ward is standing at the door, his nostrils flaring. Trevor looks horrified, then embarrassed. His face turns beetroot red. “I was only … I didn’t mean it …”
I wish I could disappear into thin air. I open my mouth, ready to say something in Trevor’s favor but the look on Ward’s face is more than angry. He looks feral.
“Get OUT!” he roars.
Trevor stands up slowly.
“You’re fired,” Ward hisses. “Get your things and GET OUT.”
“Look, I was out of line and I—”
“GET. OUT.” Ward roars, making me jump in my seat. It’s like he’s dropped a bomb and my body reverberates in the ripple of the aftershocks.
Trevor feels it too. He gets the message. There is no negotiating this. He grabs his bag and leaves, skirting around Ward who’s standing in the wide doorway, not moving an inch.
Heat tinges my skin. My insides hollow out.
I didn’t say anything.
Did I?
I didn’t laugh.
Or did I?
Suddenly I’m not so sure.
I wait, sitting timid as a mouse, awaiting Ward’s wrath. In less than a day I’ve gone from being a confident hotel manager who loved her job to a meek and quivering housekeeper.
I’ve hit rock bottom.
Ward glares at me.
In the daylight, staring at his face head on, I see him clearly for the first time. He’s swept back his long dark hair, and his eyes bristle with something bordering on rage. He’s been humiliated by Trevor, and made fun off, and I was here listening to it. He looks like he’s going to explode.
I brace myself, but I don’t have anything to hide or anything to fear, except for losing this job. I didn’t call him names.
I summon my hotel manager persona. With a calmness and smoothness I definitely don’t feel, I get up and walk towards the refrigerator. I feel the weight of Ward’s stare branding into my back.
“What would you like for lunch?” I ask, as casually as I can, opening the door and peaking in. The fridge is half empty. There are fizzy drinks and cheese. Not much else.
Thanks, Rob. You really did leave me high and dry.
He doesn’t answer, so I force myself to look at him. “Lunch?” I ask him. “You need to tell me what you want for—”
“I suppose you found that funny?”
I coach my nerves to calmness, force myself to speak up. “I didn’t laugh.”
He fixes me with a death stare. “Lunch?” I ask, hoping to appeal to his appetite.
“’m not hungry.” He walks away leaving me none the wiser. I should count myself lucky. At least he hasn’t fired me.
Chapter 8
MARI
I make it through the next few days, though it seems to take forever for the weekend to come around. But early on Saturday morning, I head out to Maplewood, my mom’s nursing home. It’s an hour’s drive from Ward’s place.
My mom is sitting in the conservatory when I get there. To my extreme joy, she recognizes me as I walk through the large communal living room.
“Marianne.” My mother’s face shines with happiness, and my heart glows. I smother her, bending down to give her a huge hug, my arms circling around her frail little body.
She used to smell of lavender, but she doesn’t smell like that anymore. The scent I associate with her is not here in Maplewood. This is one of the better nursing homes from the many I looked at, but there is no scent of flowers here. More like dry paint, varnish, and mothballs.
I hold onto my mom because I don’t want to let go. Letting go might change things, and here, in this moment, she’s my mom, and I’m her daughter, and she knows it. I inhale, long and deep and I cling to her.
“Now, now, Marianne, What’s that for?”
I move away and swallow the sob that has slowly climbed its way up from my belly to my throat. “I missed you, Mom. How have you been?”
She leans forward a little, her leathery arms resting on the armrest. “I like it here,” she whispers. “The nurses even offer to walk around with me.”
I am an only child, and while it’s never really bothered me before, now it does. This is when it would have helped to have siblings, with us all living close by so that we could all keep an eye on her and visit every day. I can’t do it all alone. Weekends are the only chance I have to come here. “I’ll walk with you outside.”