Duty Calls

Miranda stood at the edge of the pool, her reflection distorted by the rippling water. The company retreat had been her idea—team building, they'd called it. Now she watched her colleagues getting drunk on cheap wine and false camaraderie, while she bore the weight of tomorrow's layoffs in her chest like a stone.

"You've been quiet," a voice said behind her.

She turned. David, the senior analyst whose mortgage payments and daughter's dance lessons she'd memorized from his personnel file. He swam to the pool's edge, water streaming from his hair. In the moonlight, he looked younger than his forty-seven years. "Everything alright?"

Miranda thought about the spreadsheet on her laptop. The rows of names, columns of severance packages. The merger had been brutal—necessary, her boss had said, but Miranda saw only faces.

"Fine," she said. "Just thinking."

David pulled himself up to sit on the concrete, legs still in the water. "My ex-wife had a look like that. Before she told me she was leaving." He laughed softly. "That man-bear-woman thing—what's it called? Kubernetes? No, the other one. When you can see it coming but can't stop it."

"Kubler-Ross," Miranda said automatically.

"Right. The stages of grief." He studied her. "You're at bargaining."

She stiffened. "I'm not grieving."

"Aren't you?" David touched her wrist, his fingers cold and damp. "Whatever it is, you don't have to bear it alone."

Something in his voice—maybe the gentleness, or the tequila, or the sheer exhaustion of three months of secrets—made her pause. "Tomorrow morning," she said quietly, "there's a mandatory all-hands meeting."

David's hand stilled on her wrist. "Oh."

"I tried to fight for your team," she rushed on, the words tumbling out now. "I argued that analytics was core to operations. But they want to consolidate under New York, and—"

"Miranda." David squeezed her wrist. "I know."

She blinked. "You know?"

"I saw the org chart leaked on Slack." He shrugged. "Figured you'd tell me when you could. We all have things we're carrying."

He pulled her down to sit beside him, shoulder to shoulder, watching the water lap against the pool's edges. "My father died last month," he said. "I haven't told anyone. Can't afford to seem unstable right now, with everything going on."

Miranda turned to him, really looked at him for the first time in two years of working together. "David—"

"We're all just bearing it, aren't we?" He bumped her shoulder with his. "Difference is, now you don't have to do it alone."

They sat like that for a long time, two people in the water's quiet dark, carrying separate burdens together.