What the Palms Knew

The interview room had that glass of water, sweating onto the coaster. Same coaster they'd used when they fired Marcus. Elena sat across from me now, palms pressed flat against the table, and I wondered if she knew I'd recommended they terminate him.

"You saw the orange envelope on my desk," she said. It wasn't a question.

"I did."

"It was his severance. He never opened it."

The air conditioning hummed. Outside, palm fronds caught the coastal light, casting shadows that moved across her face like time.

"I can't bear this, Elena," I said. "I helped make it happen. The restructuring. I said he was—"

"Expendable." She finished the word I couldn't. "We both were, apparently."

She stood up and walked to the window. The Pacific stretched behind her, flat and grey. "He wrote something on the envelope. Before he left it on my desk."

"What?"

She turned. Her eyes were dry, which was worse than crying. "He wrote, 'I know you tried to stop it.'"

The words hit me harder than I expected. Marcus had known. He'd known I fought for him in that meeting, that I'd walked out when they overruled me. I'd spent six months carrying the weight of his firing, believing I'd failed him. All along, he'd carried something else entirely.

"I'm meeting him," she said. "Tonight. At that place on the water. He said he has something to tell me."

"About work?"

"About us. About why he never pushed, why he always stepped back." She looked at me directly for the first time. "He thought you and I—"

"God, Elena. No. Never."

She smiled then, small and genuine. "I know. But he didn't. For three years, he bore that." She picked up her bag. "You coming?"

"To what?"

"To find out what happens when we stop assuming we know what other people are carrying." She held out her hand, palm up. An invitation.

The water glass sat between us, half-empty. The late afternoon turned everything orange-gold. I thought about all the weight we bear unknowingly, all the stories we tell ourselves about each other.

I took her hand. "Let's go hear what he has to say."