Chapter 94: THE RESUME
KEISHA’S POV
I found Elliora in the bathroom.
Not intentionally though, I wasn’t exactly looking for her, she just happened to be there. I went because I needed to use the bathroom and she was already there at the mirror reapplying her lipstick.
When I saw her, I almost backed out but she had already seen me in the reflection so I came in and went to the sink.
She looked completely different.
Not the person who had been quietly falling apart at her desk twenty minutes ago. Not the person who had stood in front of Mr Hale with nothing to say. The face in the mirror was composed and there was something behind her eyes that I couldn’t immediately name but then she noticed me looking at her reflection and it shifted— like a door closing— back to something more ordinary so fast I would have missed it if I hadn’t already been watching.
"You okay?" I asked.
"Fine." She said quickly. "Thank you." She capped her lipstick and gathered her things and left.
The door swung shut and I stood at the sink for a moment.
I looked at the mirror where she had been, went back to my desk and sat down, opened her resume on my screen and read it again from the beginning.
She had years of experience. A certification number. Reference contacts at two packs. All the right language. All the right detail in all the right places.
I read this three times. Then I printed it, folded it and put it in my bag.
For the rest of the afternoon, I supervised her without making it obvious. My desk gave me a reasonable angle to her screen if I positioned my chair slightly so I did that and watched her work through the corrected record list that Mr Hale had sent back.
She was slow.
Not careful-slow. Uncertain-slow. The type of slow that came from not knowing what you were doing rather than from wanting to do it right. She checked the standard document constantly, not glancing at it the way you glanced at something to confirm what you already knew, but she was reading it properly each time like it was new information every time.
She made another small error halfway through, caught it herself, sat back and looked at the screen for a moment before correcting it.
I thought about her interview answers.
Documentation errors are less interesting than why they happened. You want to trace back through the source documents.
She had said that like someone who had lived it.
I looked at her struggling with a reference sequence that a person with two years of experience, let alone the six she had claimed, would have done without thinking.
By three thirty the record list was done. She submitted it, exhaled and sat back and looked genuinely exhausted.
Mr Hale came out at four fifteen, picked up the folder from his desk and went back into his office.
Three minutes passed before he came out.
"Better." He said, coming out again. He didn’t look at anyone in particular.
Eliora sat very still.
Then she straightened slowly and went back to her screen.
I watched her do it and thought about the bathroom mirror and the face that had been there before she knew I was watching.
Nadia appeared at my desk at ten to five pulling her coat on. "Ready?"
"One minute." I said.
I finished the log I was working on and submitted it and shut my computer down and gathered my things and we left.
We stopped at the small grocery on the pack boundary where Nadia picked up drinks and I let her and carried my bag with the resume folded inside it and thought about what I was going to say to Dane.
Outside my house I stopped. "Go in." I said. "I’ll be a minute."
She looked at me. "Where are you going?"
"To see Dane." I told her. "Work thing."
She raised her eyebrows. "At this hour."
"It’s quick." I assured her.
She gave me the look she gave when she wasn’t going to argue but wanted me to know she had conflicting opinions before she went inside and I turned and walked.
Dane answered the door in his patrol jacket with his keys in his hand like he had been about to leave and he looked at me on his doorstep with the folder under my arm and his expression moved from surprised to curious in about three seconds.
"Keisha." He frowned.
"I need you to look into someone." I said and I held the resume out.
He took it and read the name at the top. "Who is this?"
"New hire." I said. "She joined two days ago. Her resume says six years of inter-pack correspondence experience and an archival certification." I paused. "She can’t use the basic system. She submitted a record list today with errors that someone with one year of experience wouldn’t make, let alone six." I looked at him. "And there’s something else."
He waited.
"I went to the bathroom this afternoon." I said. "She was already there at the mirror. She didn’t know I was coming in and I saw her face before she knew I was there and it was—" I stopped. "It shifted when she noticed me. The way people’s faces shift when they’ve been caught being something other than what they’re performing. It’s unsettling."
Dane was quiet for a moment, then he looked at the resume again. "What do you think it means?" He asked.
"I don’t know yet." I said. "That’s why I’m here."
He looked at me. "You’re turning into a spy."
"I’m being observant." I smiled.
"Those are related." He turned the file over.
"Are you going to help me or not?" I said.
Something almost like amusement moved through his face. "Give me two days." He said. "I’ll run it through the registry. Cross reference the certification number, contact the reference packs." He folded the resume. "If it’s fabricated I’ll know."
"Thank you." I said.
"Keisha." He said as I turned.
I stopped.
"Your instincts are usually right." He said simply. Like it was a fact he was stating rather than a compliment he was giving.
I looked at him for a moment and nodded. Then I walked back to my house.
Nadia was on the sofa with two open cans and the television on. She handed one to me when I sat down and I took it, drank and let myself breathe.
"How’s Eliora?" Nadia asked.
"Trying." I said.
"She worked really hard on that correction." Nadia said. "I watched her. She didn’t stop once."
"I know." I muttered.
"I felt so bad for her earlier." Nadia said. "With Mr Hale. She looked like she wanted to disappear."
"She did." I said vaguely.
"She’s going to be okay though." Nadia said. "She just needs time to find her feet." She looked at me. "Don’t be too hard on her."
I said nothing.
"Keisha." She called my name.
"I heard you." I said.
She looked at me for a moment, then she let it go and turned back to the television while I sat beside her and drank.
Dane said to give him two days.
Just two.
We finished the drinks and the television moved through shows neither of us was properly watching and by nine Nadia was going drowsy.
Typical.
"Bed." She drawled.
"Bed." I agreed.
She was asleep in under five minutes.
I lay beside her in the dark, listened to her breathing even out and then I got up quietly and went to the bathroom and stood at the mirror and lifted my shirt.
The bump was small still. Small enough that you could look at it and think nothing of it if you didn’t know what you were looking for. If you weren’t me, standing in my bathroom at half nine knowing exactly what it was and exactly how long I had been not telling anyone about it.
I pressed my hand flat against it.
The firmness underneath was more pronounced than last week. Not dramatically thankfully. But enough that I noticed it and knowing that I had noticed it meant other people were going to start noticing it too eventually and eventually was getting closer.
I looked at myself in the mirror for a long time.
What was wrong with me?
The conversation I had been putting off since the clinic. The one I had promised myself I would have told them and then found reasons not to have and then promised again and found more reasons and the bump was growing regardless of what I decided and the reasons were running out.
I pulled my shirt back down, went back to bed and lay in the dark beside Nadia and thought about picking an actual day. Not soon. An actual day with a date attached to it.
But I never got round to it.
And I wasn’t sure when I would.
Or if I ever would.