My Boss Emptied My Purse Before Her Father Finished His Toast

My boss emptied my purse into a silver bread basket before she let me explain why I was holding my stomach.

My baby had kicked. That was all.

But the room had gone quiet, and Maren Ward was holding up my rent receipt like something she had pulled from a drain.

"Eighteen thousand six hundred dollars," she said. "That's what she took from our mothers' fund."

I had ninety-two dollars in that purse. Most of it was for groceries.

My name was Lena Price. I was twenty-nine, thirty-one weeks pregnant, and paid $14.25 an hour to mend sheets at a laundry outside Augusta, Georgia.

I had brown skin, a round face, and dark curls tied back with a yellow scarf.

That night, I had come to a hospital ballroom to fix a torn curtain. Maren had told me to use the service door.

Now she wanted every guest to see me.

Maren Ward had a sharp blond bob, pale eyes, and a cream suit with gold buttons.

She ran the Ward laundry group's charity office. Her father, Ellis, had built the group into a fortune. The new hospital wing had his family name above its doors.

"I received three hundred sixty dollars," I said. "For rent. One payment."

Maren spread six forms across the table.

"You signed for six grants of thirty-one hundred dollars each."

I stared at the signatures.

They looked like mine in the way a store window looked like a room. Close enough until you touched it.

"I didn't sign those."

Someone near the flowers whispered, "And she's expecting."

That hurt worse than the accusation. As if my baby had helped me do it.

Maren reached into the basket again. She lifted my mother's watch by its worn leather band.

"And this? Planning to sell it?"

"Put that down."

My voice came out loud enough to turn more heads.

The watch had a blue face and a little silver bird beside the twelve. Mama had worn it every Sunday until she died fourteen months earlier.

"It belongs to me," I said.

"Then you won't mind answering questions."

"I answered. You didn't like it."

Ellis Ward set down his glass.

He had white hair and the tired face of a man who had been smiling for photographs all evening.

"Maren," he said, "why are we doing this here?"

"Because donors deserve to know where their money went."

Three days earlier, I had asked her office why my rent grant showed $3,100 on a statement. Our landlord had received $360. Maren had said the rest was a fee.

I had asked for that in writing.

Now I understood why she had called me to mend a curtain during dinner.

"You brought me here for this," I said.

She slid another paper toward me.

"Sign an agreement to repay it. We can keep the police out of this."

The paper said I admitted taking $18,600. It also said I gave up any claim against the company.

"Where's my husband?" I asked.

"You don't need him to sign your own name."

Sam was waiting outside in our old truck. His shift fixing school buses had ended late. He had brought me a sandwich because the baby's heartburn had made dinner hard.

I wanted that truck. I wanted his warm hand. I wanted nobody looking at me.

Then I saw Milo under the edge of the gift table.

Maren's four-year-old son held his cloth rabbit by one ear. I had sewn that ear back on during my lunch break the week before.

"Lena?" he said.

"It's okay, honey."

It wasn't, but he was four. He didn't need my fear on top of his own.

"Go to Mrs. Cole," Maren told him.

He stayed where he was.

Ellis moved toward him. "Come here, buddy."

Milo pointed at the forms.

"Mama did her name."

Maren laughed once.

"He means I helped with the paperwork."

"On the bright table," Milo said.

I knew that table. There was a light box in the sewing room. We used it to trace patch shapes. Maren sometimes brought Milo there when meetings ran long.

"It's grown-up business," she told him.

His rabbit dragged across the floor as he walked to his grandfather.

"She put the other paper on top," he said. "She made Lena's loops."

Ellis stopped reaching for him.

Maren set my watch down too hard.

"Children mix things up."

Milo's lower lip shook. I knew that look. Adults had started speaking about him as though he had left the room.

"You can stand by me," I said.

He came close, opened the rabbit's little cloth backpack, and pulled out a crumpled, folded blue sheet.

"I kept my picture," he whispered.

Then he turned it over, and I saw my name written six times.