My Daughter's a What?
~~ All characters in this book are over 18. ~~
== || < > || ==
"Okay. That about wraps things up."
Jim Snyder sighed in relief. The Friday afternoon manager's meeting for Windhover Cellular always seemed designed to stretch the limits of human endurance, as well as their bladders.
"Except for one thing."
He muted a groan and closed his eyes.
Yes. One more thing. It's always one more thing, isn't it, Helen? Why the hell can't you schedule these things for Friday
morning
, when we can at least pretend we wouldn't rather be anywhere else?
"As you all know," his boss continued, "we're in the middle of moving to a new operating and billing system. Amy has been spearheading that for the last three months. Unfortunately, she will no longer be able to do so."
He opened his eyes, staring down the long table in the conference room at the perky, dark-haired woman. A smile of smug satisfaction crossed her lips.
"Leaving us, Amy?" Don Hardin joked.
"No." Her smile grew wider. "I'm pregnant. I'm due in June."
Cries of congratulations rose from the other women around the table, and many of the men as well. Jim smiled dully, trying to hide the way his heart twisted in envy.
"So what's going to happen?" Roxanne asked practically, when the furor died down. She was a short woman with a face like a cheerful bulldog, and along with Jim, was the supervisor for the provisioning department, which oversaw a great deal of the installation of new data services for the company. "I mean, the baby's not coming out right now, is it?"
Amy laughed, her teeth flashing in the conference room. "If it did, it would be one hell of a surprise. No. Not for about five more months. But my obstetrician told me I'm a high-risk for an early delivery. So it could be June. Or it could be May. Or even April."
"So we need to make sure that someone is ready and able to pick up the ball and run with it if Amy has to start her maternity leave early," Helen interjected smoothly. "We're due to cut over to CloudVision in May. And then we'll be running CV and the old system in tandem through July, just to make sure that the billing numbers match up. No sense in going to a new system if we're not billing our customers the right amount.
"But we have to have someone in charge to coordinate with CloudVision. Something always goes wrong." A series of nods around the table. "Jim, the board has decided that you're the right person to take this on."
His head jerked up as the import of her words sunk in. "Me?"
"You. You do still have your project manager certification, don't you?"
"Well...yeah." God damn it, he did
not
want this! "But I haven't ever used it. And the class I took was six years ago." He looked around the table, feeling slightly desperate. No one would meet his eye. "Aren't you sure someone else would be a better choice?"
"Relax, Jim." Amy smiled down the table at him. "We're not going to throw you into the deep end of the pool without a lifejacket. I'm going to help you transition over, and Roxanne will take up the load on the provisioning side, so you only have to do one job, not two.
"By the time this little bundle of joy arrives," she went on, laying a hand on her stomach, "we'll be fully cut over. Your job will be coordinating fixes with CloudVision and the people here on our side. Think of yourself as the liaison between Windhover and CV."
He rubbed his forehead. It was no good protesting, he knew. Oh, sure, he could throw a fit and they would eventually give the project to someone else. But it would be a black mark against his employment record. When the time came around next June for his evaluation, the fact that he hadn't been willing to take this on would probably kill any chance of a decent raise. And he could kiss his bonus good-bye.
Not as if you really need a bonus, though, with Mia taking care of everything.
He tamped down the bitter resentment. After all, he'd had lots of practice at it.
"All right," he said at last, forcing some amount of confident cheer into his voice. "What's the worst that could happen?"
"The new OSS/BSS fails, the company goes bankrupt, you lose your job, and we all broadcast your failure on social media," Roxanne grinned, to a wave of friendly laughter. But around the table, Jim thought he could see some concerned looks, as if several people weren't sure if he was up to the task.
To hell with you. To hell with
all
of you.
"You're ray of jolly little sunshine, aren't you?" he grunted, picking up his laptop and climbing to his feet. "Just make sure you don't destroy the department while I am taking care of this."
"Jim?" Helen's voice dragged his attention around. "You're going to go on the next visit to CloudVision with Amy."
"All right. When is it?"
"We're flying down on Tuesday evening," Amy said. "We'll come back Saturday."
He bit back a groan of frustration. "Saturday?"
"Yeah. Is that a problem?"
No. Not a problem. All I was planning on was a romantic weekend with my wife in an attempt to save my fucking marriage,
he thought savagely. "I guess not."
"Good. We'll leave for Raleigh after work Tuesday."
"Raleigh?" he repeated blankly.
"North Carolina," Dan put in helpfully.
Raleigh.
Duke.
Allison.
*****
For a wonder, Mia had arrived home before he did. Her Mercedes was parked neatly on her side of the garage. Jim carefully pulled in next to it, taking care not to let his door bump against the satiny exterior when he climbed out of his Dodge.
The last time he had let that happen, scratching the Mercedes, Mia hadn't let him touch her for nearly a month.
His face twisted bitterly as he stepped into the house. As always, everything was perfect, not a thing out of place. Mia paid a cleaning service to come in three times a week keep the house spotless. The hardwood floors were polished to a golden glow, the carpets were vacuumed, the windows without a single distracting smudge. Outside, the wicked wind of a Kansas City winter might be blowing, but in here, Mia Nguyen Snyder would have order.
How had it come to this? I feel like an unwelcome guest in my own home. No, not even a home. A museum. Where everything is clean, and beautiful, and I'm not allowed to touch anything.
Including my own wife.
He had met Mia over ten years ago. He had just graduated from Missouri State and had taken what he thought would be a short-term position with Windhover. The financial meltdown of 2008 had been in full flight, and with companies laying off employees by the thousands, any full-time job was welcome to a recent graduate with more student-loan bills than he could handle. His major had been engineering, but he took a job in the provisioning department, figuring that after a year or two, he could transfer within the company and do what he had trained to do.
And there was a cute young woman in the accounts payable department who had gently rebuffed his request for a date, but had suggested that she had a cousin who she thought he might really like. Mia and he had met on a blind date, going to a sushi restaurant downtown. She was five years older than him, ferociously intelligent, already gunning for partner at the financial firm where she worked, and with a young daughter from a previous relationship whom she was more than happy to show pictures of.
He had fallen in love (or, at least, in lust) at first glance. For a young man from a small town in central Missouri, Mia was positively exotic, with her long black hair, her golden Thai skin, her slightly tilted eyes, and her petite, exquisitely curvy body. Meeting her daughter had only reinforced his opinion. Allison was a precocious six, a cute little chatterbox with huge dark eyes and a boundless enthusiasm for cartoons, books, drawing, and her black lab puppy, Milo.
It had seemed a match made in heaven. A ready-made family. After dating Mia for six months, he was sure he was in love with her. And he thought she loved him. When he presented her with a ring on Valentine's day, she said yes immediately. They had been married a year later, in June, and had settled down to what he had assumed would be a life of domestic bliss.
Until it had all turned sour. Not all at once, with raging fights, thrown whiskey bottles, and infidelity. But slowly, as steady and as unstoppable as the erosion of an earthen dam by a river full of snowmelt in the spring.
At first it had been hardly noticeable. Mia, driven demon to increase her status at her financial firm, began to work longer and longer hours, often not arriving home until well after dark. Her rise, previously steady, became meteoric, and their combined income lifted them well into the ranks of the upper-middle class. They had purchased the home here, in a tasteful suburb of Kansas City, with a huge back yard and way more space than the three of them needed.
But any hope for a larger family was cut short. Mia did not want any more children. And after Jim had rejected her suggestion that he get a vasectomy, she had gone off on her own and had her tubes tied, which had driven him to blank fury. It wasn't that she didn't have the right to do what she wished with her body. But the cold-blooded approach, cutting him off completely from even giving his opinion, had made him doubt for the first time whether their marriage could stand the test of time.
From then on, it slowly got worse. Mia's hours grew longer and longer. She wouldn't stop. Or perhaps, he had thought in his darkest hours, she couldn't. Driven by the demons of her deceased parents, who had never forgiven her for having a child out of wedlock before she graduated college, she seemed determined to prove them wrong by fighting her way up the corporate ladder, no matter the cost. The physical affection between the two slowly drained away. Lovemaking, which had in the early days of their relationship been spontaneous, joyous, and incredible, became first a routine, and then a weary chore, scheduled by Mia in the same way she scheduled their trips to the dentist. Jim literally could not remember the last time they had made love without it being set up in advance.
And his relationship with Allison had become strained as well. The cheerful, happy girl he had known ten years ago had slowly disappeared. And when he had seen her off at the airport when she left for Duke University back in August, she would barely acknowledge his existence.
All in all, divorce from his wife had become not a possibility, but almost a certainty. He couldn't pretend any longer that they were in anything that remotely resembled a loving relationship. The only thing which bound them together was routine. He had determined to make one last try at saving things, but the announcement sprung on him earlier that day had scuttled his plans, and he didn't know if he even had the willpower to make another effort.
