The Wright One

JUSTIN

Finally I get on my own two feet. I am no longer going to be in my brother’s shadow. I finally get to show my dad that I am just as good as David. Now he and his new girl Megan can take my responsibilities with the family company and I can do something myself. Something that is all me, that will show everyone that I am not just a second rate. My whole life I have felt behind my big brother David. Don’t get me wrong I love him, he’s my brother, but it was like everything I tried to do David had already done it. It didn’t matter if I had done it better or how I even did it. All that mattered is that I was following in my brother’s footsteps.Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive © material.

I got everything together and now it is just a matter of hiring the right people. I have been interviewing all day for the positions that I have to fill. I am getting to the bottom of the lists and I am ready to take a break. Only I still have one more interview for the day. This is a small firm so there isn’t really an HR department. I have that outsourced, but I want to do the initial hiring myself. I want to build the first team myself.

I’m extremely shocked when a woman walks in with a kid about eight. She quietly tells him to take a seat in the waiting room and then proceeds to my desk. Or rather the desk that I am sitting at to do the interviews. It’s in another room, but with a large window in the front so that you can see into the waiting room. “Mr. Wright, I am here for my interview. My name is Hannah Mason.” She passes over her resume. She looks really familiar. Really put together, but that doesn’t go with bringing her kid to the interview.

I point to the kid. “Do you always bring your kid to interviews?” She hasn’t even sat down yet. She really looks familiar. I am trying to figure out where I know her from. I mean this town isn’t that big, I am sure I have seen her somewhere before. She is an attractive woman. Her hair is up in a bun, but her eyes are what catch me the most.

She looks back at her son. “No, I usually have a sitter, but she dropped out at the last minute. It is either bring him or cancel the interview. It was really too late to do the latter. So I brought him. He will stay out of the way and won’t be a bother.”

I look at the kid. Who seems to be just playing a video game at this point. He looks familiar too. What the hell? Where have I seen them before? She quickly moves into my vision so I can’t look at her son. “I recently had to move back to town, so finding a job is a top priority.” She seems serious enough.

I blink and look over her resume. “It looks like you have been in Fairview for the last eight years. You completed high school online. You worked while you were in college. What happened to make you leave here?” I look back up to her so I can see her reaction.

“Um, that is rather personal.” She fidgets. “Look, I understand if you don’t want to hire me because I made a choice to bring my son to the interview. I am not going to hold it against you.” She doesn’t actually look like she wants to be here.

“I didn’t say that.” I counter. Looking over her resume again. “I can see that you have some excellent references. I know a couple of these guys that you worked for. From your application it looks like you are looking for a receptionist position. Is that correct?” That doesn’t make a whole hell of a lot of sense based on her resume. A personal assistant would be better. Better pay at least. She has been doing that for the last four years. I’m not sure why she would apply for a position with less pay.

She nods. “Yes, I have been an assistant to several others in the Fairview area. All of which have given me letters of recommendations. My last employer was sad to see me go. But it was too long of a commute.” Completely understandable.

I agree, that is an hour one way. “So what brings you back to Eden Brook?”

She looks down. “Um, well, my father passed last year and my mother is kind of on her own. Things were getting too hard for her to handle and she was about to lose her home. So I came back to help her out.” Is she ashamed of that? That seems an odd thing to be ashamed of. Plus if that isn’t personal then what is so personal that she couldn’t tell me about having to leave town in the first place?

“So, here is what I am thinking. I think after I check these references I might have a position for you. But I have to be honest, I’m not too happy with you showing up with your son. It might be something that could be a problem in the future.”

She sighs. “I understand. I assure you this will not happen again. I have interviews for another sitter. Plus he has school. I will not just be bringing him to work. I promise.” She looks up at me, and suddenly I recognize those eyes. It was a little hard at first because it’s been years and they are new glasses, but those eyes looked up at me a lot at one point. Eyes that I wanted to look at me more than anything.

“Hannah?”

She looks stunned, but tries to look confused. “Yeah, that’s what I said my name was.” Is she really going to act like she doesn’t know who I am?

I shake my head. “You went to my high school. You were my tutor, then you just disappeared.”

She slumps back in her chair. “Yep, that was me.” She sounds so defeated. Like it is the worst thing in the world that I recognized her.

But now I am even more confused. How can her son look familiar when she has been living in Fairview like his whole life? I stand and look at the kid again. She stands to try to block my view. “So, do you still want to hire me?”

I move to the side. It can’t be. She wouldn’t do this to me. I look at the boy really closely. He has my hair, my chin, he looks like me when I was eight. I look back at Hannah. “You didn’t.” I feel this pain in my chest when I look down at her. It’s clear on her face that she did.

She looks hurt. “I didn’t know what else to do.” She falls into the chair and starts crying. “You had so much going for you. The company and just everything. I couldn’t change your life like that. Plus we were just something that happened, you said so yourself.” She looks so broken and at the end of her rope. Like the weight of the world is crushing in on her. I am sure she felt that way, doing this all on her own and then having to come to me for a job. That explains why she didn’t want to be a personal assistant. She didn’t want to work that closely with me.

I did say that to her. I was being a dick. I didn’t want anyone to know that I had fallen for the cutest little nerd that I had ever seen in my life. She is still kind of blubbering, but I don’t even know what to say. I mean it’s not every day that you find out that you have a kid. Not only a kid but a seven year old that his mother has been raising on her own. I fell to my knees. I seriously have no idea what the hell else I am supposed to do. I am vaguely aware of Hannah leaving the office, but I can’t register anything else. It’s like I am broken at this point. My body and brain aren’t focusing.

How the hell did I get myself into this shit?