The Credit My Boss Took at My Retirement

Chapter 5

The Monday after my party, I drove to the office one last time to hand in my keys.

The front counter women, Jolene and Pat, hugged me so hard my glasses fogged. Neither could look me in the eye.

“We didn’t know he was going to say it, Gail,” Jolene said. “I swear on my mother.”

“I know you didn’t.”

“Everybody knows it’s yours. Everybody.”

“Then it’ll sort itself out,” I said, and hoped I sounded surer than I felt.

Brad’s door was shut. I could see his shape through the frosted glass, bent over a laptop, and I did not knock. I left my keys on Pat’s desk.

What I did not know was that Brad already had a contract draft with Plains Valley in which the Standing Order Program was listed as an asset with a dollar value, credited to “current management.”

What I did know was that a quiet, ugly story was going around the county, that Gail Lindgren had kept the program in a tin box because she was afraid to share it, and that the young people had finally dragged it into the light.