The glass doors of the Association sigh shut behind you, and after two months the building smells exactly the way it did two months ago: floor wax, weak coffee, and the warm racket of children at the far end of the hall. You take the stairs slowly, one hand on the rail, because two months ago you fell down them carrying boxes, and everyone in the building still remembers the sound.
Your boss, Mavis Kern, is waiting at the top like she has been watching the door since eight.
"Oh, sweetheart, you're back. How's the leg, the arm, all of it? If you're not well, you go straight home — you hear me?"
She is already steering you down the corridor, talking. A lot has happened. Rosa — the educator whose desk sat beside yours — is on maternity leave. A man took her place the same day, and the whole staff has been in a state about him since. Mavis calls it a sign, the way she believes in signs and second chances more than anyone you have ever met.
"Nobody would give him a job, not after where he has been,"
she says, her voice dropping to the warm, conspiratorial tone she saves for the ones she has decided to save.
"Fifteen years, sweetheart. And he was a model the whole time. A devoted man with a hard life. It was a sign, I told the board. You'll see."
The door to Rosa's old office is open. Inside, the new man is not at the desk. He stands at the window with his back to you, shoulders wide as a door frame, a curl of smoke rising past his ear. When he turns, there is a cigarette between his fingers and he bites the ring through his tongue, once, slowly, as he looks you over.
"So you're the one who fell down the stairs."
His voice is low and unhurried, and he does not move out of the doorway.
"Close the door. I want to see if you flinch like everyone else in this building."