Chapter 10 - The Woman Who Cleaned Floors
Mom was sixty-one and had retired from cleaning offices two years earlier. She still kept a pair of rubber gloves under the sink, because old habits survived longer than paychecks. Whoever wrote the note knew enough about my childhood to frighten me, but not enough to know where she worked now.
I told her everything. She listened without interrupting, then reached for her coat.
"Where are you going?" I asked.
"To sit with you at the restaurant. You shouldn't have to carry this alone."
At East Warren High, Lauren had once taped a photograph of Mom pushing a cleaning cart to my locker. The caption said FUTURE CAREER PLAN. A teacher took it down, and I spent the rest of the day trying not to cry. Mom found the torn photograph in my backpack that night.
"People who are ashamed of honest work have never had to do it," she'd said. I didn't believe her then. I believed her now.
We met Camila and her attorney, Denise Carter, at a neighborhood library that afternoon. Camila was twenty-seven, tired, and angry enough to keep her voice steady.
"Glasshouse bills the hotels for every minute I'm scheduled," she said. "They pay me for less. I saved the schedules and clock-out messages."
Denise cautioned that the records needed checking against payroll and contracts before anyone drew conclusions. Camila agreed. She hadn't come to make a speech; she'd come because she'd missed rent after her shifts vanished.
"Lauren isn't even the one sending the threats," Camila said. "Her operations director, Owen Price, handles the schedules. He called me yesterday and told me to think about my family."
Leah, who had joined the meeting, wrote down the time and exact words. We would pass them to the right investigators, not turn a frightened worker into a public weapon.
Then Camila unlocked her phone and showed us a message from Owen that had arrived ten minutes earlier.
May you like
Tomorrow's supplier review is private. Keep your mouth shut and nobody loses anything else.
Tomorrow was Tuesday. Harborstone's contract review had just become a deadline.
