“What kind of questions?” my mother asked.

“Why she isn’t in leadership. Why we haven’t promoted her,” he said.

A pause followed. “Why she is the way she is,” he added.

My mother’s answer came soft, almost gentle. “We’ve done everything we could for her, Harold. Some children just don’t have what it takes.”

“Exactly. So she needs to go. We’ll give her a generous severance. She can find something else, something better suited to her limited abilities,” he said.

I pressed my palm against the wall. My salary was forty-two thousand dollars a year. My studio apartment in the city, shared with two roommates, cost eighteen hundred dollars a month.