Book One of Four
When the Leaves Began to Fall
Abby Mercer was fired before her latte had cooled. By the end of that summer her marriage was paperwork on a kitchen counter, her son was eighteen and gone, and what was left was ten weeks of severance and an aging golden retriever.
Silverpine Bay has working boats, long memories, and an empty flower shop. Rent is twelve hundred dollars a month. Abby needs seventy dollars a day to break even. On her first day open, she takes nineteen.
She stays.
HOW IT BEGINS · BOOK ONE, PROLOGUE
On a Tuesday morning, Abby Mercer was fired before her latte had cooled.
Marcy from Human Resources said restructuring with the careful sympathy of a woman who had eaten lunch with Abby on Friday and now had a folder open between them. The conference room fluorescents hummed overhead. Abby's cup sat between them, still warm, her name written correctly on the side for once.
"I'm sorry," Marcy said.
Abby looked at the folder. Then at Marcy. Her brain, which had spent fifteen years translating bad news into language people could survive in meetings, began arranging the facts before the rest of her could catch up.
Her position had been eliminated. The decision was final. Ten weeks of severance. Insurance through the end of the month.
"Effective when?"
Marcy's eyes moved toward the cup. "Today."
"Today as in after lunch?"
"Today as in now. You can finish the day if that feels better, or you can go home."
Abby waited for the sentence to become less absurd. It declined.
"I'm going home."
"Of course." Marcy slid one final page across the table. "There's also an Employee Exit Survey. You don't have to complete it right now."
There were one hundred and twenty questions.
Abby stared at the first one. On a scale from one to five, how valued had she felt by the organization? Read the room, Marcy.
Marcy closed the folder.