“Then somebody got into your account.”
“That’s what HR says.”
“Change your password.”
“Robert.”
“What?”
“Who would want to do this?”
He studied me for a second longer than necessary.
“I don’t know.”
Then he took a drink.
That small delay stayed with me.
I sat across from him.
“You know some of my passwords.”
His expression changed immediately.
Not dramatically.
Robert rarely did anything dramatically.
His face simply closed.
“What exactly are you asking me?”
“I’m asking whether you ever logged into my employee account.”
“No.”
“Did you ever give anyone access to it?”
“Of course not.”
“Did anyone ask you about transferring me?”
“No.”
His answers came faster now.
Sharp.
Offended.
“You think I secretly moved my wife to Houston?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
He got up, carried his glass to the window and looked into the backyard.
“If I wanted you gone, Evelyn, I would tell you.”
There was something chilling about hearing my husband say the words so calmly.
He turned.
“If I wanted this marriage to end, I’d look at you and say it was over. I wouldn’t spend my time playing childish games with transfer forms.”
I should have felt reassured.
Instead, I felt the first quiet crack.
Because Robert had not asked the question I would have asked if our positions were reversed.
Who did this to you?
He had gone straight to defending himself.
The next morning, I was waiting outside HR before Linda arrived.
She brought me into a narrow office that smelled like printer paper and old coffee. A small plant sat on the windowsill, yellowing at the edges.
Linda closed the door.
“I checked what I could.”
“And?”
“The request was valid from the system’s perspective.”
“From the system’s perspective.”
She gave me an apologetic look.
“It was submitted through your authenticated profile during business hours. Your role qualifies for the Houston opening, and because they have a major launch coming up, the staffing team approved it quickly.”
“I was with a client when it was submitted.”
“I know. I’ve added that to the review.”
“Can you stop the transfer?”
“The review doesn’t automatically stop the business process.”
I laughed once.
There was nothing funny in it.
“So someone can pretend to be me, move me across the country, and the company continues because the boxes were checked correctly?”
“I understand how that sounds.”
“It sounds exactly like what it is.”
Linda folded her hands.
“You can decline the transfer.”
“And then?”
She hesitated.
That told me enough.
“Then management would have to decide what happens to your role. The Houston team is already planning around the approved move.”
When I returned to my desk, a yellow sticky note had been placed in the center of my monitor.
Heard about Houston. Hope you like the heat.
No name.
No initials.
Just blue handwriting with round, carefully formed letters.
The paper smelled faintly of vanilla-orange perfume.
I knew that perfume.
Everyone on our floor knew that perfume.
Sloan wore enough of it that the elevator seemed to remember her after she stepped out.
Sloan was twenty-five, polished, bright, socially effortless, and technically an intern in the marketing department.
Technically mattered.
Her father owned a large block of Apex stock and had known Robert’s family for years. Robert had explained her arrival as a favor between old family friends.
“She’s trying to figure out what she wants to do,” he had told me the first week she appeared.
Sloan did not behave like anyone uncertain about where she belonged.
She moved through Apex as if the building had been waiting for her.
She spoke casually to vice presidents.
She used Robert’s first name in meetings where people twice her age called him Mr. Larson.
And she had a particular way of making comments that sounded harmless until you replayed them later.
Once, after a presentation, she looked at my charcoal dress and said, “You always look so responsible.”
I thanked her.
She smiled.
“I mean that in a good way. Very… established.”
Another time she watched me explain a project timeline and laughed.
“Evelyn, you take everything so seriously.”
When I mentioned it to Robert, he dismissed it.
“Sloan’s young.”
“So?”
“She jokes differently.”
“She seems to joke differently with me.”
Robert had sighed.
“Don’t make something out of nothing.”
That sentence returned to me as I held the yellow note.
Don’t make something out of nothing.
At noon, I found Sloan in the break room.
Or maybe she found me.
I was standing at the coffee machine when the door opened and the sound of her heels crossed the tile behind me.
“Hey, Evelyn.”
I kept my eyes on the cup.
“Hi.”
She opened the refrigerator and took out a sparkling water.
“I heard you’re moving.”
I turned.
“Where did you hear that?”
She popped the tab.
“People talk.”
“Apparently.”
“Houston.”
She smiled as if trying the word.
“That’s a big change.”
“The transfer is being reviewed.”
“Oh.”
She leaned against the counter.
For half a second, disappointment crossed her face.
Then it vanished.
“Well, maybe it would be good for you.”