Mom refused to believe it.
Then she demanded Erica quit.
Erica looked down at her sandwich.
“Fletch, I’m thirty-four. I’m living in my old bedroom. I need a job.”
I nodded.
“I know.”
She continued.
“This pays better than anything else I’ve found. I want to save enough for my own apartment.”
I studied her.
Then said, “Do the work. Paula will judge your performance.”
Erica looked relieved.
Then she whispered, “Thank you.”
I nodded.
That afternoon, Mom called the business.
Paula answered.
After listening for a moment, she looked toward my office.
“Fletch?”
I stepped out.
She covered the receiver.
“Your mother wants Erica transferred to another location.”
I stared.
“We only have one office.”
Paula nodded.
“That’s what I told her.”
I took the call.
“Mom?”
There was a pause.
Then she said, “You’re turning my daughter against me.”
I looked through the window toward Erica’s desk.
“She’s working.”
“After nine years, this is what you do?”
I took a breath.
“Mom, I’ve waited nine years for one phone call from you.”
She didn’t answer.
I continued.
“This isn’t the one.”
Her voice tightened.
“Don’t lecture me.”
“I’m not. I’m telling you that Erica has a job here, and she gets to decide whether she wants to keep it.”
Mom began speaking again.
I interrupted gently.
“This is our business line. Customers need to reach us. Please don’t use it for family arguments.”
Then I ended the call.
Mom called twice more.
Paula handled both calls professionally and ended them when it became clear they weren’t about business.
After that, the office was quiet.
For a little while.
Erica turned out to be excellent at her job.
By Wednesday, she’d learned our scheduling system.
She found three invoices that hadn’t been sent.
She helped a frustrated customer understand why his gutter problem was actually caused by an improperly directed sprinkler.
And when Gundy came into the office, she handled his questions without becoming impatient.
He watched her for a minute.
Then came into my office.
“Where’d Paula find that one?”
I smiled.
“Online job posting.”
He nodded.
“She’s good.”
“Yeah.”
He looked toward the front desk.
“She’s your sister?”
I nodded.
“She is.”
Gundy considered that.
Then said, “She’s nicer than you.”
I laughed.
“Thanks, Gundy.”
He grinned.
“Just keeping you informed.”
That evening, Erica stayed late finishing the invoices.
Before leaving, she leaned into my office.
“Fletch?”
“Yeah?”
“Mom brings Grandma’s coconut cake to every church potluck.”
I looked up.
“I know.”
“Everybody asks for the recipe.”
I smiled faintly.
“Does she give it to them?”
Erica shook her head.
“She says it’s a family secret.”
I looked toward the filing cabinet.
“Well, it is.”
Erica hesitated.
Then said quietly, “I remember Grandma making it.”
I looked at her.
She continued.
“I remember the orange zest.”
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
Then she whispered, “I didn’t say anything about a lot of things.”
Before I could answer, Paula honked from the parking lot.
Erica picked up her bag.
Then left.
I remained at my desk, thinking about the little girl who’d once stood beside Grandma waiting for frosting.
I wondered how many years of memories she’d spent pretending not to have.
The next morning, Paula was already at work when I arrived.
That was unusual.
She sat behind her desk with her reading glasses on, staring at her phone.
When she saw me, she held it out.
“You need to see this.”
My mother had written a public Facebook post before dawn.
She’d tagged Bluff Country Gutters.
The message described me as a son who had abandoned his family nine years earlier.
She claimed I’d barely visited Grandma while she was alive, then made a show of carrying her at the funeral.
She said I hadn’t spoken to my mother since.
Then she accused me of treating Erica unfairly at work and trying to keep her away from the family.
At the bottom, Mom wrote:
“Before hiring Bluff Country Gutters, people should know what kind of man owns it.”
I read the post twice.
For a moment, I felt as though the room had shifted beneath me.
Nine years.
I’d built a business.
Married Nina.
Worked long hours.
Made a life.
And somehow, my mother could still reduce me to the son she’d decided was wrong for attending Grandma’s funeral.
Paula watched me.
“What do you want to do?”
I looked toward the front desk.
Erica was arriving.
She set down her bag and looked toward us.
Then I looked back at Paula.
“Nothing yet.”
She nodded.
“Coffee?”
“Please.”
I sat at my desk.
For a while, I stared at the wall.
There were photographs of completed gutter jobs hanging above my filing cabinet.
A white farmhouse near Westby.
A church in Onalaska.
A barn that needed nearly two hundred feet of new gutters.
The work we’d built together.
Now Mom was trying to damage its reputation because she was angry that Erica had chosen to keep a job.
I wanted to answer.
I wanted to explain everything.
The farm sale.
Grandma’s care.