He was good. Lord, he was good at it. Eleven months in and he had numbers that the people who’d been there for years couldn’t touch. I’d hear about it secondhand, because Aaron and I still weren’t really talking much, but it got back to me.

The intern this, the intern that. I was proud and scared in equal parts, which is pretty much how I’d felt every day since the boy was born.

And here’s the part that made my stomach turn even back then. Gerald started checking on him. Every single week. Stopping by his desk, asking how he was settling in, real friendly. I found out later he’d even gone to HR and asked for Aaron’s home address. A CEO of a 340-person company, asking for an intern’s address. People noticed. Of course they noticed. And one of the people who noticed was the worst possible person.

Frank Delaney. The CFO. A man who could smell a weakness on you from across the building. He took one look at Aaron standing next to Gerald in a hallway and saw the same jaw, the same way they both tilted their head when they listened. Frank put it together. And Frank had a daughter, twenty-four, fresh out of school, no marketing anything to her name, who he wanted set up nice and comfortable.

I didn’t know any of this was happening. I want to be clear about that. I just knew Gerald had promised Aaron the marketing director job in writing, back in February. My son told me that much over the phone, the most excited I’d heard him in years. “He put it in an email, Mom. It’s mine.” And for one little minute I let myself believe everything might turn out okay.

Then came the all-hands. Quarterly results, the whole company crammed into that big room, Gerald up at the podium in his good suit.

I was only there because Aaron asked me to come. “Just come, Mom. Please.” So I came. I sat in the third row in my cardigan feeling about ninety years old.