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him.
    “Hunter’s going to be so jealous. He’s still talking about that time he got to treat Barry Zito in the ER,” she said.
    “Who?” I said.
    “Exactly,” she said. “So how are you doing today?”
    “I’m fine.”
    “No, I mean, how are you doing ?”
    I looked at the sky. “What are you talking about?”
    She pushed my arm. “I know why you turned off your phone yesterday, and don’t pretend you didn’t get my message.”
    “Yesterday? What was yesterday?” I said, looking at the ground.
    “You are such a bad liar.”
    “What?” I said, looking at the sky.
    “C’mon, Wave.”
    “Okay, okay. It sucks.” The day before had been the one-year anniversary of what would have been my wedding. I’d spent it at the movies and then on the couch, alone.
    “Have you talked to him lately?” she said.
    I shook my head. “The last time I saw him was months ago, when I picked up the rest of my stuff from his house.”
    “He wasn’t that cute, you know,” she said.
    “ Now who’s the bad liar?” I said, smiling.
    She laughed. “Okay, you’re right. He was extremely cute. But it doesn’t matter. Your year of mourning is over, right?”
    I looked at her. “Year of mourning? What am I, a black-clad widow in Italy?” Although I was wearing a black fleece and sweatpants and was seriously wishing I had on my black gloves.
    “Just trying to help,” she said.
    I glanced at my watch. “I know you are, and I love you for it. Hey, let’s step it up, okay? I’ve got a ton of work to do before I leave tomorrow.”
    We sped through the rest of our walk, and by eight fifteen I was in the lobby of K.A. Marketing. The two hundred employees who staffed our San Francisco office took up all four floors of a bright white building with high ceilings, dark hardwood floors, brick walls, and funky exposed piping. We had moved in two years earlier and renovated the whole place, so while the architecture was actually really modern, the design was sort of a retro warehouse theme.
    I stopped by the coffee cart in the lobby to pick up a carton of chocolate milk and a chocolate chip bagel. My department, which managed publicity for the sports and entertainment division, had a staff meeting every Monday morning, and they were less painful when I had a sizeable amount of chocolate in front of me. And ever since Mandy Edwards had transferred from our Chicago office a few weeks earlier, painful was the unfortunate standard.
    I walked upstairs and weaved my way through the cubicles to my office. People were slowly trickling in, everyone chatting about their weekends. I put my milk and bagel down on my desk, hung my coat on the back of my door, and walked over to the window to look at the view. Sometimes I think I secretly liked that view more than I liked my job.
    “Hi, Waverly, how was your weekend?”
    I turned around to see Kent Tanner standing in my doorway. “Oh, hey, Kent. It was good, thanks, nothing too exciting. Yours?”
    He shrugged. “The usual. Once you have kids, your weekends are pretty much a blur of cartoons, toys all over the house, barf, and dirty diapers.”
    I smiled. “Mr. Tanner, somehow you always know when I need a nice dose of reality to start my day. Now, are you ready for your first Super Show? It’s a lot different than the technology trade shows. Think you can handle the chaos?” Kent had joined our department a couple months earlier.
    “Are you kidding? Compared to pitching enterprise software, this will be a vacation.”
    “Cool. Let me just check to see if there’s anything important I need to know before the staff meeting.” I sat down at my desk and logged into my e-mail account. “Ahhh, there’s a message from Mandy Edwards to the entire department. Sent on Sunday afternoon, of course.”
    “Of course,” he said.
    I shook my head slowly. “What is wrong with her? Doesn’t she see how transparent the constant ‘from home’ e-mailing is?” A lot of people at our company had