Empty

The cries began at 8:55. 

Truly had started her second week at the company the same way she had started her first week at the company: entering her office precisely thirty minutes before her call time of 9:00 am. As she meandered through the common areas, locating, brewing, and holding a cup of coffee that  she never drank, so she could note unobtrusively who came in at what time, and with whom.

This Monday morning was the same, until it wasn’t.

Truly stood near the kitchen island, stirring the coffee in her mug. From around a corner, one of her fellow junior associates walked briskly toward two of their colleagues, tears streaming down her face. 

“She’s gone.”

“She’s never here on time, much less early.”

“Everything… everything in that room, is gone.”

Truly watched the trio walk down the hallway. As more team members arrived on the floor, she followed the investigatory triumvirate to the scene of the alleged crime.

“I told you, look!”

From a few feet away, Truly could see that the plaintiff’s case was proven. One office, in a row of otherwise well loved, lived in offices, was bare. Stripped of any evidence that anyone had ever inhabited the small area, much less run a consultancy out of there for years.

The sobbing woman was comforted by her two friends, whose demeanors had morphed from dubious to curious to terrified in a single minute.

“Maybe she…” The sentence was never completed.

When one of the managing partners came into view, the sobbing stopped. Truly’s colleague wiped any remaining tears from her face before she and her friends headed for their own offices. “No one ever leaves the company.”