Free Captured Again by L.L. Akers Page A

few women there, but the guys on the floor and in the trucks had been respectful of her from the beginning. Several of them had played basketball with Jake and would have never flirted with his wife, even before the accident. They had become protective of her, even pushing management to give her an extended leave to grieve. She’d been guilty of using that time to wallow in self-pity and sit for hours a day on her swing, weighed down to it by guilt and the need to feel close to Jake.
    When she’d returned to work, she hadn’t been herself. For the first few weeks, she cringed each time someone would ask about Jake. First she couldn’t answer; she would just cry and walk away, locking herself in the bathroom and sometimes heading straight out the door toward home to find her escape under the blankets, away from the real world. After a while, she found herself shooting off blunt answers like, “He didn’t make it.” She would be constantly amazed at the shocked and bewildered look she received back and had thought to herself, How could everyone not know? This is a small company after all. Didn’t they have some type of meeting to discuss it before I came back? Apparently they should have. It would have made it less awkward for everyone.
    After a few of those encounters, it seemed everyone except the guys on the floor—the ones that actually knew Jake—avoided her like the plague. She felt sure they were as uncomfortable talking about it as she was, and that made it easier for her anyway. She didn’t want to think about it or talk about it anymore than she had to. Now even the guys on the floor looked at her funny each day she walked in, almost examining her with their eyes, if only for just a second, before they spoke to her. And sometimes they didn’t speak; one look at her and she seemed to scare them away. But they’d all been kind, if not a little quiet, waiting on Gabby to get it together. Several of them even helped, in their own way, to distract her when she’d find herself alone at her desk, staring at the outside window, not seeing anything beyond, letting her eyes get lost in the glass, losing huge gaps of time.
    One of the guys would eventually pop into her office, breaking into her silent world of grieving, and get her attention, snapping her back to work. She knew they kept an eye on her through her other glass window, the one that overlooked the floor, taking turns in creating some lame question or problem, trying to help, but unknowingly bringing her back to the cruel reality of her life. They were a good group of guys. She appreciated their patience in waiting for her to snap back into shape, and if not for them, she wouldn’t have been able to stay focused long enough to perform the basic functions of her job.
    She’d taken this job for a temporary paycheck so she wouldn’t have to return to the French company where she’d been nearly terrorized by a sociopath, one who nearly drove her to the precipice of death’s door. But she’d decided to stay. It was home here. And what she enjoyed most about it was it was nothing like the last one. No accounting. Mostly personnel and payroll duties, timecards and benefit administration. And it was casual dress—no more skirts or dresses for her; she could dress however she wanted, and typically that was denim and pearls.

A fter everyone had grabbed a donut, she shooed them back to work and went into her office to pull the small bouquet of flowers from her bag to brighten the room. This was to be her new start—a new beginning. She glanced up at the calendar.
    She stared hard at it, wondering how time had passed so quickly—yet so slowly—since the accident. Something niggled at her brain... trying to capture her attention or remind her of something. She couldn’t wrap her head around this... something. The harder she tried, the more her mind and body protested. She stood there staring, and thinking in circles, until she felt her façade starting to