“Amy, I’d like to talk to you outside,” I tell her, and I’m already out in the hallway when she comes out with a huge smile on her face. I don’t think she realizes how angry I am. Is she that clueless? I don’t even beat around the bush. “Amy, we are going to have to let you go.”

Her smile fades and in its place is the leer. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“It means that you’re fired,” I tell her. “It means that you take your stuff and don’t come back.”

“But why?” she asks, trying to act as if she’s hurt by all this.

“Well, just off the top of my head. You are rude and condescending and aren’t a nice person.” I take a deep breath. “What I’m doing here is helping the kids, and it’s helping the community. It’s called giving them a chance and not judging them. It’s called being a decent human being.”

“This is bullshit.” She starts to throw a hissy fit, and as my sisters would say, a tantrum. “I have given this everything I have.” I swear she stomps her foot. “You can’t fire me.”

“Oh, but I can,” I inform her, “and I just did. I started this foundation when I was nineteen years old. I saw my family do things like this when I was just a kid. My brother-in-law has the biggest foundation I’ve ever had the privilege of being a part of, and I want to have one just like him. I want people to have nothing but amazing things to say abut my foundation, and having you represent me and my foundation the way you have is not okay.”

“This is not the end of me,” she says, pushing past me. Going into the office, she grabs her purse and then comes out. “You are firing me without cause. I’ll be contacting a lawyer.”

“You do that,” I tell her, and she storms out. Putting my head down, I look at the phone in my hand with still no word from her. I walk back into the meeting, and I don’t even know what we discussed after that because the only thing on my mind was Caroline.

Chapter Eight

Caroline

“I’m tired, Mom.” I hear from beside me as we sit on the bus, making our way home. To say that today has been a giant disappointment is the understatement of the year. “Are we almost there yet?” he asks, putting his head on my shoulder, and I just nod, looking outside.

The two-hour commute has turned into almost three hours and counting since the first bus broke down, and then it took over thirty minutes to fix. “We should be home soon,” I say, trying to keep the defeat from my voice.