Belonging

Naomi requested the interview through the front door, the boring way — a media inquiry about "workplace culture initiatives at Castellan Family Foods," the kind of soft pitch that got calls returned within the hour.

Odalys Fenn met her in a glass-walled conference room that smelled like eucalyptus, wearing the specific calm of someone who had done a hundred interviews and lost none of them.

"We're proud of our retention numbers," Odalys said, sliding a printed folder across the table — a folder, Naomi noted, not unlike the one she imagined had been slid toward her father. "Average tenure at Castellan is eleven years. Industry average is four."

"What happens to people right before a pension bonus vests?"

The pause was small. Professionally small. "I'm not sure I follow."

"October ninth. Cost exposure review. Does that term mean anything to you?"

Odalys's manicured hand went still on the folder. "I think this interview might be better suited for our legal and communications team."

"I think you just told me it's real."

"I didn't say that." But her voice had changed register, dropped half a step, the way people's voices do right before they start choosing every word like it costs money.

Naomi didn't push further. She'd learned that too — the second silence mattered more than the first question. She thanked Odalys for her time, gathered her bag, and left through the same glass door she'd come in.

She was three steps down the corridor, badge clipped to a lanyard some assistant had handed her at the front desk, when she heard Odalys's voice through the not-quite-closed conference room door behind her — low, fast, already on the phone.

"...she's not writing about culture. She used the exact phrase. I don't know how she— just get legal on the line, now, before she's off the building."

Naomi kept walking, kept her face perfectly still, and didn't stop smiling at the front desk on her way out.

She'd been made. Which meant the clock had just started.