Life didn’t become perfect overnight. It just became steady. She still drank gas station coffee sometimes. She still folded her laundry on the bed. She still answered the phone when her niece called. But the heavy weight in her chest was finally gone. She built something that actually belonged to her. She kept moving forward.
"You really thought they’d keep you around once the audits hit, right?" she laughed in the breakroom on a rainy Tuesday, sliding my termination papers across the stained laminate counter like yesterday's mail. Her diamond tennis bracelet caught the overhead fluorescent light as she watched me crumble. She had no idea I’d been recording every whispered lie for three months.
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