Mr.
Harris stood just inside the automatic doors with the folder from headquarters tucked under his arm.
For a few seconds, nobody spoke.
Jenna still held her phone in front of her.
Mrs.
Whitman stood near the bread aisle, one hand curled around the strap of her purse.
The thin smile she had worn when she walked in was gone.
I looked from Jenna’s phone to the folder.
“What did they find?” I asked.
Mr.
Harris did not answer immediately.
He glanced toward the front registers, where my new manager had quietly stepped back to give us room.
Then he nodded toward a small seating area near the store’s front window.
“We should talk somewhere we’re not blocking customers.”
That was Mr.
Harris.
Even in a moment like that, he noticed how the store was moving.
We sat around a small table meant for customers drinking coffee.
Jenna stayed beside me.
Mrs.
Whitman remained standing until Mr.
Harris pulled out the final chair.
“You asked for this conversation,” he told her calmly.
“You should hear it.”
“I didn’t ask for anything,” she said.
“No,” Jenna replied.
“You just came here looking for Mary.”
Mrs.
Whitman’s eyes moved to the phone.
“What exactly is on that?”
Jenna looked at me.
For the first time, I understood why she had been so nervous when she stepped into the office a month earlier.
The morning Mrs.
Whitman accused me at the register, Jenna had been working nearby.
She had taken out her phone after hearing Mrs.
Whitman begin another one of her comments about part-time workers.
She had not filmed customers.
She had not planned some dramatic confrontation.
She had simply been tired of hearing things happen and then watching them disappear into silence afterward.
“I started recording after you came over to Mary’s register,” Jenna said.
Mrs.
Whitman’s jaw tightened.
“You recorded me without permission?”
Mr.
Harris lifted a hand.
“We are not going to turn this into an argument about Jenna.”
Jenna tapped her phone.
The audio began.
The screen itself faced downward on the table.
There was nothing for us to watch.
We only heard voices.
Mr.
Alvarez saying, “Mary, they should put you in charge of this place.”
Then Mrs.
Whitman.
“In charge? Of what, exactly? Missing coupons and misplaced cash?”
