Page 40 of See You at the Sunset

Jia kept an eye on Jared as he exercised. He was blind, and though Clementine, his service dog, was obviously more thancapable of making sure Jared was safe, Jia liked watching his steady pace and the dog faithfully moving beside him.

She let out a deep breath, the feeling of satisfaction flowed through her lungs.

“Jia, honey, do you need some more sunscreen? I got some here in my bag.”

Jia looked up to find her grandmother in the doorway of the community center, a red-and-pink floral swimsuit on with a cute yellow sarong wrapped around her waist. What a stunner. She’d had her roots touched up, and an effervescent glow radiated from her skin. Her Mimi was back.

“I’m good, Mimi. Thanks. I brought extra,” she said, raising the tube of sunscreen that lay by her side.

“Okay. Well, don’t stay in the sun too long. Your skin is too precious. You don’t know it now, but you’ll regret it when you’re my age.”

“I should be so lucky looking like you do at your age, Mimi,” Jia called back.

“Well, I put in enough years with my ten-step Korean skincare regimen. It better look good,” she called back. “I’m heading home. See you later. Oh, Jia, before I forget, the contractor who did my fantastic kitchen remodel left a message on the home machine. He’d like you to call him back. Said there was some question with the invoice. Sounded important.”

Jia looked up at her grandmother, but she seemed unbothered. In fact, the smile on her face made it very clear to Jia that all she cared about was that she had a brand-new kitchen island. She trusted Jia with the rest. The last thing she wanted to do was cause Mimi any stress. But the last time she’d talked to the contractor, everything was on track and all invoices had been paid up to date. This was odd.

Jia had gotten a couple estimates for Mimi’s kitchen remodel and had chosen the one who was neither the most expensive nor the least. But he had great references and could get the job done in a couple days. Mimi couldn’t be without use of her kitchen for too long, so that was a selling point.

Jia was kind of nervous overseeing his work and the budget. But she’d managed costs and receipts and payments in her previous job.How’d that end up for you?Jia asked herself in her head, suspiciously in her father’s voice.

Jia’s heartbeat sped up, and she found it hard to breathe. She felt real trauma from being fired from her last job over a mistake, one she wasn’t convinced had entirely been her fault. In fact, the more Jia had thought about her termination, the more she believed it shouldn’t have happened the way it had. And if she wasn’t so happy where she ended up, she might have done something about it.

Who was she kidding? She was powerless against the big guns of the Bakerson’s Group. And frankly, she wasn’t interested in rehashing it all or even thinking about anything from those days. Except for maybe Henry Shin.

Jia had been thinking a lot about him lately, and she wasn’t sure what to make of that.

Jia picked up her phone and walked to the picnic table shaded by a big red umbrella. She took a seat, pulled up the number for Martin, their general contractor for Mimi’s renovations, and pressed Call.

“Hello.”

“Hi, Martin. It’s Jia Chung. I got your message about some error with the invoice? How can I help?”

Jia liked Martin. He seemed like an upstanding kind of guy. But she’d been told by some of the residents that no contractorwas entirely trustworthy. She didn’t want to believe that, but she had proceeded with a tiny bit of caution nonetheless.

“Yeah, Jia, hey. So I was auditing the papers and looks like the marble for the kitchen island wasn’t included in the invoice. It’s gonna be seventeen ninety-nine plus tax. I gave you a bit of a discount because of the countertops. Can you get me payment for that by the end of the week?”

Eighteen hundred dollars? Jia had carefully budgeted out an additional bathroom renovation for Mimi’s house based on what they’d spent on the kitchen. This would screw everything up. How could Jia have missed this? She went through the invoice line by line. The total cost even equaled what Martin had originally estimated. She remembered seeing everything there and accounted for before sending the check.

Didn’t she?

“Martin, I need to get home and look over the invoice again. I’ll call you later, if that’s okay,” Jia said. She hustled back over to her lounge chair and began packing up her things.

“Sure thing, Jia. Give me a call when you can. But sooner than later. I gotta pay my marble guy,” Martin said.

“Will do. Bye.” Jia hung up the phone. “Jared, do you have a lot of laps left to go?”

“Just about done here, Jia. You can take off. Clementine will make sure I get out okay. Don’t worry.”

Jia hesitated. She wanted to stay. But if Jared said he’d be okay, she didn’t want to doubt him or baby him. He knew his limits. Just as she put Mimi’s old sundress on over her bathing suit, she saw Jared carefully step out of the pool, Clementine by his side.

She smiled their way, grabbed her bag, and headed home.

Jia looked through all the papers lying haphazardly on thecoffee table. It was a mess, but it was Jia’s organized chaos. She knew this was the only place she kept the renovation stuff. Jia grabbed the invoice on the top of the pile and began going through each line item.

“Whatcha looking for, sweetie?” Mimi asked.

Jia hesitated. She didn’t want Mimi to know she might have fucked up the budget and they might be an additional eighteen hundred dollars in the hole and that might change all their plans and Jia might just be a royal screwup after all. But it was no use trying to keep anything from Mimi’s prying eyes.