Azaria slept in the next morning.
She needed the rest after second-guessing herself the whole evening prior. She didn't set an alarm, didn't care to check her emails, and didn't open her laptop. The resume was done and submitted, and there was nothing left to do but wait. She had spent the better part of the previous day fixing every line of it to fit Rhodes Industries, reading through their company profile more times than she could count, and now it was out of her hands. Whether they called her back or not was not in her control.
She lay in bed for a while after she woke up, staring at the ceiling with her glasses sitting on the nightstand beside her. The apartment was quiet. Outside, she could hear the distant sounds of the city going about its morning. Car horns, the low hum of traffic, someone's music drifting up from the street below. She let the sounds wash over her without moving.
Had she made a mistake? The question had been sitting at the back of her mind since she hit submit. Rhodes Industries wasn't exactly a small company. She had done her research and everything looked good on paper, but she had thought that about Aldrith Corp too, once upon a time. She had walked into that place believing in the work, believing that effort meant something, and she had given them years. Years of long hours, of going above and beyond, of watching people who didn't work half as hard as she did get passed over the same way she eventually was.
She pushed the thought away and sat up. There was no point in going back and forth about it. She had made the decision. If Rhodes Industries turned out to be the same kind of place, she would find out soon enough, and she would deal with it the same way she dealt with everything else. She would leave and she would find something better. That was all there was to it. Staying stuck in a bad situation had never been her style, and she wasn't about to start now.
She decided to visit her mother. After a long shower and skipping breakfast, she tugged in a simple sun dress and made her way to the parking level.
The neighbourhood where Azaria grew up was a quieter part of the city, far enough from the centre that the noise and pace of things felt like they belonged to a different world. The streets were lined with older trees that had grown tall over the years, their roots pushing up against the edges of the sidewalks. The houses sat close together but not uncomfortably so, and most of the front yards were tidy. Azaria had driven this route so many times that she barely had to think about it, her hands moving on the wheel while her mind drifted.
She pulled up in front of her mother's house just before noon and sat in the car for a moment after she turned off the engine. The house looked the same as it always did. The same cream-coloured curtains in the front window, the same small potted plants lined up along the porch railing that her mother fussed over every other morning. And the porch swing that was changed every few years.
She grabbed her bag and got out of the car, but before she even reached the porch, the front door opened and Genevieve appeared in the doorway, already smiling. She was a small woman with brown eyes and greying hair she kept natural, and she had a way of looking at Azaria that made it feel like no time had passed since they last saw each other, even if it had been more than a month.
"I was wondering when you'd show up," Genevieve said smugly, pulling her into a hug the moment she stepped through the door.
Azaria hugged her back and held on for a second longer. "I needed a day off… everything," she said into her mother's shoulder.
"Then you came to the right place."
The house smelled the way it always did when her mother had been cooking. It was warm and rich, with a hint of something sweet.
Azaria stepped fully inside and pulled off her shoes by the door. Soft jazz played quietly on an old vinyl player in the living room. Jazz was mostly the only music her father used to put on during Sunday afternoons when she was young, when he would sit in his chair by the window with a cup of tea and tell them both to come and rest for a little while.
There was a meat pie cooling on the counter and a tray of cinnamon rolls beside it, the icing still soft. Azaria washed her hands at the sink and without a word began setting out plates and cups. Her mother moved around her easily, the two of them falling into the old rhythm of the kitchen without having to think about it.
They ate at the kitchen table with cups of ginger tea, sweet and slightly spiced, and Azaria felt herself begin to relax a bit.
They talked about small things first. Her mother's neighbour had finally fixed the fence that had been leaning for two years. There was a new cat somewhere on the street that kept sitting on Genevieve's porch and refusing to leave. Her mother had been to a retirement lunch the week before and caught up with an old colleague she hadn't seen in years. Azaria listened and laughed and ate, and for a stretch of time she forgot entirely about the gnawing uncertainty that had followed her out of bed that morning.
Then she told her mother about Rhodes Industries.
She laid it out plainly. She talked about Aldrith Corp too, though her mother already knew that story well.
Genevieve listened without interrupting. When Azaria finished, her mother was quiet for a moment, wrapping both hands around her mug.
"You know I don't know much about any of that," Genevieve said finally. "The corporate side of things. That whole world was never mine. I spent my years in social work and even then I was just trying to do right by the people in front of me. I don't know whatever it is these big companies get up to."
Azaria nodded.
"But I know you," her mother continued. "And I know that when you feel something is right, you know. You've always known. So you try Rhodes Industries, and if it feels right, then it's right. And if it doesn't–" She gave a small shrug. "Then you'll know that too, and you'll do what you need to do. You've never needed someone to tell you when to stay and when to walk away."
It wasn't complicated advice. There was nothing difficult in it. But sitting there in her mother's kitchen with the jazz still playing softly, it was exactly what she needed to hear.
They spent the rest of the day together and they finished the cinnamon rolls. They watched a film in the afternoon, and her mother fell asleep on the couch halfway through it. Azaria turned the volume down and let her rest. She sat there in the quiet of the living room, her legs tucked under her, and looked around at the familiar walls and the old furniture and the photographs lined up on the shelf by the window. Her parents on their wedding day, Azaria at her high school graduation with her parents, the two of them at the beach one summer, her father laughing at something off-camera.
She missed him.
When evening came and the light outside had shifted to the soft amber of late afternoon, Azaria gathered her things, kissed her mother goodbye, and drove home.
She sat behind the wheel and breathed. The uncertainty about Rhodes Industries hadn't disappeared. She still didn't know if she had made the right call, and she wouldn't know until she did. But the weight of it had lifted somewhere between the meat pie and the jazz and her mother's unhurried voice telling her she already knew what she needed to know.
She felt lighter.