The Mystery Woman

Robert Pritchard paused as he stood assigning duties to his assembled social workers in preparation for the day. It was the usual hasty meeting addressing problems the social workers had raised in the early morning assembly and adjusting the schedules where there’d been a no show for the day due to sickness. Their programs for the day had been preassigned and, they were on the app, supplied by the scheduler for the week but there was always the need to deal with issues they’d faced the day before and find someone to fill in where there was an unplanned no show.

Rob as he was fondly referred to had fielded questions and made notes to follow up where there’d been need for further actions on the clients they served. It was all becoming a familiar routine for Rob as he’d been in this position for six months after working as a government employed social worker for three years but had made a huge impression with administration with his work ethic and organizational skills so that when this supervisory position became vacant he was urged by his fellow workers to apply for the position and after going through the competitive interview with others applying for the job and passing the online psychological and other tests was confirmed in his supervisor role. His fellow workers were delighted to have him there as he was empathetic and pulled out all stops to support them in their work.

He’d paused briefly while the Human Resources officer Mildred Ryan had ushered a stranger into the room and sat with her in the back seats until Rob had finished his duty assignments for the start of the day. The social workers filed out quickly glancing at their watches and heading for the basement in pairs to go to their assigned tasks in small cars supplied by the government department.

There’d been some unfortunate incidents where social workers had gone to their assigned addresses singly in this part of the city now under Rob’s supervision so after much protracted begging from the government and union threats it was finally decided it was better to concede to the union rather than have everyone on strike with the resulting turmoil in the community they served. Elections were coming up and the ruling party was not anxious for this to become an issue during campaigning for the election which they hoped to win and stay in power.

When the room had cleared Mildred Ryan made her way to the front with the recruit.

“Rob this is our latest recruit Daniella Bowen, and she’s cleared all the pre interview tests and gone through the final interview with administration. They voted to employ her as a temp yesterday so as mentioned to you last week, we hope you’ve assigned the time to spend with her today as part of the orientation process. She needs to be introduced to the reality of hands-on work in our part of town. She’s had the app installed on her phone which includes policies and expectations as well as the scheduling calendar and I spent yesterday afternoon going over these with her. You said you’d be partnering with her this week, so she gets to know the area we work in and some of the clients. I’ll leave her with you now as I must get back quickly for the first of my appointments for the day. We will look forward to your usual evaluation report at the end of this week to see if she can be made permanent.”

Mildred turned and quickly returned to her office.

Rob looked at Daniella and something in the back of his mind told him this young woman looked familiar. His mind worked overtime trying to determine where he may have come across her in the past. She was the mirror image of a girl he’d had a crush on in High School but at that time of his life he’d been introverted and not willing to approach any girl because of the fear of rejection. She kept to herself at school and avoided socializing with the other students outside of school hours. But that girl’s name was Darlene Brown and he’d been intrigued by her because she was obviously white but delivered to school each morning by either a prosperous looking black man or black woman. Obviously, this could not be that girl because HR had listed her as Daniella Bowen, and they did exhaustive background checks on anyone they hired in this government service. What a strange coincidence as they could easy be twins, he thought. Obviously, years had passed by, and all people change over time, but the resemblance was amazing still.

Daniella waited patiently as Rob thought this through pretending to be gathering papers together to account for his delay in addressing her. He looked up soon and smiled.

“Welcome aboard Daniella. Let’s head to my office to get to know each other then we head for the city and assigned visits to some of our clients. You will be my partner for this week and next week you’ll be scheduled with someone else for each day after that.”

They spent a half hour in the office. Rob started by giving some of his background and experience in this work and Daniella gave a guarded quick review of her education and experience smiling at him and studying him to try and gauge what kind of person he would be as a work partner. She did have experience in this line of work and had some bad experiences which made her cautious.

As they talked about the work ahead and he explored her likes and dislikes in the process of attending to social work Rob continued to study her.   He remembered the way his high school crush walked, the expressions on her face as she answered questions raised by the teacher. This had to be her but why the change of name? As a test he mentioned his school days at Richmond High School and observed her tense at the mention of that name, but she recovered quickly and returned to the confident way she presented herself now. Rob was certain. This was Darlene Brown, and she’d obviously changed her name, so he decided not to embarrass her by probing further into her background. But he smiled as he remembered how much he’d idolized her from a distance from those years long ago. Then it struck him. Obviously, she must have married someone called Bowen and that would account for half of the mystery to solve.

“Daniella it’s time for us to get out on the road. We have eight places to visit today and that’s the average. Some of them are a joy to visit and some of them are difficult so I hope you are familiar with that part of social service from your previous years of work.”

Daniella laughed.

“Believe me I know all about difficult clients Mr. Pritchard so it will be hard to shock me, but I made the change to this service to see a different set of clients and forget some of the difficulties in handling my previous job.”

“Daniella, we don’t get too formal in our department. Everyone will expect you to call them by their given name rather than surname as that makes for a happy group who support each other. So please call me Rob like everyone else does.”

Daniella inclined her head appreciating the invitation to be less formal and began to relax. She’d thought about making a change in her job location for a year now as apart from some difficult situations in the slums the administration structure in her previous work had been toxic and sometimes with pressure from clients and her administration she’d gone home really stressed out. It seemed things would be much better here.

“Thank you, Rob that makes me much more relaxed to commence work here knowing that.”

Rob was impressed as he watched Daniella at work. He allowed her to take the lead and by the time the morning was complete he was ready to write a positive evaluation without waiting a week but knew he had to follow the rules. He looked at his watch.

“We have an hour and a half before the next client in the afternoon. Your lunch will be provided by me today so do you by any chance happen to like Mexican food as there is a Mexican restaurant close by with good parking and I can thoroughly recommend it.”

Daniella looked at him cautiously. Did this man know something more about her than he’d let on or was it a coincidence he’d chosen Mexican for this meal?

“Sí, me gusta la comida Mexicana.”

It had kind of slipped out in Spanish as she’d thought about Mexican food which she loved, and her eyebrows raised wondering if he understood, and she was ready to repeat herself in English but saw him smiling broadly and he replied in accented Spanish which was obviously part of his elective language course at high school and not his native tongue. Spanish and English had been interchangeable in her home in her bringing up years.

“Entonces me alegro de que lo hagas porque también es una de mis comidas favoritas.”

“Rob laughed. Sorry about my bad pronunciation as it was an elective language I took at school, and I had no one to practice on outside of class. But it helps to know Spanish as many of our clients are not very proficient in English.”

Daniella reverted to English.

“I’m looking forward to lunch then Rob but are you sure I can’t split the bill with you? I’m sure the government doesn’t give free lunches.”

To be continued.

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