Everything Is Probably Fine

New York Times bestselling author Julia London returns with a story about forgiveness and second chances perfect for fans of The Wedding People and The Husbands. After forty-two years, Lorna Lott is ready to learn where she's going with her life—even if it means revisiting all the places she wishes she hadn't been. It'll be fine. Probably. Maybe.

Lorna Lott has been leaning into the awkward side of things most of her life. Her intensity and drive haven't earned her any friends, but at least her sales team is meeting their quotas. Why should she care that they call her King Kong when her promotion to senior vice president is within reach? Or it was--until she made a mistake that even apology donuts couldn't fix.

Now she's been mandated to attend a thirty-day wellness program, and everything is on the line. If she can't get her low-key rage thing under control, stop her eyes from leaking, and figure out how to be more likeable, she won't get a promotion or raise. Which means she won't be able to buy back her grandmother's house and reclaim the happiness she hasn't felt since childhood.

Cooperating with the program means coming to terms with her past. Mainly, how her older sister's substance abuse ruined Lorna's life--and her many regrets about the way she handled things. With the help of her oddly endearing eight-year-old neighbor and his equally charming father, she throws herself into the process of making amends. But as she begins to accept that there is nothing she could have done to change the course of her sister's life, Lorna faces her most challenging task yet: changing the course of her own.

Lorna Now

They called her King Kong.

Not to her face, of course. In polite company, they said Lorna Lott was a hard nut to crack. One tough cookie. All business, no play.

Behind her back they said something else. Lorna knew this because she had a habit of striding into conversations around the proverbial watercooler. It didn’t take a genius to know that when the conversation came to a dead halt just as you entered, you were the subject. But since she had a bit of genius in her, Lorna knew to slow her steps before entering the break room to catch the whispers and comments.

As best she could tell, the King Kong moniker had popped up after the unfortunate incident during the quarterly sales conference. She’d broken the heel of her shoe by getting it stuck in a grate on the way to work—a classic romantic comedy maneuver without the requisite hunk to save her. No one in the office had or would admit to having a shoe that fit her size 10 dogs. So Lorna hobbled through several presentations, and apparently her hobble gave off a gorilla vibe. Well, she couldn’t help her feet. They matched her five-foot-nine body. Her late uncle Chet used to say she was built like a farmer. “Some of my favorite people are farmers,” he’d add cheerfully.

She also tended to scowl, which probably didn’t help. “I’m not telling you to smile,” her boss whispered at the same sales conference, “but could you look less . . . mean?” Lorna tried. She really did try.

Anyway, they called her King Kong in the break room, and she tried to laugh it off and tell herself that it didn’t matter what they called her as long as they met their sales quotas. But she wasn’t unaffected by the name. She was not an automaton; she had feelings and very much wanted to be liked, even in her role as a sales team leader. She just didn’t know how to get people to like her. She’d been leaning into the awkward side of things most of her life, and now that she was in her forties, it was clear she didn’t know how to be un-awkward.

And there was the whole low-key rage thing. The vague feeling that she needed to clock someone for no good reason. She didn’t like that feeling, and she’d been working on developing a different mindset. She was a frequent visitor to the library, checking out self-help books. Edward, her favorite librarian, had nodded along sympathetically as she explained she needed to learn how to be more likable, and he’d directed her to guides that advised her to smile more, ask questions, and soften her approach with humor. Then when she told Edward she needed to learn how to harness a killer instinct to make more sales, he showed her all the books designed to help her reach a million dollars in sales or climb the corporate ladder. Those advice books tended to be a little more aggressive in their approach—work hard, know your product, don’t give up, persist, persist, slay.

She was very good at persisting, anyway. She was a goal setter. When she had the idea to learn how to row after watching one summer Olympics, she did it, right here in Austin on Lady Bird Lake. Create needle art? The angel on her cubicle wall was her own creation. Sing? She’d absolutely nailed it as an alto in the community choir until Jed Faris took over and turned it into a show choir singing pop tunes. Lorna did not believe that choirs were meant to sing pop tunes.

The point being, Lorna looked tough, acted tough, and knew how to achieve goals. Sure, she could be a little hard on her sales team when they lagged behind the quotas she set, but it was her job as team leader to light a fire under their butts. That she seemed “mad” or “pissed” was just their way of deflecting.

Once, a therapist had suggested she work on being more in the moment and aware of how snappish she could be. Snappish? That hardly seemed fair. Wasn’t everyone snappish at times? Wasn’t everyone subconsciously mad about something? Sure they were—politics, gas prices, extreme temperatures, tornadoes, wildfires, ice storms, barking dogs. Social media, long queues, not enough cashiers. Zoom calls, traffic, poverty, high heels, skinny jeans. More ice than soda, more bun than burger, more noodles than shrimp. There were any number of things on any given day to set off even the saintliest person. Such was the nature of modern times.

But she was working on it. And in the meantime, she was trying very hard to be likable.

So when no one even made eye contact when she came back from lunch, Lorna thought through what might have upset them. It probably had something to do with the sales team meeting she’d convened yesterday. Their cubicles were built around a “discussion pit” made of couches that were too low to the ground and sprinkled with colorful pillows that smelled like mildew. In the center was a scarred table for drinks and pastries. The pit sort of looked like a giant flower. Lorna had gathered everyone together to discuss quotas because, as she liked to say, quotas were set to be achieved, not waved at as they flew by.

She’d indicated she didn’t think they were working smart (she’d read that in a self-help book: Work smart!).

What else had she said? It wasn’t that bad, was it? She was pretty sure she’d said worse in the past and they’d all survived. Why this should put their panties in a twist, she couldn’t say. Except . . . except maybe she’d been a smidge harsh. Lorna was hard on herself, and sometimes she found it difficult to discern where her internal self-flagellation ended and her inappropriate comments during pep talks began. They tended to be the same in theme and tone.

Okay, she’d bring donuts tomorrow. People would forgive a multitude of sins if there were donuts, and even more if strawberry sprinkles were involved. She’d just pulled out her cell to check which delivery service would bring donuts when her office phone buzzed. “Lorna Lott speaking.”

“Good morning, Lorna.”

It was Deb, Lorna’s boss. Unlike some of her colleagues who found their bosses to be insufferable, Lorna really liked Deb. She looked up to her, admired how she’d risen to the top of management with hard work and dedication. That was what got you places—whining did not get you anywhere.

“Could you please step into my office?” Deb asked. “I’d be delighted.” That wasn’t a lie. Lorna popped up and briskly traveled the ten feet to Deb’s office.

Deb was standing behind her desk. She was sixtyish, short and round, with a bowl-shaped head of curly gray hair. She always wore a pair of glasses on her crown and preferred a standard daily uniform, a move that was either genius or insane—Lorna could never decide. Black pants and a black cardigan or blazer. The only thing that varied day to day was the color of her blouse. Today, Deb’s silk blouse was peach colored, with tiny little swans dotting the fabric. Personally, Lorna favored tailored suits. Her self-help books had taught her that suits give an air of authority. Particularly dark colors. King Kong.

“How was your evening?” she asked Deb. They weren’t friends, exactly, because Deb’s large family and many children kept her from socializing outside of work. But they were friendly. They sat together at company meetings and often had lunch together in Deb’s office to talk about work.

“Good, thank you. Shut the door, please.”

Lorna hesitated. Deb never asked her to shut the door, and her trouble meter began to tick. “This must be about that raise,” Lorna said, and chuckled at her joke in a feeble attempt to gauge the seriousness of this door-shutting business.

Deb did not smile. “Have a seat, Lorna.” She gestured to the small, round conference table where they often had lunch. This was not good. Lorna’s scalp tingled with dread. “We don’t need to sit, do we? I know you’re very busy—” “Sit,” Deb said more firmly.

Lorna sat.

Deb took a long, deliberate drink of water, then came around from behind her desk and sat next to Lorna. She sighed. She glanced toward the window, which overlooked several massive transmission towers, and sighed again. “Lorna, Lorna, Lorna,” she said sadly.

Oh no. Lorna’s belly began to somersault. She hadn’t been fired from a job since she was a teen. Quite the contrary—she had worked her way up through employee of the month awards to sales achievement awards. Yet she had an uneasy feeling that something bad was about to happen. Her immediate thought was to head off whatever it was, to correct whatever mistake she’d made before Deb could act. “Is this about the new sales quotas?” she blurted. “I know they’re high, but you don’t win the blue ribbon for going easy.”

“No,” Deb said. “But the quotas are insanely high. We’ve dis cussed that.”

They had, but Lorna knew what her team was capable of. She drew a shallow breath. “Did . . . did something happen at the sales team meeting yesterday?” she asked. “I mean, I know what happened, I was there, but was someone . . . offended?” Again? She whispered in her head.

Deb didn’t say anything but emitted another weary sigh. There was a fine line between assertive and mean, and Lorna had missed the line a couple of times. “I admit, I was a little annoyed that they hadn’t met this month’s threshold.” And she did say something that she knew was bad, but in her defense, she had not directed it at any one person. It had been more of a collective slander. “For what it’s worth, I didn’t call any one individual a moron,” Lorna said quickly. “I said it was like working with a bunch of morons. I didn’t mean to insult them, Deb. I was just trying to be funny and make a point.”

Deb looked dubious.

“Millennials, man, am I right?”

“You’re a millennial, Lorna.”

Right. She kept forgetting that.

“I didn’t call you in here to talk about the sales team meeting, although this admission doesn’t help your case.”

Her case? Well, that tipped her right into a small eddy of anger. Her case should be ironclad. She was the top salesperson at this firm. She pushed them, but it wasn’t like there was no reward for that push. The more sales, the more money they all made. She frowned, trying to think of what she had done wrong so she could fix it. That’s what she did—she fixed things, set everything to rights. Then she went home to her small apartment and ate frozen dinners and talked to her dog and fumed like any working woman in this country would do. Think. “The Auto Zone account,” she said, sitting up. That had to be it. “I had the team stay late last week to get the specs out quicker.” “On the promise of pizza. Which you didn’t order until eight o’clock. People have lives outside of work, you know.” Unfortunately, she didn’t really know. “I’m so sorry. I was attempting positive motivation.” She’d read all about it in her book about hitting a million in sales.

“It’s not positive when they don’t actually get the pizza until well into the night.”

“I’ll make amends to the team.”

“I hope you do. But that’s not—”

“Please don’t say it’s Franklin Industries,” Lorna blurted. She had everything riding on that account. Her promotion. Her bonus. Her raise. Her house.

Deb cocked her head to the side. “Are you okay?” She leaned closer to place her hand on top of Lorna’s, which, Lorna suddenly realized, was curled into a tight fist.

“What? I’m fine.”

“But it looks like you’re crying.” Deb gestured to Lorna’s face. Damn it. She really needed to see a doctor because her eyes had recently started leaking all the time. “No, no.” Lorna grabbed a tissue from the box on the table. “Everything is fine.” Probably. “It’s allergies.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.” She dabbed at her face.

“Okay,” Deb said, sounding uncertain. “I was trying to say that the problem we are having is you.”

More leaks. Lorna dabbed harder at her face. “Me? That’s crazy. I’m fine.”

“What about the email attachment?”

Lorna paused while her brain sorted through a dozen email attachments she’d sent recently. She found nothing offensive.

“Pardon?”

“The email attachment in which you. . .expressed some thoughts.”

She’d expressed some thoughts? What was wrong with that? Her thoughts were pretty basic and mostly about work. Or instructing others to work. Or what was for dinner, or when she could walk her dog, or what the guy who lived above her was doing at 10:00 p.m. on a Tuesday that sounded like a flash mob rehearsal. But she hadn’t put any of that in an email. “Oh dear,” Deb said. “You don’t know.”

“I don’t know anything,” Lorna admitted.

Deb sighed heavily again. She reached for a plain blue folder on the table and drew it toward her. She opened it, flipped through a couple of pages, found what she was looking for, and slid the paper across to Lorna.

Lorna was reluctant to take it but forced herself to look down and read. She didn’t get very far because words started to swim. King Doofus. Most Likely to Get Punched. These words, her words, did not belong in this office. She’d written them in a letter she was composing to her sister. Her sister was her sounding board. Or she would be if Lorna ever sent the letters she typed, printed out, and stuffed into envelopes. But that was neither here nor there, because somehow, Deb had this letter. “I don’t understand,” she said slowly. She looked up from all the terrible words. “This is a letter to my sister. No one else was supposed to see it.”

“Well, you made it un-private when you sent it to your entire team early this morning as an attachment to the Franklin Indus tries specs email.”

Lorna’s heart nosedived to her toes. She felt suddenly sick— she’d been up at five working from home this morning, and both the specs document and the letter had been recently opened on her computer. When she responded to an email from the team about the Franklin project, she must have attached the wrong file. “Oh no.” Her voice was shaking slightly. Her eyes burned and her chest heaved with an emotion that was so hot and toxic she almost couldn’t breathe. “No, Deb, you don’t understand— these were jokes.”

“Your jokes are not funny.”

Well, no kidding, looking at this list now. No matter how hard she tried, she could not be funny. “It’s . . . it’s something we used to do as kids. You know, make up superlatives for people.” Even she knew that explanation wasn’t very helpful. Lorna winced and looked at the page again. How could she have been so care less? She felt the blood draining from her face. And the faint but steady drum of anger that this had happened in the first place. “This is so bad,” she admitted. “I would never intentionally hurt them. Never, Deb. I didn’t mean . . . Listen, I will figure out how to make it up to them. I’ll—”

“Lorna.” Deb handed her another tissue, because apparently her eyes were really leaking. “I think you know you have a problem that needs to be addressed.”

That felt . . . alarming. Did she know that? Maybe a little part of her? “Look, I was careless, and I feel horrible, and I’ve been working a lot lately, you know that, because I really want the promotion to senior vice president for all the reasons we’ve dis cussed, and I let—”

Deb surged forward, placing her hand on Lorna’s again. “As your boss, I’m telling you that you have a problem. Now, I like you, Lorna. But this isn’t the first time we’ve had an issue with something you’ve said or done. It is clear to me that you have a lot on your mind and you need better coping strategies.”

Lorna was shaking her head. Maybe she was shaking her whole body. She felt like she was standing outside of herself, not really absorbing this properly. Not really understanding. She kept a tight control of everything in her life and could not allow it to get out of control. Out of control was when bad things happened. “Are you firing me?” she asked, her voice scarcely above a whisper.

“No,” Deb said softly. “And I don’t want to. You’re really good at what you do and you could go far. But I want you to get help.” “Okay,” Lorna said. “I will get help. But really, I probably only need some sleep.” Even as the words left her mouth, Lorna knew that wasn’t what she needed. Who typed letters to her sister going through the roster of her team? Who spent her birth day picnicking at Zilker Park with just her dog? Who couldn’t get invited to an after-work happy hour to save her life? And Deb, whose opinion she trusted, looked very skeptical. Lorna scooched forward. “I can see how things might look a little . . . disconcerting. I don’t mean to be this way, I swear it, Deb. I want to be their friend. I’m having a bit of difficulty figuring out how.” Deb nodded. “It’s good that you recognize you can be a little . . . much.”

“Cringe, even,” Lorna added helpfully.

“I know you’re a good person, Lorna. But Dirk is not happy. He’s questioning my judgment about you.”

Dirk Kendall was the CEO of Driskill Workflow Solutions. He would have the final say about her appointment to senior vice president and the raise that would accompany it. Not to mention the signing bonus. All the things Lorna needed and had worked so hard to achieve.

“I convinced him to let me help. But, Lorna, you need to get your act together. Fortunately, at Driskill, we take mental health very seriously.”

That was debatable, but Lorna was not in a position to point that out.

“I’m putting you on leave—”

Lorna gasped as if Deb had just sentenced her to death. “—and sending you to our new wellness program. You’ll be entering the day program at Bodhi Tao Bliss Retreat and Spa on the shores of Lake Austin.” She smiled as if Lorna had won a grand prize. As if she should be happy about this turn of events. Lorna knew that place—she’d sold them their workflow software and then laughed bitterly at the thought of all those spa goers walking around in plush bathrobes. That some people didn’t have to work and could lounge around all day made her a skosh furious.

“Their day program is called Leaves of Change, and it’s thirty days.”

Lorna’s mouth fell open. “Are you crazy?”

“I most certainly am not,” Deb said curtly.

“I mean . . . this isn’t like you, Deb. I can’t take that kind of time off. We’re about to finish Franklin Industries, and you know how important that is to me.” That was the sale that would put her over the top. The project that would get her the promotion and the raise and the bonus. The bonus that would enable her to put a down payment on her grandmother’s house.

“Franklin Industries will not be finished in the next month. We are just now developing the proposal.”

But she needed to be here to develop the proposal. This was a disaster. That stupid letter. Lorna straightened, making her spine stiff. That was something else she’d learned in her books— posture mattered. “I understand. But the thing is, I am very good at my job, and the team can’t really function without a leader. Also, I want to go on record and say that I don’t think any of this is necessary. I promise I will make amends. And I will work very hard not to be snappish.”

Deb did not look pleased. “The problem is that I don’t believe you can make proper amends to your team until you address whatever is the cause of your. . .unhappiness.”

Lorna opened her mouth to argue, but Deb held up a hand. “It’s not up for debate. Human resources has already prepared the paperwork. All I need from you is the name of someone on your team who can head things up while you’re out.”

A seismic urge to beg or, conversely, to toss a chair through the window was building in her chest, pushing all the air from her lungs. It was impossible to explain to Deb how important her plans were. She had no other way to achieve her goal of buying her grandmother’s house. Well, except maybe adhering to the terms of the trust her mother had left for her, and that certainly wasn’t happening. Talk about a rage-inducing thought.

Panic like she hadn’t felt in years seized her. She always had a plan. She was always working toward something. That was all she did! She worked. And she tried not to say rude things or get angry with people who let her down, and okay, she needed improvement. But she did not need a wellness program. “So. . .you need to gather your things and sign some papers and speak to your team to get the ball rolling. Okay?” Deb leaned forward in her seat like she was about to stand. Lorna could hardly think to speak. “I don’t know if I would choose the word okay.”

“Listen.” Deb put her hand on Lorna’s again, which was now balled into a fist so tight she was surely cutting off circulation. “It’s going to be all right. You’ll be back before you know it. Take a few breaths and work through things. I know the last few years have been very difficult for you.” She stood and straightened her blouse with the tiny swans, signaling that the meeting was over.

No, Deb, this will not be all right. It will not be even remotely all right. She could feel the cracks spreading across her bubble already.

“Okay,” she forced herself to say, and then made herself stand up too. “Okay.”

It was not okay.