It was November. I was still working at RC Willey. And I was smugly gloating that I would not be working the obscene Black Friday sale as a cashier. I had been assigned a dream shift: four easy hours, manning the door, checking receipts as people left through the flooring department exit.

Four hours. Standing. Smiling. Judging.

The day before Thanksgiving, I was in the flooring office doing my thing when one of the cashiering assistant managers appeared, holding a money bag and drawer.

They needed me to sign them out.

“Excuse me?” I said, “What are you talking about?”

It turned out several cashiers had recently quit, and my old boss Barbara had asked my current manager, Mike, if I could cashier for the holiday. A twelve-to-fourteen-hour shift of hell. He agreed.

No one bothered to tell me.

Until now.

I protested. Loudly. I had taken a pay cut for months specifically to avoid this scenario.

This was not an accident. This was a lifestyle choice.

I was not about to step in—or step up—because Barbara couldn’t retain employees.

I was told I could work Black Friday as a cashier, or I could be out of a job.

So, I quit.

It took a couple of months, but I found a better job. Full time, Monday through Friday, and holidays off.

I got a call for a job interview as a payroll processor.

I did not remember applying for this job. It sounded like something I wasn’t qualified for and definitely not bold enough to pursue. But I went.

And for reasons known only to God, they hired me.

The company had started as an insurance business. The owner brought in his sons. Then more sons. Then sons-in-law. Eventually, he opened a payroll branch so everyone could suckle at the teat of the family cash cow.

They partnered with a payroll company in California, which supplied clients. We supplied cheap Utah labor.

It was a small operation. Lola was the manager. Susan was the part-time processor. They hired me and one other girl—complete newbs—and showed us the ropes, just enough to hang ourselves.

There were… questionable practices.
Involving federal forms, scissors, tape, and a photocopier.
And a confidence that suggested this was not their first felony-adjacent arts-and-crafts project.

I declined to participate and did things the long, correct way. This did not make me popular.

It turned out I was very good at payroll. It was mostly keying numbers—something I’d trained for my entire retail career. It ran on an ancient DOS program, which did not intimidate me because I am apparently eighty-seven years old at heart.

Once I learned the menus, I flew.

The only thing I struggled with was garnishments. Every check required a separate form showing earnings and calculations, written in legalese that made my eyes cross. I never fully understood it and had to take it to Susan every time.

The office sat downwind of an open-air sewage treatment facility. On hot days, I gagged while processing payroll.

It was also a Utah County “family” company, which meant they prayed. At work events. Like the Christmas party, when someone blessed the food.

Again: gagging.

Now, when I said earlier that I had been “nothing-ing” TJ, that wasn’t entirely true. I would still occasionally look him up online. He was an Air Force pilot, after all. There could be news. I had hopes.

Nearly two years after leaving him, I randomly thought of him at work. Since I was already sitting at a computer—with the dangerous combination of curiosity and free time—I Googled him.

The first hit was a Target wedding registry.

It didn’t occur to me to be jealous, I was confused. What was he doing registering for wedding presents? He already had everything from the first round.

Then my brain screamed: I should warn her.

And then came the problem-solving montage:

What would I even say?

How would I make her believe me?

Why would she believe me?

She’d probably assume I was the bitter ex-wife and ignore me.

Or worse—tell him. And then he’d contact me, and I’d have to deal with that emotional hangnail.

I worried all day. Felt awful. And eventually decided to do nothing. She probably wouldn’t believe me anyway.

The next day, my phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Hi,” a woman said. “My name is Jaqueline. I’m married to TJ. I understand you’re his ex-wife?”

I exhaled a breath I apparently had been holding for two years.

“Yes,” I said.

Also—married?

Apparently, I’d missed that detail. They’d been married nine months.

“I just wanted to ask,” she said, “if you would tell me what happened when you were married.”

I stood up, walked outside, and sat on a concrete step like this was a Very Special Episode of My Life Is Getting Weird.

“Yes,” I said. “I can do that. It won’t be very nice.”

“That’s okay. I just want the truth.”

So I told her. Everything. Without exaggeration. Without editorializing. Just facts. How we met. How we got engaged. The wedding night. The control. The cruelty. The divorce. Him showing up afterward with a shit-eating grin, expecting to be welcomed into my parents’ home.

It took twenty minutes. She didn’t interrupt once.

When I finished, she said, “Thank you. I just wanted to see if it was the same.”

It was.

“Except things have escalated a bit,” she added. “I need to figure out my next steps.”

Then she hung up.

I went back inside and tried to work like this was a normal Tuesday.

She called later that week and asked if I would be her emotional support person.

I said yes.

She called often. She told me everything—her fear, her confusion, her grief. She had converted to Mormonism for him. Her family had all but disowned her. She kept saying, “I don’t know what to do.”

I told her what I could. Don’t fight for furniture. Or cars. Or dishes. Everything is replaceable.

Except your life.

If I’d had a little more courage, I would have driven to Washington and extracted her myself.

Then I got a call from an unknown number.

It was Jaqueline’s sister-in-law.

Jaqueline was in jail.

Here’s what I was told: TJ had come home, and—as was his habit—checked her phone history. He saw my number. He confronted her. He demanded to know how she got my number—she’d told him she had gotten it from his phone. But she was not allowed to look at his phone. She was not allowed to talk to me. I would “turn her against him.”

He threw her phone in the toilet. She tried to retrieve it and scratched his arm.

He picked her up and threw her against the wall.

Then he called the police.

And reported her for abuse.

She was arrested.

And was spending the night in jail.

I was horrified.
Helpless.
Livid.

Days passed with no word.

Then Jaqueline called.

She knew what to do.

She filed for divorce.

She got out.

Months later, she called one last time. She told me she was rebuilding her life. She had gone back to her home state. Found a new job. She also told me she hadn’t left the church—and bore her testimony to me. Since I’d helped her escape a terrible situation, she wanted to help me escape what must be my personal hell – disbelief in the church.

She said she would help me find the Lord again.

I said, “Thanks—I’m good.”

And hung up.

She never called again. That was fine. I gave her support to get away from an abusive marriage. We only ever had a villain in common. Our relationship had no need to continue.

TJ married again. Then again. Then again. Divorces. Children. Engagements.

I never spoke to those women.

I wonder how many of them Googled him first.

Why couldn’t he have died in a plane crash? It would have saved a lot of heartache.

Speaking of crashing and burning—that’s what happened to the payroll company.

I worked there three years. Toward the end, everything unraveled. One of the owner’s sons spent a lot of money buying a new payroll software that never worked. We worked nights and weekends and lots of overtime, trying to make it function while rumors circulated that they couldn’t cover our payroll.

Then we were called into a meeting.

One of the other sons had been arrested trying to flee the country with stolen client money. Securities fraud. Wire fraud.

The company changed its name. Website. Phone number. Emails. Trying to distance itself from the scandal in the news.

They did not tell the clients.

When they could no longer reach us, clients assumed we’d closed up shop.

It was obvious we would soon.

I put in my notice, but I wasn’t going to rage quit this time. I gave them six months-notice. I figured that would be enough time to help them get the new software running, and I could help train my replacement. I was as considerate as fuck.

They accepted my notice.

Then escorted me out of the building.

I felt zero surprise when they went out of business later that year.