I curl up against the wall in the corner of an empty terminal, rolling my suitcase in front of me as a makeshift shield and call her back.
“I expected you to call me back sooner,” she says once the video call connects.
“So you video call?” I mutter, my eyes scanning the airport instead of looking at her directly.
We’re best friends, and I guess that’s a good thing since we were born only eleven months apart. Chelsea was the loner, whereas I clung to Dad, needing to find love where I could. He didn’t have much time to spare since he was always busy running Redmond Enterprises, so I found interest in what he was interested in, and there my love for consulting was born. As things go, I look like Mom, dark hair and eyes, and Chelsea, much to her dismay, looks like our father, light eyes and sandy blond hair. She says I’m mysterious and sultry. I argue with her, complaining that I’m plain and unapproachable. How I wish that were true after last night.
“Where are you?”
“The airport. I told you I was coming home. Blackbridge didn’t work out. I think I’m going to have to renege on what I told Dad.”
“That’s going to be a problem.” She sighs, her pretty face frowning, and I can tell she has bad news.
“Just tell me. It’s not like my day can get any worse.”
She scrunches her nose.
“That bad?”
“Dad was upset that you were upset,” she begins, and my heart starts to race.
I’m expecting the worst. Pain lashes at me from the inside. My mother is hard. The one that has no feelings, the uncaring one. The one who probably regrets ever having children. My dad is a workaholic, and that probably has more to do with avoiding my mother and having to interact with her more than anything.
If he hurt himself because of something I said, I’ll never be able to forgive myself.
“Is he—”
“He told Mom about the affair.”
“He what?”
Chatter near me comes to a halt, but I don’t bother to look away from my phone to look up at the people I know are now staring at me.
“Are you kidding?” I hiss at my sister.
I didn’t think he had it in him. Now that she’s telling me this, I realize I never expected him to actually do it, although I felt like she deserved to know.
“Not a joke,” my sister deadpans. “And that’s not the crazy part. He packed his things and moved in with Margaret.”
My mouth is hanging open. I can see it in the tiny image on my phone, but I just can’t bring myself to close it.
“And what was Mom’s reaction?”
“I wasn’t there, Leighton.” She rolls her eyes, her tone dry as if she’s relaying news about a discrepancy on her taxes rather than the crash and burn of our entire family.
“This is bad.”
“Worse than bad. Mom shut down Redmond Enterprises.”
Sound ceases to exist around me. I no longer hear people chattering. The baby that was crying disappears. The roar of the planes taking off fades away. Chelsea’s face starts to blur. But it isn’t until I drop my phone do I realize that the world does in fact keep on spinning despite my world imploding.
“Leighton? Leighton?”
I pick the phone back up, swiping at my eyes with the back of my hand. “She did what?”
“Shut the entire thing down. She went into the office, gave everyone an hour to clear out their desks, handed off envelopes with severance packages, and made them vacate the building.”
“Everyone?”
“Every last person.”
“Over a hundred people work there.”
“I know.”
“Technically, I work there.”
“I don’t know if you got a severance. You know she’s a bitter woman. She probably thinks you knew the entire time. She sure as hell called me and accused me of knowing.”
“What did you say to her?”
She scoffs. “I don’t answer the phone when she calls. You know that. She left all of that on voicemail.”
“She hasn’t called me. When did all of this happen?”
I wipe at my eyes some more, but the tears won’t stop falling. People are going to stare at me when I have to board my plane, and that thought makes me cry even harder. The idea of crawling back to my dad, effectively telling him that I was going to have to be okay with his affair because I couldn’t make it on my own was going to be bad enough, but now I literally have nothing to go back to.
“Yesterday. I just got off the phone with Dad. I called you straight away.”
“Mom hasn’t called me. Dad hasn’t called either,” I mutter.
“He knows you’re mad at him.”
And I am. I’m so incredibly mad at him. I blame him, but I blame Mom, too. They’re so miserable, a terrible couple, and so much of this could’ve been avoided if they had made a decision to split years and years ago. Yeah, my life would’ve been on a different trajectory, but at least I wouldn’t be thirty years old having to reboot my entire life.