Switch (Landry Family 3)
He slams a paper in front of me, shaking my pencil holder. “Here it is. It clearly says ‘line busy/no answer’. Did you bother checking it?”
“I thought I did,” I whisper. I have no idea how I missed that because it’s obvious. “I must’ve picked it up and just filed it.”
“You just cost Ford’s company weeks, Mallory. Weeks. Their offer was predicated on a date—which was Friday. I made that very clear. Now we have to go back through the process of getting it inspected and approved.”
“Graham, I’m sorry.”
He takes a step away from me. “I should’ve done it myself.”
Tears lick my eyes, red-hot bubbles of liquid pooling at the corners. My hand shakes as I try to steady myself. “What can I do? There must be something we can do?”
“I’ll take care of it. You can go ahead and go.” He looks at me as he starts to walk away. “I’ll be working late.”
“Graham, I . . .” I look down at the envelope from Vanessa and don’t know what to do. “You had someone here to see you.”
He looks at me with a gaze of pity. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”
“But I need to talk to you—”
“I have enough to deal with today, Mallory. Whatever you’re dying to talk about will have to wait.” He turns on his heel and disappears in his office.
With tears streaming down my cheeks, pieces of my heart in limbo, I grab my bag. As I’m going out the door, Ford is coming in.
“Hey, Mall . . . ory,” he says, then stepping back out of my way as I rush past.
Graham
“Fuck!” My voice booms over the sound of the door shutting. Reaching up, I tear away at the knot in my tie and instantly think of Mallory and the way she does it for me. That only angers me more.
My eyes pull shut and I try to regulate my breathing. I suddenly know what seeing red means. Everything is pulsing so quickly through me that I’m dizzy.
I don’t fail. I don’t make mistakes of this caliber, ones that cost thousands of dollars and weeks of time. But I trusted her to do it. I thought she understood the importance.
“Hey.” I whirl around and see Ford standing in the doorway. He watches me warily. “What the hell just happened?”
“About what?”
“About what?” he repeats. “About Mallory running out of here practically bawling.”
The look on his face tells me much more than any adjectives he uses to describe her. I’ve never seen him look at me this way, like he’s second-guessing me.
“She was probably crying because I pointed out her fuck-up.”
“I didn’t say she was crying, Graham. I said she was bawling.”
Choking back a lump in my throat, I look at my brother. “I just told her I’d take care of it.”
He shakes his head. “I have a feeling you said a little more than that.” As he walks deeper into my office, he shoves his hands in his pockets. “No one is more upset about this than I am. It’s my company, my bottom line at the end of the day. But there are worse problems to have.”
“I don’t fail,” I say through clenched teeth. Despite my narrowed eyes, my hands shake as I place them on my desk. Her face floats through my mind, the shock written all over her features.
“No, you don’t and you didn’t this time. But you are about to.”
I hang my head.
“I’ve been around the world,” he reminds me. “I’ve seen real problems, real issues, and it makes things like this seem pretty inconsequential in comparison.”
He gives me a second to respond, but I don’t. The anger that was spilling over a few seconds ago wanes, the flames of fury doused with a dose of reality marked by Ford’s words.