Chương 9
“Yes.”
“Wouldn’t that have been weird?”
“Incredibly.”
“You would have been my CEO.”
“Yes.”
“And my sister.”
“Yes.”
Chloe grimaced.
“I probably would’ve quit.”
“That would have simplified my life.”
“See? Still smug.”
“A little.”
Chloe folded the towel.
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
Claire knew what she meant.
She looked toward the dark window above the sink, where their reflections stood side by side.
“I was afraid.”
Chloe turned.
“Of what?”
“Of exactly what happened.”
“That I’d get fired?”
“No.”
Claire searched for language that did not sound rehearsed.
“That all of it would become family property.”
Chloe waited.
“My work,” Claire said. “The board process. The promotion. I wanted one thing that didn’t immediately become a comparison or a discussion about what everyone else needed.”
Chloe looked down.
“I would’ve been jealous.”
“I know.”
“You don’t have to say it that fast.”
“You asked for honesty.”
“Maybe slower honesty.”
Claire smiled.
Chloe leaned back against the counter.
“I am jealous.”
Claire said nothing.
“Not of the office.”
“No?”
“Okay, the office is ridiculous.”
“It’s too big.”
“Your desk looks like it belongs to a Bond villain.”
“That has been noted.”
“But mostly…” Chloe rubbed the towel between her fingers. “You know what you’re doing.”
Claire laughed.
Chloe frowned.
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
“You walk into a room and people assume you belong there.”
Claire looked at her sister.
“No. They assume I belong there now.”
“What’s the difference?”
“About fifteen years.”
Chloe considered that.
Claire continued.
“I spent my first year at Harrington afraid someone would realize I didn’t understand half the acronyms.”
“You?”
“Yes.”
“You love acronyms.”
“I learned them out of fear.”
“That’s deeply annoying.”
“I agree.”
For the first time that night, Chloe looked directly at her without anger.
“I thought things were easy for you.”
Claire looked toward the living room.
“So did Mom and Dad.”
Chloe followed her gaze.
“Yeah.”
They stood together in the kitchen, not reconciled, not fixed, but no longer performing the roles they had brought into the room.
Upstairs, a floorboard creaked.
Robert coughed in the living room.
A commercial began loudly on television.
Chloe folded the dish towel again even though it was already folded.
“I should’ve asked you about the job.”
“You didn’t know I was CEO.”
“I knew you worked there.”
“Yes.”
“I could’ve called.”
“You could have.”
“I thought you’d tell me not to apply.”
“I might have.”
Chloe glared.
Claire lifted a hand.
“You asked.”
“Why?”
“Because mixing family and work is a nightmare.”
“Excellent prediction.”
Claire smiled.
Then Chloe said, “Would you help me with the Rainier interview?”
Claire’s smile disappeared.
Chloe saw it.
“Not like—call them. I mean help me practice.”
Claire thought about the question.
The old version of their relationship offered two easy answers.
Yes, because Claire was supposed to be the competent one who solved problems.
No, because Chloe had already been helped too much.
Neither answer felt right.
“I can practice with you,” Claire said. “I won’t contact them.”
“I didn’t ask you to.”
“I know. I’m being clear.”
Chloe rolled her eyes.
“Fine.”
“And if they ask about Harrington?”
“I tell them what happened.”
“Without making yourself sound worse than you were.”
Chloe blinked.
“That sounds like Dad.”
“It isn’t. Accountability doesn’t require self-destruction.”
Chloe looked at her for a moment.
“Okay.”
Claire picked up her coat from the chair.
As she passed the dining room, Robert looked up from the dark television screen.
The game had ended.
“Leaving?”
“Yes.”
He nodded.
Claire waited.
He looked toward the stairs where Diane had disappeared.
“Your mother will come around.”
Claire slipped one arm into her coat.
“I’m not sure I need her to come around.”
Robert frowned.
“What does that mean?”
“I need her to decide what she thinks. I don’t need you to manage it.”
His face closed slightly.
Claire expected an argument.
Instead he looked down at the remote in his hand.
“I did that a lot, didn’t I?”
Claire stopped.
“What?”
“Managed things.”
“Yes.”
He rubbed his thumb over one of the buttons.
“When you girls were little, your mother worried about everything. Chloe would cry and you wouldn’t. So we dealt with Chloe.”
Claire listened.
“You never seemed to mind.”
“I minded.”
He nodded slowly.
“I see that now.”
The words were so small that another year Claire might have dismissed them as insufficient.
They were insufficient.
They were also real.
Claire put on the other sleeve of her coat.
“Goodnight, Dad.”
“Goodnight.”
She drove home without music.
The floating bridges shone ahead across the dark water.
At one red light, she checked her phone.
Chloe had removed the original posts.
A new one had replaced them.
My brief employment at Harrington Global ended after I violated company security procedures during onboarding. I still believe the termination conversation was handled poorly, and an independent review agreed there were process concerns. It also upheld the employment decision. I posted before I had fully confronted my own responsibility. I’m leaving this here because accountability should apply to me too.
Claire read it twice.
Then the light changed and someone behind her tapped the horn.
She put the phone down.
“Okay,” she said to no one.
Two weeks later, Chloe came to Claire’s apartment on a Wednesday evening carrying takeout noodles and a printed copy of her résumé.
Claire opened the door.
“You printed it?”
“My laptop battery died.”
“You can charge laptops.”
“The charger is at Mom’s.”
“You own one charger?”
“Please save the judgment for the mock interview.”
Claire let her in.
They sat at the kitchen island.
For ninety minutes Claire asked questions.
Why Rainier Creative?
Tell me about a campaign that failed.
Describe a disagreement with a supervisor.
What did you learn from your experience at Harrington Global?
Chloe’s first answer to the last question lasted four minutes and contained the phrase institutional proportionality.
Claire stared at her.
May you like
“What?”
“You sound like a hostage reading a statement written by a labor attorney.”
