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"""The lock clicked from the hallway while Emily Carter was fastening the second button of the navy blazer she had bought with three months of tutoring money.She stopped with one hand at her waist and listened.For a second, she told herself Linda had bumped the knob while carrying laundry.Then Emily crossed the room, turned the handle, and felt the deadbolt hold.“Mom?”No answer came immediately.Emily tried the handle again, harder this time.“Mom, open the door.”Her mother’s slippers scuffed against the hallway floor.“Lauren’s flight got moved up,” Linda said through the door.Emily stared at the cheap brass knob.“What does that have to do with me?”“You’re watching Noah.”The digital clock beside Emily’s bed read 7:16.Her interview at Harrington Financial was at nine-thirty in the Loop, and the commuter train she planned to catch left in thirty-six minutes.“No.”Linda made a sound Emily had heard all her life, a short exhale that meant Emily had somehow exhausted her without being given permission to speak.“Don’t start.”“I’m not starting anything.”Emily pulled the door again.“I have the interview today.”“We know.”The answer frightened her more than an excuse would have.Emily pressed her forehead against the door.“You know?”Robert’s voice drifted from farther down the hallway.“Oh, for God’s sake.”Emily straightened.Her father approached with the heavy, impatient steps he used when a household problem had become interesting enough for him to dominate.“It’s one interview,” he said.“It’s the final interview.”“There will be others.”“No, Dad, there might not be.”Robert laughed.It was not a large laugh.That made it worse.“You’re twenty-two years old, Emily.”“Yes.”“You’re living in my house.”“I know.”“You eat food I pay for.”“I buy my own groceries.”“Oh, excuse me.”His palm struck the door once, not hard enough to threaten her, only hard enough to remind her whose door it was.“Maybe put that on your résumé.”Emily looked toward her desk.Her leather portfolio waited beside a printed train schedule, two sharpened pencils, and a packet of notes about municipal bond exposure she had reviewed until nearly two in the morning.She had practiced answers in the bathroom because the exhaust fan covered her voice.She had ironed the blazer after midnight so Lauren would not ask to borrow it.“Please,” Emily said.She hated how quickly the word came.“I need to leave in twenty minutes.”“Your sister needs help.”“Then why isn’t she asking me?”Almost on cue, Lauren’s voice floated from downstairs.“Because I’m trying to get to the airport.”A suitcase wheel bumped against something.Noah began crying.Emily shut her eyes.Her nephew’s cries came in offended bursts, loud and breathless, and under any other circumstances she would have gone downstairs automatically.That instinct had been useful to everyone except her.“Lauren,” Emily called.“What?”“You knew about today.”“I know about a lot of things, Em.”“Open the door.”“I don’t have the key.”“Mom does.”There was a pause.Then Lauren said, “I’ll bring you something from Miami.”Emily almost laughed.“What?”“I don’t know, sunglasses or something.”“Lauren, open the door.”“I said I don’t have the key.”“Then tell Mom to.”Noah’s crying grew louder.Lauren muttered something Emily could not make out.Robert answered it with a chuckle.The casualness of that sound changed something.Emily had spent years believing her family’s treatment of her came from emergencies, misunderstandings, bad timing, Lauren being overwhelmed, Linda being tired, Robert worrying about money, Noah needing someone, everybody simply assuming Emily was available because Emily had always managed to be available.But they had locked the door.They had known.They had discussed it before she woke up and decided that the easiest way to settle the question of Emily’s future was to remove her from it.“Dad,” she said.“What now?”“If I miss this, I’m not getting another interview with them.”“You don’t know that.”“Yes, I do.”“You always think everything is the end of the world.”Robert’s voice moved closer.“You’ve got some college degree and suddenly you think you’re too good to help your family.”“That isn’t what I said.”“It’s what you mean.”“No.”“Then prove it.”Emily said nothing.Robert waited.When silence failed to give him the surrender he expected, his voice sharpened.“You know what your problem is?”Linda murmured his name.“No, Linda, she needs to hear this.”Emily looked at herself in the mirror above the dresser.Her hair was pinned neatly at the back of her head.She had covered the small stress breakout on her chin with concealer.The woman in the mirror looked prepared for a life nobody outside the bedroom seemed willing to believe existed.“You want everyone to treat you like some big success,” Robert said.“I never asked for that.”“You walk around here with your little folders and your little business clothes like you’re better than your mother and sister.”“I have a job interview.”“You have fantasies.”Emily’s fingers loosened around the doorknob.Robert gave another humorless laugh.“You’re a servant, not a success.”Linda did not correct him.Lauren did not correct him.Downstairs, Noah called for his mother.Emily heard Lauren say, “Mom, can you grab him?”The clock changed to 7:21.Something inside Emily became strangely quiet.“All right,” she said.Robert seemed caught off guard.“All right what?”Emily walked away from the door.“You’re right.”Silence followed.Then Robert said, “Finally.”Emily took her leather portfolio from the desk.She slid her résumé inside, followed by her transcripts and the notes she had prepared for the interview.Her wallet contained forty-three dollars in cash.Her debit card held six hundred and twelve dollars from tutoring and weekend shifts at a campus library she no longer worked at.Her phone charger was plugged into the wall.She pulled it free and stuffed it into her purse.Linda tried the knob from outside.“Emily?”“I’m changing.”“Well, hurry up.”Emily kicked off her heels.Her bedroom window opened over the garage roof.She had climbed onto that roof once at fifteen to retrieve a badminton birdie and had been grounded for a week.The memory arrived with ridiculous clarity because she could still hear Robert shouting from the lawn that she would crack the shingles.Emily pushed the window upward.Cold spring air touched her face.She looked down.The roof sloped more sharply than she remembered.Beyond its edge stood the blue recycling bin and the green garbage bin beside the driveway.Her stomach tightened.From downstairs came the front door opening.Lauren called goodbye.Emily climbed onto the sill.“Emily?”Linda rattled the bedroom handle.Emily lowered one bare foot onto the shingles.“Emily, what are you doing?”The second foot followed.The roof felt gritty beneath her stockings.Her skirt pulled tightly around her knees as she crouched.Linda struck the door with her palm.“Robert.”Emily began sliding.The shingles scraped her left hand.She grabbed for the gutter and heard metal groan.The bedroom window flew higher behind her.Her mother screamed.“What the hell are you doing?”Emily did not answer.She reached the lower edge and looked down.It seemed much farther from there.Robert appeared at the window beside Linda.“Get back inside.”Emily lowered herself until her arms were straight.“Emily, I’m serious.”“So am I.”She let go.Her right foot struck the recycling bin lid and punched through it.The bin tipped sideways.Emily hit the driveway on one knee, rolled against the garbage can, and sat there for half a second in stunned silence.Pain shot through her leg.Above her, Robert shouted something about breaking her neck.Emily looked at the torn knee of her stockings.Blood was already forming beneath the skin.The absurdity of worrying about her interview clothes nearly made her laugh.Then the front door opened.She stood.Linda came onto the porch.“Get back here.”Emily picked up her purse and portfolio.“Emily.”She walked toward the sidewalk.“If you leave,” Linda shouted, “don’t bother coming back.”Emily stopped.For twenty-two years, home had been the fixed point around which every argument eventually circled.Tuition was expensive, so live at home.Chicago rent was ridiculous, so live at home.Lauren needed help with Noah, and Emily was already living at home.Robert needed invoices entered for his logistics company, and Emily was already living at home.Linda had migraines, Lauren had plans, Robert worked hard, Noah was little, and Emily was there.The sentence from the porch should have terrified her.Instead, it sounded almost like permission.Emily turned just enough to see her mother.“Okay.”Linda blinked.Robert had reached the porch.“What did you say?”“I said okay.”She walked away before either of them could turn the word into another negotiation.At the corner, she heard Lauren’s car accelerate past.For one stupid second Emily expected her sister to stop.The silver SUV continued toward the main road.Emily began running.Her heels knocked together in one hand.Her portfolio was trapped beneath her arm.Every few steps, pain stabbed through her injured knee.At 7:49 she reached the station and saw the train waiting beyond the platform.The conductor was already checking his watch.Emily ran harder.“Hold it.”A man near the doors looked toward her.The warning bell sounded.“Please.”The conductor caught sight of her and kept the door open.Emily stumbled aboard.“Rough morning?”She bent forward, trying to breathe.“You have no idea.”He glanced at her bare feet.“I’m starting to get one.”Emily laughed once despite herself.Then she moved into the carriage and found an empty seat beside the window.Her phone began vibrating before the train had left the platform.MOM.Emily declined the call.It rang again.DAD.She declined that one too.Lauren sent a message.Are you seriously doing this right now?Another followed before Emily could decide whether to answer.Mom is freaking out and Noah is screaming.Emily stared at the screen.She typed, I have an interview.Then she deleted it.Lauren already knew.Emily turned the phone facedown on her thigh.Outside the window, the neighborhood began slipping backward.Her hands would not stop shaking.A woman across the aisle noticed the blood on Emily’s knee and offered her a packet of tissues.“You okay?”Emily accepted them.“I fell.”The woman looked at Emily’s bare feet, torn stockings, blazer, and portfolio.“Big day?”Emily pressed the tissue against her knee.“I think so.”By the time the train reached downtown, there were seventeen missed calls on her phone.Emily bought the cheapest pair of black flats she could find from a pharmacy near the station because one heel had cracked during the fall.She changed her stockings in a restroom stall, cleaned the blood from her knee, and discovered a scrape across her palm.At 9:24 she entered the marble lobby of Harrington Financial.The receptionist looked at the pharmacy bag sticking from Emily’s purse.Emily quietly pushed it deeper inside.“Emily Carter for Daniel Reeves.”The receptionist checked her screen.“You’re early.”Six minutes had never sounded so beautiful.Emily sat beneath a wall of framed market awards and tried not to think about where she would sleep that night.At 9:32, a gray-haired man in shirtsleeves came through the glass doors.“Emily?”She stood.“I’m Daniel Reeves.”His eyes dropped briefly to the scrape on her palm.“Everything all right?”Emily looked at the hand.There were a hundred possible answers.“Yes.”Daniel studied her for a moment, then opened the door.“Come on back.”The interview lasted seventy-three minutes.Nobody asked about her family.Nobody laughed when she spoke about risk models.Nobody told her that ambition was vanity dressed in business clothes.When Emily disagreed with Daniel about a distressed municipal portfolio, he leaned back and asked her to defend her reasoning.She did.He disagreed again.She defended it again.By the time she walked outside, the city had become bright and noisy with lunch traffic.Her phone battery was at twelve percent.There were twenty-nine missed calls.One voicemail from Linda began, “You have humiliated this family.”Emily deleted it halfway through.She sat on a concrete planter outside the building and called her college friend Priya.Priya answered on the fourth ring.“Hello?”“Can I stay with you tonight?”A pause followed.“Emily?”“Yes.”“What happened?”Emily looked up at Harrington’s windows.“I left home.”Another pause.Then Priya said, “Okay.”Emily swallowed.“Just for tonight.”“Okay.”“I mean it.”“Emily.”“What?”“You can stay.”Emily pressed her lips together.Across the street, a man was arguing with a parking meter.A bicycle messenger nearly clipped a pedestrian.Someone laughed outside a sandwich shop.The whole city seemed offensively normal.“Thank you,” Emily said.Her phone buzzed with an incoming call from home.She declined it.At 4:47 that afternoon, Daniel Reeves called.Emily answered from Priya’s kitchen while eating cereal because she had forgotten lunch.“We’d like to offer you the analyst position,” he said.Emily set the spoon down.For several seconds she could hear only Priya opening and closing cabinets behind her.“Emily?”“I’m here.”“Good.”Daniel laughed softly.“I was worried we lost you.”Emily looked at the scrape across her palm.“No.”Her voice came out steadier than she felt.“You didn’t.”
