Chương 2
Daniel sent the formal offer by email before Emily had finished washing the cereal bowl.
The salary looked enormous until Priya leaned over her shoulder and said, “In Chicago, that is what landlords call an appetizer.”
Emily smiled because Priya was trying to make the moment ordinary.
It was not ordinary.
She read the offer four times.
Then she opened the banking app on her phone and looked again at the six hundred and twelve dollars she had saved.
Priya set two mugs of tea on the counter.
“So.”
“So what?”
“Are you staying here tonight, or are you going back to that house and pretending today was a weird family disagreement?”
Emily stared at the screen.
Her mother had left another voicemail.
Her father had sent a single text.
Come home before you make this worse.
Emily turned the phone over.
“I’m not going back.”
Priya sat across from her.
She did not smile.
“Okay.”
Emily looked up.
“That’s all?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know.”
“Congratulations on leaving the people who locked you in a bedroom?”
Emily’s mouth twitched.
“When you say it like that, it sounds bad.”
“It was bad before I said it.”
Emily wrapped both hands around the tea.
The mug was too hot, but she kept holding it anyway.
“I don’t have clothes.”
“You have the ones you’re wearing.”
“I mean work clothes.”
“Then tomorrow we go to Target.”
“I can’t show up at Harrington Financial in Target.”
Priya gave her a long look.
“You climbed out a second-floor window today wearing drugstore flats.”
Emily glanced down.
One of the flats was already rubbing a blister into her heel.
“That’s fair.”
“You’ll survive a polyester blouse.”
They sat there while evening gathered against the apartment windows.
Priya’s upstairs neighbor vacuumed for an unreasonable length of time.
Somebody in the alley dropped a bottle.
Emily’s phone continued to buzz at irregular intervals.
She did not answer.
At ten-thirty, after Priya went to bed, Emily lay awake on the narrow sofa with a folded blanket under her head.
The apartment smelled faintly of garlic from dinner.
A streetlight painted a pale rectangle across the ceiling.
She had expected freedom to feel clean.
Instead it felt like forgetting something important at the airport.
At 11:06, Lauren texted.
Mom says you need to come get your stuff tomorrow.
Emily read the message twice.
Then another appeared.
Also Noah keeps asking where you are.
That one landed differently.
Emily closed her eyes.
Noah had nothing to do with any of it.
He was three and liked trucks, blueberries, and the same book about a sleepy bear read six consecutive times.
Emily had taught him how to say spaghetti badly enough that he still called it skabetti.
She typed, Tell him I love him.
Lauren replied almost immediately.
Then come tell him yourself.
Emily deleted the conversation.
The next morning, she returned to the Carter house with Priya beside her and Priya’s cousin Marcus following in his pickup truck.
Marcus was six foot four, worked nights at a hotel, and had been told only that Emily needed help moving boxes.
Robert opened the front door.
He looked past Emily at Marcus.
“Who’s that?”
“My friend’s cousin.”
“I asked who he is.”
Marcus raised one hand.
“Marcus.”
Robert stared at him.
Marcus stared back without apparent interest.
Emily stepped inside.
Linda stood at the dining room table folding Noah’s tiny shirts with stiff, furious movements.
She did not look at Emily.
Lauren sat on the couch in leggings, scrolling through her phone.
Her Miami trip, apparently, had disappeared.
Noah ran toward Emily.
“Aunt Em.”
Emily crouched before she could stop herself.
He threw both arms around her neck.
The bruise on her knee protested as she knelt, but she held him anyway.
“You went bye-bye,” he said.
“I did.”
“You come back.”
Emily looked over his shoulder at Lauren.
Lauren’s eyes had lifted from the phone.
Emily swallowed.
“I came to get my things.”
Noah frowned.
“You stay?”
The question broke something small and precise inside her.
She kissed the side of his head.
“I can’t, buddy.”
Lauren stood.
“See?”
Emily’s shoulders tightened.
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.”
Lauren folded her arms.
“Noah misses you.”
“He has a mother.”
Linda slammed a folded shirt onto the table.
“That was unnecessary.”
Emily stood.
“What was unnecessary was locking me in my bedroom.”
Robert appeared from the kitchen carrying coffee.
“We are not doing this again.”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“You walk in here with some stranger like we’re criminals.”
Marcus shifted awkwardly near the doorway.
“I can wait outside.”
“No,” Priya said.
He stayed.
Robert pointed toward the stairs.
“Take whatever you bought yourself.”
Emily looked at him.
“What does that mean?”
“It means furniture stays.”
“I don’t want the furniture.”
“Television stays.”
“I bought the television.”
“With what?”
“My money.”
“You were living here rent-free.”
Emily nearly answered, then stopped.
There was no version of this argument that ended with Robert admitting anything.
She went upstairs.
The bedroom door stood open.
The key was still in the lock on the outside.
Emily stared at it.
Priya, behind her, noticed.
Neither of them said anything.
Emily took the clothes she had purchased, her books, her laptop, framed college photographs, toiletries, and a small wooden box containing tax documents and old birthday cards.
She left the bed.
She left the dresser.
She left the television.
She even left the desk chair she had bought secondhand because arguing over forty dollars suddenly seemed exhausting.
Robert watched from the hallway while Marcus carried boxes downstairs.
“You’re going to regret this,” he said.
Emily taped a box shut.
“Maybe.”
“You think that job is going to save you?”
“No.”
“Then what exactly are you proving?”
Emily tore another strip of tape.
“Nothing.”
Robert’s face changed slightly.
He had prepared himself for defiance.
Indifference gave him nowhere to put his anger.
May you like
“You always were stubborn.”
Emily picked up the box.
