When she logged in to her SunlightCorps email, her eyes traveled straight to a message from Lorena titledHoliday Fundraiser Totals.With a shaking breath, she opened it.
Her jaw dropped, her eyes widened, and she picked up her phone, dialing a number she should have deleted but thankfully, procrastination won the day.
“Hello?” asked a groggy voice. “I thought I blocked this number.”
“Dade—are those numbers for real?”
“What numbers?”
“The fundraising totals!”
There was a shuffle on the other end. She could picture him sitting up, disentangling from his sheets. “Uh, I mean, if it’s the email from Lor, yeah. Real enough, y’know, if you ascribe to objective reality as a concept.”
“But it’s so much money! I told off the audience! And then I panicked, and I ran, and…”
“Sure, but it was about more than you, Rowan. There was an entire team of people out there. Yes, your unexpected heel turn into insult comic didn’t help things, but that doesn’t mean the entire night was a fail.”
The statement left her silent.
He barked a laugh after a moment. “You’ve been beating yourself up this whole time, haven’t you? Thinking you fucked it all up?”
“Pretty much,” she admitted.
“Look, as your ex, this is the last time I’m giving you free advice. That thing you do where you think everything’s all on your shoulders? You should really cut that shit out. Taking on too much blame when things go wrong isn’t unfair to you, it’s unfair to all the other people it infantilizes.”
She was stunned for a moment, finally replying, “That…is really good advice. Thank you.”
“Thank my therapist. Anyway, I’m going back to sleep now. See you in a couple of days when we figure out what to do with this pile of money. Maybe we can’t do as much as we wanted to, but we sure as shit can do something. And that’s not nothing.”
“You’re right,” said Rowan. “It isn’t.”
She had barely said good-bye before the call went dead. But it was just as well, because the last thing he’d said sent the wheels in her brain turning.
Only her father was still home, drinking a mug of coffee and working on a puzzle at the dining table: a vintage postage stamp featuring a Santa drinking cocoa by the fire.
“Morning,” she said, kissing the top of his head. He reached up to pat her arm. “Mom already out?”
He nodded. “It’s a big day. She wanted to let you sleep in.” He looked up from the puzzle. “Your plan hasn’t changed? I’m still driving you to the airport?”
Rowan hesitated but nodded. “I need to go back.”
She retrieved a mug of harsh coffee and filled it with milk, which curled and spread to lighten the drink to a pale golden color. As it cooled, she noticed a white envelope on the counter, her name written on it in elegant, flowing script.
“Dad?” she asked. “What’s this?”
“Oh,” said her dad, “it was in the mailbox this morning. Wasn’t there last night.”
It was from Gavin, she was certain of it. His handwriting was unmistakable. She tapped it against the counter.
She would read it later, when all their business was through. It had been too hard to get to a place where she felt ready to do this, and it wasn’t worth risking whether the contents of the letter could destabilize her. Her thoughts strayed down well-worn paths, imagining all the worst things he might have written about her.
That power had revealed the worst in her; that deep down, she was self-serving and callous, and that she did not deserve love, trust, or companionship.
No.She pushed back. That was a story. A story she had been living with for a long time, so it would take time, and practice, to stop telling it, but she would do that work.
It was possible she wasn’t going to like what was in this letter. It was still better to wait. But it wouldn’t be anything that extreme.
She tucked it into the pocket of her high-waisted trousers and smoothed down its wrinkles, then took a seat opposite her father. Pieces of puzzle lay scattered across the table, organized into tidy piles based on general shape, each one a fragment of broken linework and color. Unassembled, they were nothing but abstract impressions; unified, they had meaning. She slid one of those pieces around on the table for a minute before she could finally bring herself to ask the question that burned at the back of her throat.
