I continued to wait for it to load. If there was one thing that my father sucked at as CEO, it was putting some of our technology budget to developing a functioning app.
It finally loaded. I opened the email folder in the app and read the subject.
“FW: New Solar Farm.”
“Elizabeth!”
I read what my father had said.
“FYI.”
That was so typical of my father. No pleasantries, no short message, no “Love,” signature. Just the bare minimum. The “minimum effective dose” to get his point across.
And then Tara yanked the phone from my hand and threw it into the back seat.
“Hey! What the hell!”
“We said no phones while we were out today!”
“It was Dad messaging me! I had to answer it!”
Tara’s nostrils flared, but then she let out the air slowly and deliberately.
“Let’s just relax, OK?”
“How the hell can I relax? The solar farm construction is supposed to start tomorrow, and that was probably what that was about. So—”
Tara scrunched her eyebrows at me. I hated when she did this. I hated when it looked like she was questioning my judgment and making me feel like the inferior one.
“You’re still worried about that?”
“You’re not?” I said, my voice rising. “How in the world could you not be? Those assholes almost killed you!”
“Which is exactly why I’m not worried about that,” Tara said. “There is no way that our father, even as distanced and cold as he can be, is going to send us back to that office after that happened.”
I sighed. I wished I agreed with Tara. Unfortunately, as the sister who made more attempts to connect with our parents, I knew better.
“You know that was what the email I was responding to was talking about, right?”
Tara stuttered before she went silent. She would probably say the board was made up of a bunch of greedy pricks and that our father couldn’t fight, but I knew better. I knew, more than anyone in the world, even my mom and my sister, that our father understood when to play the part of heroic executive and when to use his workplace capital to blame the board for something that he agreed with.
Our family was not a family as much as it was a political entity.
“Just read the email out loud once and then let’s move on.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Ugh, your back seat is so dirty.”
“I’m sorry it’s not perfect,” Tara said with an eye roll, the humor in her words drastically reduced.
I found the phone, reopened to the email, and started reading bits and pieces.
“‘Employees of NME, As you all know, one of our own was nearly the victim of a crime this past Thursday. We take safety seriously…’ Blah, blah, blah. Let’s see… ‘Starting on Monday, we will have security manning the building from five p.m. to seven a.m. to ensure the protection of our property and employees.’ So cute how they put property first.”
At least I won’t have to come in to a filthy place again.
“‘All employees are expected to vacate the building by five p.m. unless given specific requests otherwise. Said employees will be given security.’ Blah blah blah. ‘We take your concerns seriously and will not allow any danger to come to you.’ So, yeah, bunch of corporate speak.”
Tara grimaced and shook her head. We may have been the same age, but Tara seemed like she had grown up more in the last month and a half than I had. I wasn’t complaining; I would have preferred not to get entangled with a biker and gone through all the emotional heartache that she did.
