Wrong sister, Right man

chapter two

I didn’t sleep. I want to say I spent the night crying or breaking things, because that would at least be a night with a shape to it. What I actually did was sit on my bathroom floor with my back against the tub and type a message to Ryan, delete it, type another, delete that, and do this eleven times. Around four in the morning I tried to send the twelfth, and my phone told me the message couldn’t be delivered. He’d blocked me. He’d had the nerve to get there first.

At six I showered, put on yesterday’s rage like a coat, and drove to my parents’ house.

My father’s study smells like cedar and old coffee and the particular kind of silence that comes from a man who’s been worried for years and has learned to keep it under his tongue. He was behind the desk when I walked in, still in last night’s shirt, and Mr. Hale, our family lawyer, was in the chair by the window, sucking on a peppermint like it was a cigarette.

“She’s gone,” my father said.

I stopped in the doorway. “Who?”

“Your sister.” He held up his phone as if it were evidence. “She sent me a message at two this morning. ‘I can’t do it. I’m sorry. Don’t look for me.’ Her phone is off. Her apartment is empty. The doorman says she left with two suitcases and a man in a green jacket.”

I’d bought that jacket. I almost laughed again, and I managed not to.

“A man,” my father said, with the kind of weary disgust he usually saves for tax auditors. “Do you know anything about this?”

This is the part I’m not proud of. I knew everything. I could have told him in one sentence, and I wanted to, not for revenge exactly, but because carrying it felt like holding a pan I’d taken straight off the stove. But I looked at him, gray around the mouth, and I knew what would happen. He’d be furious at Vanessa, and then he’d go straight back to the contract, because the contract was the only thing in the room he knew how to be afraid of. I’d have handed him my humiliation and he’d have put it in a file marked inconvenient.

“No,” I said. “I don’t know anything.”

Vanessa had never once in her life said “I’m sorry” in a text. That should have been my first clue that she hadn’t written the message in a state of distress. She’d written it like a person closing a door quietly on her way out of a restaurant without paying.

Mr. Hale cleared his throat. “I’ve been through the contract again, Richard.”

“And?”

“And the Blackwood agreement is very specific about the money. Eleven million, released in three tranches, the first on the day of the wedding. It’s very vague about the bride.” He unfolded a paper, though he clearly knew it by heart. “It says ‘a daughter of the Carter family.’ Not Vanessa. Not ‘the younger.’ A daughter.”

The room went very quiet. I could hear the old clock in the hall.

It took me a second to understand why they were both looking at me.

“No,” I said.

“Mia—”

“No. Absolutely not. I’ve never met the man. He’s…” I tried to remember everything I’d heard. “He’s the Iceberg. He fired someone whose mother was in the hospital.”

“You don’t know that’s true,” my father said.

“You don’t know it’s not!” My voice cracked, and I hated it. “Dad, I came here this morning because my sister humiliated me, and I wasn’t going to tell you how, and the first thing you do is look at me like I’m the spare tire.”

He flinched. That was the first honest thing I’d seen on his face in weeks. “That isn’t—”

“It is, though.”

Mr. Hale had the grace to look at his peppermint.

My father stood up slowly and walked to the window. For a moment I thought he might say something real. Instead he said, “If this contract falls through, we lose the Eastgate plant by March. Then Harlow Street. Four hundred people, Mia. Some of them have worked for this family longer than you’ve been alive.”

I knew the numbers. That was the worst of it. I’d built half of those spreadsheets myself.

“I have a plan to save those plants,” I said. “I put it on your desk four months ago.”

“Mia.”

“You said later.”

“I never said it was bad.” His voice dropped. “It’s a good plan. It’s a very good plan. It would also take two years and money we don’t have, and the bank gave us sixty days.”

I stood there and thought about how quickly I’d gone from the girl whose boyfriend had cheated on her to the girl they were about to sell.

Here’s what I did next, and I’m still not sure whether it was strength or just spite wearing strength’s clothes. I took a long breath, and I said, “I’m not agreeing to anything.”

My father turned, and I could see the relief starting to build on his face, which I’d have to stop right now. “I’m not agreeing to anything,” I repeated. “But if I even consider this, there are conditions. The first one is that you read my proposal. All forty pages. Not the first one.”

“Of course.”

“The second is that I run the retool. Not you. Not a consultant. Me. If I’m going to be the price of this, then I’m going to be the person who makes it worth paying.”

Mr. Hale had stopped chewing. “That would have to be negotiated with the Blackwood side.”

“Then negotiate it.”

My father looked at me for a long moment, and for the first time in my life I had the strange feeling of being seen by him as a person with leverage instead of a person with feelings. It was not entirely comfortable. It was not entirely bad.

“There’s a meeting this afternoon,” he said finally. “Three o’clock, at Blackwood Tower. Part of the original arrangement. The family representative signs the share transfer, ten percent of Carter Textiles to Blackwood Group as a show of good faith. Vanessa was supposed to do it.” He rubbed his eyes. “Go and sign it, meet the man, and tell him your sister is unwell. It buys us a week.”

“A week for what?”

“For you to decide.”

“And if I decide no?”

He didn’t answer, which was an answer.

“I’m only going to sign a piece of paper,” I said, mostly to myself.

“That’s all,” said Mr. Hale, a little too fast.

I drove home, because I needed a different blazer. The navy one, the structured one, the one I wear when I need people to take me seriously. I stood in front of my mirror and practiced my face again, the way I’d practiced it for the surprise party that never existed. A calm face. A professional face. The face of a woman who was absolutely not about to walk into the building of a man she’d already decided to hate.

It wasn’t quite right yet. I fixed it anyway.

Then I went to meet the Iceberg.