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She barely agreed.
* * *
Alba was officially giving me the silent treatment.
I hadn’t heard from her in over four days, and it hadn’t been for a lack of trying. Even Ben was ignoring my messages. She’d gotten her husband to shun me. That was how pissed she was.
By Friday night I’d had enough. She had every right to be mad at me, but we were going to handle it like grownups, damn it! The least she could do was ignore me to my face, though I much preferred it if she yelled. Around fifteen or twenty minutes of that usually calmed her back down.
I showed up at their front door with a box of Alba’s favorite donuts (crème brûlée from this tiny shop on the other side of the city), and a few treats for Olive.
“She’s not home,” Ben lied as soon as he opened the door.
“I could hear her talking before I knocked, dork. Tell her I need to talk to her.”
He hesitated for a few seconds, then threw a glance over his shoulder and stepped outside. The door shut behind him. “Listen. Now’s really not a good time,” he said quietly, pushing a hand through his brown curls. “You should probably come back in… I don’t know. Just give us some space.”
Us. He saidus.
He hadn’t been ignoring me just because of Alba. He was pissed. And it wasn’t until he shifted under the porch lights that I noticed the dark rings circling his eyes, and the way his hair was sticking out on all sides like he’d been running a frustrated hand through it all day.
“You, uh… you okay?” I asked. Had they been fighting again?
“Not really, no.” He shoved his fists into his pockets, tension squirming through his jaw. And then he said it. “She got fired, Ria. Because of what you did.”
At first, I thought I’d misheard him. Because there was no way he meant thatAlbahad lost her job.
Alba, who’d devoted the last four years of her everything and more to Adrien Cloutier.
Alba, who constantly prioritized her work over her own health and sanity and wellbeing. Over her family. Over me.
Alba, who was supposed to go on maternity leave in seven weeks.Paidmaternity leave. For a year.
“What?” I said.
“He fired her,” Ben repeated, his entire body coiled with stress. “With cause. So no package, no severance, no… nothing. She got nothing.”
What the fuck?
The air in my lungs went stale as the reality of what he was saying set in.
“She was supposed to go on maternity leave in less than two months. Does she… is she still…”
“Nothing.”
I blinked, my mind reeling.
It hadn’t been her fault. She hadn’t done anything. It had all been me. I’dbeen the one who’d hit him. I’d made the mess in his office.
“What do you mean he fired her withcause?” I asked, my voice unsteady with panic and anger and… shame. This was all my fault. “Alba didn’t do anything. She wasn’t even there. She didn’t even knowabout it until the video and—”
I cut myself off when the front door opened again, revealing my very pregnant, verytired-looking big sister.
She was a mess.
Her hair was half crumpled into a bun, her makeup-free face weighed down by stress, and her eyes… she must have been crying nonstop for days.
“Hey,” I said, swallowing back the ball of barbed wire scratching at my throat. “Ben told me what happened. I don’t understand. How or why or… you didn’t do anything.”
