I pursed my mouth. "You said it was something you needed."
"It is," he said easily.
"I see you got a new car."
"That's the one I always wanted."
"I remember," I said. "Good for you."
He looked at me as if trying to decide if I was being snarky. "Thanks. So what's new with you?" he asked.
"I've been job hunting, actually."
Warren laughed. An actual laugh, head back and everything. "Good luck with that. You're not qualified to do anything, Iz."
"Please don't call me that." The word "anymore" hung in the air.
But I was drowned out by the ring of his phone. "Gotta take this," he said. "See you later." He walked away, already absorbed in his conversation, which from his wolfish grin, looked to be personal.
I rolled up the window and sat in my dog-food-scented SUV, blinking hard at the steering wheel.
Not qualified to do anything.
Warren was wrong about a lot of things over the years—the popularity of hybrid cars, the viability of NFTs, the fact that he looked good in a mustache.
But this time, I worried he was right.
July 3, Friday
ELAINE HADtexted me a single word that morning—SHOPPING—followed by a location pin to the mall, which from my sister is less an invitation than a summons. Elaine doesn't ask. Elaine deploys.
"I got the promotion," she announced before I'd even gotten both feet inside Macy's. "Regional VP."
"Elaine, that's amazing." And it was. I squeezed her into a hug. My little sister, thirty-seven, single, childless, and now apparently in charge of an eye-popping number of zeros at the largest bank in the South. She practically vibrated with the kind of happiness that comes from a job that texts you accolades instead of, say, a reprimand for a permission slip you forgot to sign.
"Thank you. Speaking of the bank—did you ever send in that application like I told you to?"
I gave her a bright smile. "I did. And I got back a polite response. 'We've decided to move forward with other candidates.'"
"That was AI-generated. Let me put in a word—"
"Elaine, no. Thanks, but I want to get something on my own. Even if it takes a while."
She studied me for a few seconds, then let it go. "Fine. But you should come on the cruise with me and my friends. We can bunk together like when we were kids. There's a swim-up bar shaped like a pirate ship. I saw a video."
"Elaine. I have two teenagers."
"Who are sixteen and fourteen, and who will survive seven days of microwaving their own Hot Pockets. And they have a father, don't they?"
"Their father can't even remember which kid plays soccer."
"Then maybe," Elaine said in a sing-song voice, holding up a sundress against herself in the mirror, "it would be educational for him to find out."
I had a brief, vivid fantasy of Warren attempting to operate our washing machine and decided not to dwell on it. "Anyway, I can't plan anything. I have jury duty Monday."
Elaine made a noise like a tire losing air. "Oh, please. You know how that goes. You fight traffic downtown, circle the garage forty times looking for parking, then sit in a hot room with a thousand smelly strangers for six hours until some clerk comes out and says everyone can go home because the lawyers worked out a plea deal. It's a complete and total waste of time."
"Probably," I said. "But it'll be nice to have somewhere to be that isn't the grocery store."
