AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter One
Thirty-one days until Christmas
As usual, the last thing that went in the suitcase was the Post-it.
Change is the essential process of all existence.—Mr. Spock
Cara plucked it off the mirror in her bedroom and set it on top of her toiletry bag. She wasn’t sure why she always just laid it on top of everything when the rest of her stuff was so meticulously packed, clothing and shoes and notebooks nestled together as snugly as a game of Tetris. She supposed it was because she liked opening her suitcase at the other end of her trip, in a hotel room in Milwaukee or Madrid or Miami, and having it be the first thing she saw. But one of these days, an overly aggressive TSA agent was going to select her for a random screening and the Post-it would get lost in the shuffle.
Which would be fine. It was just a thing. A visual representationof a sentiment that existed independently of its depiction. She could write those words on a new Post-it any time. It wasn’t even sticky anymore—it had to be inserted into the mirror’s frame to stay up—and the ink was faded. She’d thought, over the years, about going over it with a Sharpie, but she kind of liked the way the emerald ink she’d used as an eighteen-year-old had faded to a dental-office mint. It reminded her how far she had come. How much shehadchanged, and therefore by definition that she was still here, not only not dead but thriving. Getting closer and closer to her goals.
A glance at her phone informed her that her Uber was ten minutes away. Time to get the big goodbye over with. She checked her last-minute essentials list against the contents of her shoulder bag: passport, phone, computer, chargers, briefing binder, sudoku book. Steeling herself, she took a quick look at her reflection in the mirror that hung by her bedroom door. She couldn’t look like she’d been crying. And she hadn’t been, really. If a few tears had escaped while she was showering, it was because she was overtired. A mechanical response to exhaustion.
“You’ve never had to travel over Thanksgiving,” her mom said as Cara clattered down the rickety stairs from her attic bedroom to the kitchen. It was four in the morning, and Cara had half hoped her parents would not be up.
But of course they were. They always got up to see her off. Especially today, the day Cara left for a trip that would cause her to miss Thanksgiving. Cara traveled more days than not in any given year, but she always made sure she was home for Thanksgiving, the holiest of holidays in her family, which was funny because they were Catholic. Which meant there were many other,literalholy days—Christmas? Easter?—one would think would be a bigger deal.
One would be wrong.
For what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly thankful.That was said every day in the Delaney household, and it was meant every day, but never more than on Thanksgiving.
Mom was wearing her sad face. Because her mother loved her, Cara reminded herself, and was disappointed that she’d be away for the holiday. Though maybedisappointedwas too anemic a word, judging by the tears that had been shed when she announced two days ago that she’d have to be gone.
“The person who was supposed to go broke a hip,” Cara said for the tenth time, willing her voice to remain even. Cara had a tendency to soak up her mother’s emotions, just like the secondhand smoke she used to inhale back in her mom’s smoking days.
“I know. I’ve been praying for him. I just don’t understand whyyouhave to be the one who takes his place. You’ve given so much to that company for so many years.”
“And ‘that company’ has given so much to me.”To us.She tried to say it without any censure in her tone, in a way that wouldn’t offend her mother’s robust sense of pride.
It didn’t work. “I know. I know,” her mom said quickly, turning away and aggressively stirring the pot of oats she cooked every morning. As usual, her mother could hear what Cara left unsaid: “that company” had put a stable roof over their heads and was the reason her dad was going to be able to retire next year.
She sighed. She was being prickly because being prickly was easier than being disappointed. She had a tendency to lash out when she was feeling vulnerable. She started over. “I have to gobecause this is a big, important project that we’ve already put four months of work into, and I’m the one who knows it best, after the guy with the broken hip.” She was his boss, and that’s what you did when you were the boss. At least that’s what you did when you were a senior associate who was someone’s boss. She reminded herself that she loved her job. She loved the travel that came with it, too. It gave her a feeling of freedom, of expansiveness, of amazement, honestly, that she had carved out such a life for herself. Or at least it used to.
She’d been on the road so much lately; she’d only gotten back yesterday from a two-week stint in San Diego. She was tired—like, in-her-bones tired. She just needed some sleep, and she’d be done with this weird maudlin mood. Honestly. She’d missed holidays before, if not Thanksgiving, and she could do it again. Her annual performance reviews always made mention of her reliability. She was a team player. A respected leader. Those adjectives accreted. She had worked hard for those adjectives. Someday, she would make partner because of those adjectives.
“I just...”
Argh! Cara wanted to scream at the way her mother trailed off performatively, her back still turned as she tended her oats. “You just what?” Which refrain was Mom going to pull out?I just don’t know how you’ll ever have time to meet someone when you’re working so hard. I just don’t know how they can expect people to work that hard and also have families. I just, I just, I just...
“Honestly, I’d never even heard of Eldovia before last week,” her dad said good-naturedly, setting down his copy of thePost. As was his endearing way, he was oblivious to the undercurrentsswirling around Cara and her mother—or maybe he chose to ignore them.
Either way, she was grateful for the reset. “I don’t think a lot of people have.” And that included the partners at CZT, aka “that company,” before they’d been invited to bid on the job. Cara had heard of Eldovia, but only because she had memorized every country and its capital for the seventh-grade geography bee, back when she was in a particularly aggressive education-is-the-way-out-of-poverty phase. “It’s tiny. It doesn’t do much.” Except make luxury watches, and her parents were not luxury watch–type people. The small Alpine nation didn’t even make that many watches anymore. Hence the big, lucrative contract. And the Thanksgiving trip.
Cara’s mom set a bowl of oatmeal in front of her dad, her eyes shiny. Damn it. Cara didn’t want to miss Thanksgiving any more than her mother wanted her to. She didn’t want to spend her flight cramming—though she knew this file, she hadn’t been heavily involved in the day-to-day details of the project in the last couple weeks because Brad had been ramping up for the trip.
Cara told herself Thanksgiving was just a day. Like the Post-it was just a piece of paper. The sentiment attached to Thanksgiving wasn’t unique to the fourth Thursday in November.
A tear escaped the corner of her mom’s eye.
Fucking Brad. On her good days, Cara thought of Brad as a management challenge. He existed, she told herself, to remind her of her Mr. Spock maxim.Change is the essential process of all existence.
Cara had no role in hiring Brad, even though he reported to her. He’d been parachuted in to Cara’s manufacturing operationsteam by one of the partners, who was friends with Brad’s dad. Cara was forever having to adapt to Brad’s low-key bullshittery. But that was okay, because that meant she was forever adapting. The summer intern complains about Brad aggressively complimenting her outfits all the time? Have a conversation with Brad about it and rewrite the team’s sexual harassment policy. Brad breaks his goddamn hip at age twenty-eight because he drunkenly falls off a rooftop patio in the Hamptons? Cara’s off to Eldovia for Thanksgiving.
“We’ll FaceTime on Thursday,” she told her parents. “We’ll FaceTime constantly. And I’ll be back for Christmas.” Barely, but she would make it. She was scheduled to fly out of Eldovia the morning of Christmas Eve, and with the time change working in her favor, she’d be home in time to cook dinner.
“I’m gonna miss you, lassie,” her dad said as he stood and wrapped her in his arms. She let him hold her for longer than she normally would have, thanking her lucky stars that Patrick Delaney had chosen to claim her as his own. When she broke the hug, she avoided eye contact with both parents. “When I make partner, I won’t have to travel so much.” Partnership. The brass ring. The dream she’d had since her first day of work at CZT as a twenty-year-old intern. Once that happened, she would stop having to do Thanksgiving duty when someone fell off a freaking roof. She could be more selective about which projects she got personally involved in, and choose where, when, and how much she traveled. You paid enough dues, you stopped having to prove yourself.
She assumed.
