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“The IRS kind.”
I let out a low breath. “What does his accountant say?”
My dad shrugs. “He fired him. Says it’s his fault.”
“His office manager then?”
Mom wrinkles her nose. “He fired her, too.”
“And he’s about to have surgery? How long will he be out for?”
“At least three months. He’ll need to go into a nursing facility to recover.”
“Oh, that sucks. I’m sorry,” I say. “What’s he going to do about the IRS?”
There’s a little shift in everybody’s posture on screen. Like they’ve suddenly relaxed. It takes me a minute to figure out why.
Because I’m asking questions. They think I want to help.
Oh hell no.“Listen, I think there’s somebody at my door. I need to go…”
“You’ll help him, right?” Isabella asks. “It’s Gramps.”
I blink because Isabella and I so rarely interact. It takes me a moment to realize she’s talking to me.
“Of course she will,” Brad agrees. “She knows we can’t do it.”
“We can’t,” Isabella says. “Not with our filming schedule and your game schedule.”
“And let’s face it, even if we were available we’d be terrible at it.” That’s Johnny. Okay, so he’s not my favorite anymore. “None of us know how to run a business.”
“But Mackenzie does,” Brad says.
I swallow hard. “I also have a job,” I say. One I’m hoping to get a promotion in as early as next week if all goes well.
“You could take leave,” Isabella says hopefully.
“I don’t have three months leave.”
“Pretend you’re having a baby. Or women trouble,” Brad says.
I roll my eyes at him.
“Honey, please.” My mom looks at me in that way only moms can. And yes, I’m thirty-six-years-old and a successful consultant in a dog-eat-dog industry, but it still works.
And I feel guilty.
“I can’t,” I tell her. “I’m sorry.”
Five sets of eyes are trained on me, looking at me as though I just killed their favorite puppy.
“I’m sorry,” I say again. But I’m not giving in this time.
My dad breathes in sharply. “Okay,” he says. “We’ll regroup on this.”
It’s only when we end the call that I think about the expression that was on his face.
He looked exactly the same way he did when the US hockey team was down three-two against the USSR in the Olympic finals.
