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“Of course,” Rachel said. “I’m about to do a school run, but if you’re okay tagging along—”
“Perfect,” I said and hung up.
I walked out of my office. At the secretary’s desk, I stopped.
“I’m taking a personal day.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You know I can’t just tell Stein that, right?”
I shrugged. “Tell him that. I’ll deal with him if it comes down to it.”
“Your funeral,” the secretary said, but right now I didn’t care.
I was panicking. I felt like I was going to faint, and if I didn’t do something, I was going to go into a panic attack which wasn’t going to be good for anyone around me. The only person who could talk me down from the ledge was Rachel.
She was already waiting for me by her car when I pulled into her driveway, and I climbed from my car into her passenger seat.
“You’re driving."
Rachel nodded. “I couldn’t sit around a moment longer. Tom flew out for a meeting again and Lydia was asleep, so I figured I’d do it. Their help is amazing but I miss running around after my own kids.” She grinned at me.
I was so glad that she was so much better already—the operation had been completely successful, and it looked like Rachel was going to be okay. We were going to have her around for a long time, still.
I tried not to think about why that was—that Troy had paid for the operation we hadn’t been able to afford.
“What’s wrong?” Rachel asked, looking worried when she twisted in her seat to reverse the car out of the driveway. “You look like you’re about to faint.”
“Troy came to see me."
Rachel looked as surprised as I’d felt.
“And?”
“I told him I’m pregnant.”
“Oh, wow,” she said. “How did he take it?”
“Exactly as I’d thought he would,” I said grimly. “He left.”
“Oh, Mackie,” Rachel said softly.
“No, no,” I said, putting on my seat belt when Rachel turned into the road. “That was the point. It was why I told him.”
“I’m not following,” Rachel said, confused.
“He kept telling me how he was in love with me and how he’d given up the contract for me, that Stein would give it to me now. He wouldn’t let me tell him off, he wouldn’t take no for an answer, so I told him the one thing I knew would send him running for the hills. It worked.”
Rachel glanced at me, her eyes narrowed, before she turned her attention back to the road.
“Okay, he actually said to you that he’s in love with you, in so many words, and you wanted him to leave?”
“I wanted him to stop saying the right things to me.”
“Do you hear yourself when you say that?” Rachel asked.
I sighed heavily. “I’m still angry with him, Rach. He hurt me. Badly. He chose work over me, he lied to me, he betrayed me. I can’t have someone like that in my life.”
“What about all the things he did right?”
