Chapter 2 #3
“Wait, what?” Lyla’s been working at the office of her family’s landscaping company for years.
When she initially told her parents she wanted to work for them, her mom cried with relief.
Lyla knew the expanding business was getting to be too much, especially since her parents didn’t have the tech savviness to modernize how they managed things.
Still, it wasn’t until that moment that she realized how they’d barely been managing to keep their heads above water before she got involved.
How could they possibly not want her to come back? “Are they having money problems again?”
“No, business is booming, thank god.” Lyla hadn’t been working for them yet when they almost had to close their doors for good, but that was the summer she had to practically take over taking care of her younger siblings and managing the house, dinner, homework—all of it—while her parents worked around the clock to save the business they’d put their life savings into opening.
I met Lyla two years later at college, which she’d put off for a year to stay behind and help at home, making her a year older than everyone else on our residence floor and the default mother hen there, too.
“Mom’s being very cagey about the whole thing,” Lyla continues. “She keeps saying it’s time for me to spread my wings and do something for myself.”
“And your dad?”
She makes a face. “You know how he feels about change.” I make a fond noise of acknowledgement.
Her dad is a man who has always and will always prefer to work with his hands.
He still calls scans faxes and braces himself whenever he has to do work on The Computer Machine—watching him sit down to do it is not unlike watching a scuba diver taking that first breath and tumbling backwards off the edge of a boat.
“He’s about as excited about Billie being in the office as she is. ”
Though I don’t say it out loud, I can admit it’s an odd visual picturing her sister in the role Lyla held for years.
Billie is the second oldest and left home the minute she could to go to college across the country and travel the world.
She’s not one for staying in the same place for too long, and I hope Lyla isn’t wasting her time training her to take over for a job she might not stick around for.
“What does Adam think about everything? Is he doing okay?” Lyla filled me in on the details the day after Adam got cut in the downsizing, but since then, she’s changed the topic as quickly as possible whenever I try to bring it up.
I’m not surprised. Lyla has always had an independence I’ve admired.
“He finally changed out of his sweatpants yesterday, so I’m considering that progress.”
“Yikes. I hope you washed them immediately.”
She makes a face. “Are you kidding? I burned them. They were about to become permanently fused to his body.”
Lyla seems back to her usual self, but she’s always been a silver linings kind of person, while I’m more of a type of brace-for-impact gal, which is why I’ve been keeping my head down, trying to get through the rest of the day without stepping in dog shit a second time.
Because yes—that already happened today.
“Any luck on the job hunt?”
She sighs. “Nothing yet, but we should be fine for a while between his severance and our savings. Enough about me. When are you leaving for Vermont? Did you finish packing? Oh, and don’t let me forget to send you the list of podcasts I put together for you to listen to on the bus ride.”
“Yes, and tomorrow morning,” I say, draining the last of my latte.
The kernel of excitement I have over seeing my aunt lets me enjoy the flavor of pumpkin spice.
A week in my favorite place couldn’t come at a better time.
“I feel bad that it’s been so long since I’ve been to visit Tabitha.
You and I were too busy this summer with …
” I trail off. We’d been too busy with preparations for the shop for me to take my usual two-week holiday at my favorite aunt’s farm, making this the first time in my entire life—or at least as long as I can remember—that I’d missed my summer visit.
I’d also missed Easter this year, and even though the farm isn’t as much fun in the spring with all that mud, I missed my aunt.
Apart from my parents, Tabitha is my closest relative—closer even than my parents.
She’s the person I’ve always been able to be completely honest with, judgment-free.
As the only other artist in the family, she was the most supportive of me turning my calligraphy hobby into a side hustle and switching majors to pursue it as a legitimate business, making me believe it was possible.
When my parents went through the roughest patches in their relationship, she’s the one who took me in, letting me stay with her for the entire summer when I was seventeen.
Thankfully, my parents worked things out, but Salem Stables will always be my happy place.
My best friend’s face falls. Her gaze drops to her hands, clasped on the table before her. “Sloan, I—”
“If you say sorry one more time, we’re no longer friends,” I say sharply.
She scoffs. “You’d throw twelve years of friendship out the window, just like that?”
“If it means you’ll stop apologizing, then yes. Seriously, Lyla, this isn’t your fault. It’s like you said, this wasn’t the right time, but we’ll try again. We can still do this.”
Something like uncertainty crinkles her features, but it disappears just as quickly.
“In the meantime, are you sure you don’t want to get back out there and try to meet someone?
The rest of it might not be in your control, but your horoscope says that your love life is something you should focus on right now. ”
“Caleb and I just broke up,” I remind her.
“Besides, with everything else that’s happened, dating is the last thing on my mind.
” My phone buzzes in my pocket, and when I see the text message, I can’t help but laugh.
“Between you and Tabitha, I can’t believe I haven’t been married off yet.
Listen to this: ‘One more sleep! Clock emoji, pancake fixings are ready to go, clapping emoji. Can’t wait for you to meet Parker finally, I think you’re going to like this one, raised eyebrow emoji. ’ Subtle, right?”
Lyla lifts her eyes to me, smirking. “I guess she finally learned how to use emojis, huh?”
I shake my head fondly. “Last week she sent me a message from the grocery store with an eggplant emoji and I almost died.”
She gasps, covering her mouth as her eyes open wide. “Did you tell her?”
“I’m waiting until I see her in person so I can see the look on her face.”
We dissolve into giggles, and for a few seconds, it feels like old times, when we thought we’d be able to spend every day together. Remembering that’s not going to happen—at least not for a long while—causes my mood to dip again.
Lyla pulls my phone from my hand and taps the screen a few times before placing it face up on the table between us. Our eyes lock over the screen, where a timer starts counting down, and she squeezes my hand.
“You have three minutes to wallow. Make the most of it.”
I suck in a breath, fighting the sudden pricking sensation behind my eyes.
Normally, this is where I would be bluntly honest about everything I’m feeling: devastated that the last two years of planning have gone nowhere.
Hurt that we got so close to finally opening, only to have yet another obstacle thrown in our path.
Scared that we haven’t devised a plan on what to do next.
Embarrassed at being seen as a failure by my parents, who tried to warn me that this would happen.
Only … I can’t say any of it. The words dry up in my throat as I stare at Lyla through blurry eyes, because I’ll hate myself if I say anything to make her feel a sliver more guilty than she already does over what happened.
“I’m okay, really,” I lie as I blink back the tears before they can fall, stopping the timer.
“Are you sure?” Lyla asks softly.
“Absolutely,” I say, pretending to check my text notifications. “Ready to head out?”
She doesn’t answer immediately, but eventually says, “Let me go to the bathroom first. I swear, my bladder’s getting smaller.”
She disappears to the restroom, and I’m left to stare at the increasing notifications on my social apps.
I know I should check them, since I’m responsible for engaging with any activity on my client’s accounts, but I can’t do it; instead, I dip into my email, thumbing through the messages.
There are a few from referrals asking if I’m taking on any new clients right now—hard pass, seeing as how I’m not even managing my current workload—and the usual newsletters from other calligraphy accounts and marketing tips.
They used to be useful, but now feel like junk mail since I can’t apply any of the information anyway.
One email stands out though. The subject line catches my attention.
It's time to Discover Yourself.
Before the blood completely drains from my face at the strange omen, I remember that Discover Yourself was the name of the company Lyla and I sent away for a DNA test at the beginning of summer.
“Hey, my results for the ancestry thing came in,” I say when Lyla returns to the table, holding my phone up.
“Finally! I got mine three days ago, but I’ve been waiting so we could go through the results together. Come on, let’s go back to your house and see which celebrities we’re closely enough related to that we can brag about.”
I raise an eyebrow at her.
“What?” she asks, the picture of innocence.
“This wouldn’t be another attempt to distract me from my problems, would it?”
She flashes a self-assured grin and hitches her cross-body bag over her shoulder. “Besides the fact that this was my birthday gift to you, it’s in your best interest to be nice to me if I’m related to a Hemsworth and you want me to set you up.”
It’s something we’ve talked about doing ever since college, where I walked in on Lyla watching an episode of Forensic Files in the dorm’s common room and discovered our shared love of true crime; it quickly became the basis for our friendship.
Despite everything else crowding my thoughts, I’m excited to see the results.
Finding out I’m the descendant of some badass female pharaoh could be just the boost of confidence I need to dust myself off and keep moving forward.
We head outside, the wind blowing with a hint of the crisp September air. Lyla’s parked on the street out front, and I climb into the passenger side.
“I thought you were doing the DNA kit as a public service in case we’re related to a serial killer and can help catch them,” I say.
“Originally, yes,” Lyla concedes, pulling away from the curb and heading west on shop-lined Main Street towards my parents’ house.
“But after the week we’ve had, I’m hoping I have deep connections to some rich and generous old lady looking for a loveable young woman to be the daughter she never had to share her fortune with. ”
“Is there any chance these results could be mixed up with someone else?” I say, frowning at my screen.
“Hey, no peeking!” she shouts, letting go of the steering wheel to smack me. “I’ve waited three days, and you can’t wait another five minutes?”
“I’m serious,” I say, dodging her before she can swipe my phone from my hand.
Something twists in my stomach as I comb through my connections for several quiet minutes, that same tingling sensation that came right before Caleb dumped me slowly growing in my chest like heartburn.
I scan the results of my immediate family tree, confusion washing over me.
“Lyla, I don’t recognize a single one of these names. ”
“Really?” Lyla glances at my screen before turning her focus back to the road, a line forming between her light eyebrows as she senses my playfulness evaporate.
By the time she pulls into my parents’ modest red-brick bungalow’s driveway, I’m convinced there’s been a mistake.
“Seriously, there’s … no one on my dad’s side that I know.”
“That can’t be right,” she says as I hand her the phone. “Didn’t you say Serena did this one last year? She’s your cousin on your dad’s side; she at least has to be there.”
But she’s not.
After saying a distracted goodbye to Lyla, I go inside to ask my parents to make sense of it.
The look on their faces after I ask tells me that sick feeling in my stomach wasn’t a fluke or the pumpkin spice latte not sitting right.
Turns out my instincts are much more reliable than my horoscope, after all.