Chapter 1
One
Twenty-Three Years Later
Life would be so much easier if everyone listened to me.
Especially my sisters.
Especially amid any kind of stressful situation.
Especially when they are the ones at the hospital with our mother who is having brain surgery and I’m over seven hundred miles away, on the brink of walking into the biggest meeting of my career.
“What do you mean you didn’t bring the wheelchair?
” I snap. The lengths to which these people go in the name of annoying me defy logic.
Plus, I’m tired, wired, and literally have my hands full: one with a coffee that will be my saving grace as soon as I manage a sip, the other with my bag that holds my entire life, namely my laptop.
Pinching the phone between my ear and shoulder, I elbow the up button at the elevator.
“I literally sent you the best one on the market. And a hospital checklist that included ‘bring wheelchair’ because Mom shouldn’t walk long distances right away. ”
“She’s not leaving today,” Rue argues. “I’ll bring it when she’s discharged. Or not at all.”
The elevator door slides open with a ding, ushering me and a half-dozen other people into the small box. The frequency I encounter the tight space does nothing to dampen my initial reaction to it.
Coffee. Bad cologne. Blue wallpaper. People. Toothpaste. I am not trapped.
I take a deep breath—pushing the feeling away like I always do—then move on.
“Why the he—”
Rue cuts me off. “It’s a hospital, Reese. I think they have a wheelchair to get Mom from her room to the car when we leave. It’s literally their job.”
I knuckle the button for the thirty-second floor at the same time a woman bumps me hard enough my coffee bobbles and spills on my silk cream-colored blouse.
My bitten-out “Watch it” goes unacknowledged as she loudly tells the woman next to her about her appointment on the twelfth-floor sperm bank.
Though the woman is different, I hear some version of this nearly every morning.
And every single morning when I see women in various stages of their quest to get pregnant, the same things happen: My brief pang of envy and accompanied thought of That will be me one day is overridden by When will I ever have time for kids?
Funny thing is, I thought I’d have kids by now.
Five years ago by now, to be exact. Only that was the year I made partner, and as it turns out, winning in the corporate world doesn’t take maternity leave.
Sure, I could take the time—have a baby and take six weeks off—longer even—but the job I’d come back to wouldn’t be the same.
Those weeks away could change the landscape and render me nearly obsolete.
I’ll get to having kids—I will—when the timing is right and the closing of one deal doesn’t overlap with the start of another.
But now, busy and in the thick of things, it’s hard to think of anything except this win then the next.
Hard to imagine making the time to be the kind of mom I’d want to be while dominating the task at hand.
“Are you listening?” Rue barks, pulling me from a mythical world of babies and work-life balance. “I said the wheelchairs they have will be fine.”
I snort. “Hospital wheelchairs are like an ass after a wipe with generic toilet paper.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Shitty,” I say, making the heads of my elevator companions turn in my direction. I raise my coffee and give a too-big smile.
Rue, naturally, doesn’t find me funny, shouting in my ear, “It’s a hospital!
” The elevator starts its ascent. “And stop being bossy. In case you forgot, Remy and I can handle this. Namely because we’re here and not in some glass tower being an important, busy business lady in important, busy business lady clothes. ”
She’s being a bag of bitch, but I chuckle anyway. She’s no doubt wearing the same idiotic overalls she’s worn since we were kids and would fall over dead if I told her the silk Michael Kors shirt I’m wearing cost eight hundred dollars.
“I wouldn’t need to be there if you would just follow the instructions I sent,” I remind her, “or would have caught the fact Mom had a brain tumor she was hiding for a decade instead of nurturing its growth.”
She mutters under her breath then talks to someone in the background, presumably Remy. The elevator door opens on the twelfth floor and sperm-bank lady exits, off to choose a baby daddy, no doubt. The door closes and our upward route ensues.
“My meeting starts in an hour,” I remind Rue. The elevator door opens once again, resulting in an exchange of nameless, faceless people to happen around me. I manage a sip of my coffee, swearing when I’m once again knocked into.
The man responsible smirks at my scowl.
Asshole.
There might be too many people on this elevator. I do a quick head count and confirm we’re within regulation per the posted sticker on the wall. The flashing red light of the security camera in the corner tells me it’s working. If nobody else is freaking out about being trapped, neither am I.
I refocus on Rue. “I’ll keep the ringer on if you need me.
” I cringe at the thought—I never, ever keep my ringer on in a meeting, but I’d also never forgive myself if something happened with Mom and I wasn’t available.
“But don’t need me.” For a split second, the elevator goes from lifting to the sky to dropping straight to the basement in a free fall.
My mom is having her skull cracked open, and I’m a full day’s drive away while the two people taking care of her can’t even remember to bring the wheelchair.
My sisters are going to fuck this up; I have a meeting I can’t fuck up. “I mean it. Emergencies only.”
The door opens at the thirty-second floor, and I elbow my way off the elevator. Rue says, “Don’t you have enough money?”
Like there is such a thing.
I reiterate, “Emergencies only,” and end the call.
Walking toward my office, I force my brain to shift gears with every click of my Louboutins on the glossy tile. I can’t be distracted by a surgery happening in North Carolina. I can’t be distracted by anything.
Mom’s tumor is benign, her surgeon is the best, and even though they forgot the wheelchair, I’ve set my sisters up to give her the best post-op care possible.
I’ve spent months dividing my time between preparing for today’s meeting and making sure they have everything she needs.
I made lists—that they’ve apparently ignored—and lined up post-op therapists and appointments along with very thorough follow-up questions for them to ask.
I may be the most competent of the three of us, but they don’t need me there. If they’d do what I tell them.
A frosted-glass wall leads to a gold plaque with my name, and I push open the door to my office. My gaze instantly crosses the minimalistic décor to the full wall of windows and the Chicago skyline beyond.
I drop my bag and phone on my desk, strolling toward the view.
Every east-facing surface is bleached by the morning sun, so bright it’s white.
The windows of nearby buildings—some taller, some smaller—burst with light.
Thousands of daytime fireworks at the crest of their explosion reflected as far as the eye can see.
A sparkly sea of success with me in the middle of it.
Cities are known as concrete jungles, but there’s so much glass it looks fragile.
Like I could crack the scene with the tap of a hammer.
It can’t be that fragile though, because the more money I make, the more glass I’m surrounded by.
Protected by. My office alone has two full walls of it: one facing the world, one facing the guts of the firm.
And it’s not just the amount of glass, it’s how much higher in the air it is.
My success is measured by a raw material made of sand and heat that magnifies the difference between me and everyone else.
Swallowing a yawn, I rest my Givenchy-wrapped hip against the window. After my first uninterrupted sip of coffee, I let out a long exhale.
I was in the office until two this morning prepping for today’s meeting and watching surgical-feed videos of craniotomies, then woke up at four when Rue called on the way to the hospital.
Most nights I don’t sleep for more than five hours, but two hours is painful.
I need the caffeine to hit. Immediately.
Beneath me, cars stop and go, and people scatter like ants in every direction, oblivious to my watching. I could probably strip naked and press myself against the window like a starfish and not one of them would care.
Well, except the man who’s now in front of me washing the window. Unless he’s blind, he’d be forced to notice. He’d probably be delighted by my nipples spilling across his workplace. They’re good nipples.
But also, it’s Chicago. He’s likely seen wilder things on a Tuesday morning through a high-rise window.
Maybe women across the Windy City regularly press their naked bodies to dirty glass, and what’s beneath my silk shirt would only result in him squeegeeing right over my smooshed flesh.
I tap on the window; he doesn’t react. Why does that irk me?
Only an inch between us—two quarter-inch panels of glass with a half-inch air gap—it might as well be a chasm.
We’re both on the thirty-second floor at one of the most prestigious buildings on Canal Street, and if he looked over his shoulder, we’d have the same clear view of Lake Michigan and the buildings and parks that lead to its shore.
But there’s a difference between us.
It’s not just our clothes—he’s in discount jeans and a faded T-shirt under his neon orange harness while I’m in a skirt, shirt, and pair of pumps that cost more than his monthly salary—nor is it the fact he could fall to his death if one thing goes wrong.
It’s that I’m looking out and he’s looking in.
I see the world; he cleans the dirt so I can.