Chapter Two #2
I sit up and look around, realizing I barely have anything. Not even a place to live. Originally, I had at least an entire week to get myself settled before orientation. Why the hell did they move it?
Swallowing hard, I grab my phone to fulfill the promise of calling my parents. It’s still really early in Boston, which means it’ll be even earlier in California, but I know they’ll already be tending to the garden and the chickens, getting ready for deliveries produced by the garden.
“Hi honey!” My mother chimes. Her big, blue–green eyes are wide with excitement. The eyes I inherited.
Looking at my round-eyed mother on the screen, my heart squeezes in my chest knowing she’s so far away. I’m so lucky to have such a good relationship with my parents. Most people aren’t as fortunate as I am.
I’m so sorry I had to leave you guys the way I did.
“Hey, mom. I made it safe and sound.” I force a smile. I find it hard to do most days, but for them I will.
“She made it, honey!” Mom yells to my dad.
He approaches the screen, the curls of his dirty blonde hair flecked with salt and pepper falling over his forehead, just like the full mustache that sits on his upper lip. A Tom Selleck stash that my father is very proud of. His glasses sit on his long, strong nose as he looks at me through them.
“There is our girl,” he says with a wide smile.
Feeling tears sting my eyes, I try and swallow down the knot forming in my throat. I have to keep my composure. I can’t let them see me break more than I already have. It’s torn them apart, I can’t be responsible for more bloodshed.
I just miss you both so much already.
“Hey, dad,” my voice slightly catches. “Have you…heard anything?”
“No sweetie. The police have been all over it, but it looks like Ryan fled town,”
Or is dead. I swallow hard, trying to ignore that pestering voice. Murderer. It whispers. Stalking you. I suck in a breath as I double check the lock on the hotel door while all the what-if’s fester in my mind.
“But sweetie, there is no way he knows where you are. He probably left town like a little coward because he knew he would go to jail. I don’t think we have to worry about him.” My father tries to comfort me, seeing my eyes bounce around the room.
I know that isn’t true, because of course I have to worry about him. It’s why I’m here in Boston in the first place.
Sadness was rarely an emotion I felt. I was always, well, Sunny. But the years of Ryan wore me down, and the day I left was the day that part of me no longer seemed to exist.
Parts of me died because of him.
I know I’ll never get those parts of myself back, but sometimes, I find her in my dreams, trying to cling to who I was. Those nights are far worse than my dreams about him, knowing I’ll never get her back.
I will never be who I should’ve been.
“I’m just so sorry,” I breathe into a cry.
I’m sorry for a lot of things. In a matter of a few hours, years of mistakes obliterated in my face, taking down everyone around me. But mostly, I’m sorry for having to leave them, their once whole girl now fragments of who she used to be.
“Sweetie,” my mom coos. “Don’t you ever apologize. This is not your fault at all. Listen, we are safe, he is gone right now. We are okay, you are okay, and we will catch him. That’s all that matters.”
“And,” my father chimes. “You got a badass traveling gig!”
Here I am, twenty-seven years old, crying to my parents about a boy who broke me. Because he isn’t a man. A man would never do what he did to me.
“We are just so proud of you, Sunny. You are achieving your dreams. You always wanted to be a travel nurse, and now you’re doing it! You are making things happen,” my mother says.
God I just adore my parents.
They have given me such a beautiful example of what love should be like. Hopefully one day I’ll come to learn what that feels like instead of just what it looks like.
I swipe my runny nose with my sleeve. “I really love you guys.”
“We love you too, Sunny girl.” My father smiles.
“I know it’s only been a few hours, but, how about you tell us about the city, when you start your job, all the things!?” My mother asks.
Smiling at my parents through the phone screen, I tell them all about it as I schedule apartment viewings for that day.
Maybe it will be okay.
TYLER
“Don’t forget, we have our dinner with mom and dad tonight,” Sam says as I rummage through a stack of paperwork while she lounges on the chair in front of my desk, snacking on carrot sticks.
I clench my jaw at the words. “How could I forget?”
My office is large, with panoramic windows overlooking the city and water, graced with plants from Sam. Stacked with a full bar and couches for clients that she uses more often than not.
“How the hell did we end up in this kind of family?” Sam asks, noting my gaze peering around the office.
“I ask myself that every day.” The mayor of the city is hosting a campaign at one of the local breweries. As investors to the brewery and the campaign, we are obligated to go. I’m trying to find the contract that has the list of details they want for it.
My father’s plan is to move up the political chain, and that’s exactly what he’s doing. Hence my arranged marriage with the daughter of the current governor. The puppet master doing his best work. It’s what investors are notorious for, and how we own politicians.
“I’m betting a coffee tomorrow morning that they’ll bring up Shelby tonight. Oh, and that they will try and bring up a good suitor,” she signs with her hands. “for me to marry.”
I set the papers down. “You’re on. I’m betting that she will ask me as soon as I walk through the door.”
“No. Mom will definitely ease her way into it so that when she does come off as nosy and annoying, she’ll try and claim that she wasn’t.” She plays with a strand of pink hair.
We keep our lives as far as possible from that lifestyle.
We were forced to deal with it growing up, but when we both turned eighteen and went to college, we tried to create as much distance between ourselves and our parents.
Save for working in the same company. But it’s not like we really had a say in the matter.
Caddell is large so we barely see them as it is. The headquarters is in Boston as the heart of the company, beating life into seedy satellite offices across the nation. My father gave the bulk of the work to me here while he travels frequently to manage our other campuses and contracts.
I make my appearance on those trips if he needs me for my abilities.
While I may be heir to the Caddell fortune, I’ve become Mitchell’s personal cleaner.
It’s easier to groom your son into doing your dirty work versus having a hitman on payroll and risk everything.
Blood runs thick, but certainly not as thick as a payroll.
Thus, resulting in my becoming my fathers personal hitman. He needed someone in the family he could control. His own adjuster to ensure the necessary people are taken out to reach his business and political gains.
Aside from that, we never see them which lead to every other week family dinners. Our mother tries to push for weekly, but that’s something we just can’t commit to.
We save a weekly dinner slot for the family we made for ourselves. Every week one person from our group hosts a family dinner in their home. It’s the one thing that gets me through each week, if I’m being honest. When you come from a broken family, you cling to the one you created yourself.
“Okay, well I should probably get back. Spreadsheets await,” she says sarcastically.
Although my sister is wild and rebellious, she’s very smart when it comes to numbers. That’s why she became the head of the financial department in our company. In addition to our separation anxiety, that’s also why she went to Harvard with me.
“I have a meeting I have to get to anyway. Have to finalize for the brewery campaign.” I finally find the file.
Sam laughs. “It kills me you do this shit because outside of here, you just would never guess. You’d think you work somewhere more dirty and nitty gritty.” With that, she’s out the door.
If only you knew, Sam.
I sit in my car, staring at the house I grew up in, but never felt like home. I hate this place.
Normally Sam and I drive here together, but she was out tending to her art studio. So, we opted to meet one another here.
So, I wait in the truck because I have a bet waiting, and I know I won’t hear the end of it if I go in without her. Things are always easier with Sam by my side.
I reach for the flowers in my passenger seat as she pulls up in her purple jeep wrangler.
I may not have much in common with my mother, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love her.
It’s my ritual to bring her and Sam flowers each dinner, and each dinner my mother beams at the sight of me and the bouquet before her.
She always switches out the previous dying one with the newest, freshest one.
There will come a day when she has to sit and watch the flowers die to ash, knowing she won’t get another one.
Questions will press her mind, the loudest being who will protect me now? even if she doesn’t want to admit it.
She’s just a product of her generation, her environment, her grooming. Just as we all are. She’s the soft spoken, timid, spineless type of delicate woman with no voice. The submissive wife she was groomed to be by her upbringing.
A bang on my window jolts me from my thoughts. Looking over, I see Sam standing there. With her face pressing against the window, her flaring nostrils create perspiration on my truck window as her face squishes against it.
“You coming or what loser?”
SUNNY
I nestle myself into the mattress on the floor of my new apartment with a hot mug of tea in my hands. I’d found the bags of tea shoved into my backpack — a reminder that my parents sent me off with a small part of home.