by Stasia Black
“So that’s the plan?” His intelligent eyes train on me.
“I…” I look around, not even knowing what to say. I feel like I’ve just been steamrolled into something. Hearing everything from Alberto was stressful enough and then Jackson was suddenly on the phone making plans. Next he was telling me he was flying us up to see my parents tomorrow.
And you know, that he’s coming along. To meet my parents. Who just defamed my character on the record. On behalf of my fuck-face baby daddy ex.
But is this that far out of line with the rest of my insane life lately? And the thought that Jackson could be a buffer between me and my parents...
I mean, Shannon will be there, sure, but my parents are the kind of people who are a lot less likely to air dirty laundry in front of strangers. Especially in front of Jackson Vale, the founder of CubeThink. Even in Siskiyou County, they’ve heard of CubeThink. Jackson’s company name might just have enough tech celebrity cachet to win me some ground with my parents. I’m not above trying to milk every possible advantage I can get. After all, this isn’t so much about reconciliation as securing my son’s future. Going in with the aim of manipulation might not win me any daughter-of-the-year awards, but considering why we have to go there in the first place, I won’t lose any sleep over it.
* * *
“I don’t know about this.” Shannon says, looking nervously around the narrow interior of the plane Jackson arranged for us. “Doesn’t it seem… a little… small? You know, I could still just drive up and meet you there.”
I follow her anxious eyes. The plane is comfortably appointed inside with lounge seats like they must have in first-class—though these are probably even more plush and luxurious. But yeah, it’s small. Like it feels about the size of a school bus on the inside.
I glance several seats behind me to see Jackson working away at his laptop. Since he’s taking the weekend off to be with me, he has to spend the travel time tying up loose ends. With everything coming down to the line with the new prototype programming, it’s probably the worst time in the world for him to be taking a little mini vacation, but he still insisted on coming along. Warmth spreads through my chest followed by a piercing pang.
The pilot gives a brief message and then the plane is taxiing. Shannon grips the seat rests as we lift off the ground and gain altitude. My stomach swoops.
Oh goody. Now we’re in a bus hurtling several hundred miles an hour at thirty thousand feet. Awesome.
“It’ll be fine.” I find my voice. “This plane was designed by the same guy who’s taking people into space.” If I say it out loud and convince Shannon then I’ll start to feel better too, right?
She nods and seems comforted by the fact. I bite my lip as I look out the window at the engines set a little further back from the wings. I can barely make them out from this angle. All seems nice and steady, but now I’m paranoid imagining all the tiny little parts inside that have to work together perfectly to keep us in the air. Sometimes I think working in the tech industry is actually a curse. I know too well how one little insignificant component misfires and… an image of last year’s Samsung exploding phone flashes through my head.
I pull my Kindle out of my purse and try to distract myself from everything—the flight, Jackson, the upcoming hearing with Charlie, and what Gentry is trying to manipulate me into doing. Not to mention the reunion with my parents I’m about to face. Oh yeah. Because distraction from all that is really going to work. I sigh but try to focus on the words on the screen anyway.
As suspected, I’m barely able to concentrate on the book, but fifty minutes later, the tires of the plane squeal as we land on the tarmac at what is apparently Siskiyou County Airport.
I had no idea that we had an airport.
When Jackson first said we were chartering a plane, I thought we’d have to land in Redding and then drive another hour and a half to get home. But nope, just like Jackson said, there is indeed an airport in my home county.
Well, calling it an airport is a stretch. As I look out the window, I see that it’s more like one long landing strip and about six hangers. Our plane taxis into one.
“How was your flight?” Jackson asks, appearing at my side.
My smile is as wobbly as I feel. “I didn’t have to use the barf bag, so we’ll call it a win.”
Shannon elbows me in the stomach. “What she means to say is that we appreciate you arranging the flight and it’s so much nicer than driving in a car for seven hours.”
“Suck up.” I say under my breath and elbow her back.
Jackson just grins at us. And finally, for the first time in an hour, I feel like things will be all right. Which is total bullshit, but I feel it anyway. Just because Jackson’s smiling at me. He makes me completely ridiculous.
We grab our bags and get in a nice luxury car that’s waiting for us. Of course it’s luxury. It drives smooth even over neglected country roads.
Then, far sooner than I’d like, we’re pulling into my parents’ driveway.
I stay in the car for a second longer than is necessary, staring up at my childhood home. It’s nothing special. An oversized two-story house with pretentious white columns in front that lead up to a deck on the upstairs master bedroom.
The mortgage was always just a little bit beyond what my parents could comfortably afford, but they loved the prestige of living in this neighborhood with all the other cookie-cutter houses. Each one looks almost exactly like the other except that some of the columns are made of brick and others are white with Corinthian flourishes. Oh, and some houses have circular driveways with fountains in front.
My mom was always jealous of the houses with fountains. As I look around, I notice that she finally got the nice landscaping she always wanted. There’s thick grass that looks cut exactly to an inch and is greener than I’ve ever seen it. In front of the house, a small garden area is hemmed in by big white stones. Little spherical bushes dot the garden at perfect intervals. There’s even a new stone pathway to the front door instead of the old simple concrete one. More little bushes line the walkway.
Mom must be so proud.
I take a deep breath and then join Shannon where she’s waiting beside the car. Jackson’s already retrieved my suitcase from the trunk. I feel like a soldier going to war as we head toward the front door.
I think Shannon will just open it and head inside, but instead she presses the doorbell. So weird. Standing like a stranger on the doorstep of the house that I grew up in.
I hear Pachelbel’s Canon echoing through the door. So Mom got the fancy doorbell ringer thing she always wanted too. I take in each new detail with an odd detachment, like a sociologist studying a foreign tribe. An outsider looking in.
We all wait on the stoop for a good minute and a half before the door finally opens. And there she is.
My mom.
She looks… altered. She’s wearing more makeup than I’ve ever seen on her before. All it seems to do is cake into the lines on her face and accentuate them. She smiles but it’s stilted. Her eyes glide right over Shannon, hover on me with a lingering top to bottom scan and then land on Jackson. She brightens.
“Welcome,” she says with too much enthusiasm to be genuine. “Come in, come in.” She backs up and holds the door open for us.
I shoot a quick glance at my sister but she just shrugs and walks inside. With trepidation, I follow. Jackson grabs my bag and is right behind me. He closes the door and then there we all are, huddling in the foyer.
“Well don’t just stand there,” Mom says, her voice oddly high-pitched in that way it always is whenever she entertains guests.
God, this is all so twilight zone.
“Your father is catching up on some last-minute work in his study,” Mom says. “Any day now he’s going to be promoted to branch manager, you know.”
All these years later and it still hasn’t happened. That bastard Mr. McIntyre held it over me the whole time he was abusing me, that he’d fire my dad i
nstead of promoting him unless I did what he said. But here it is, four years later and he still hasn’t given him the promotion.
Rage sparks in my chest. Not just because of how the fucker manipulated me. But I believed all of it. Not just McIntyre’s lies. I believed it was all so important. Dad’s job. The house. My parents’ upper middle-class position in the community. We had so much, but at the time I believed McIntryre’s threat of Dad losing his job would mean the end of the world.
Believed in it all enough to sacrifice my innocence for it.
I squeeze my eyes shut as Mom prattles on about updates they’ve made to the house. New white granite kitchen countertops. An infrared sauna they installed because, in my mother’s words, “all my friends were getting one and they are just a necessity for clearing the body of toxins. It’s really a can’t-live-without item.”
She looks between the three of us gravely. “Do you know how many toxins are building up in your body on a daily basis? I can email you some articles. Sitting for twenty minutes in my sauna is the equivalent of running two to three miles. You girls should really look into getting one. You could share it since you’re living in the same apartment.” Her face sours some at this.
“Hopefully that situation won’t last for much longer,” comes my father’s voice from the other end of the living room. “If what you said on the phone is true and you’ve got a real job. It’d be nice to finally have a daughter we can be proud to claim.”
Dad strides into the room wearing a polo shirt and khaki pants. Country club attire, naturally. But he looks good, like he hasn’t aged at all since I last saw him. There’s not even any extra gray at the edges of his hair.
He’s a good-looking man, something Mom was always proud of. She always said I got my beauty from his side of the family. A way to both brag about Dad and show her own lack of self-confidence. And subtly, to put Shannon down too, since Mom always said Shan was the spitting image of herself—usually in the same breath that she talked about me getting my looks from Dad’s side.
I glance over at Shannon. What Dad just said could be interpreted as a dig at her too. I want to grab her hand and squeeze it to assure her he only meant me. I’m the fuck up. She’s the daughter they’ve been proud of the whole time.
“You must be Jackson Vale.” Dad bypasses me and Shannon and heads directly toward Jackson, hand out. Jackson humors him and gives him what looks like a firm shake.
“I took a look at CubeThink’s market shares when I heard Callie was coming up with you for the weekend,” Dad goes on, nodding as if modestly impressed. “Not bad. Of course, all the easy money’s been made in the market and we’re in a bottoming process. But there’s lots of cash on the sidelines and I really think we’re constructive on the market. I’m cautiously optimistic. You?”
Oh my God. My dad’s a total blowhard. Jackson refrains from calling Dad out on all the nonsense bullshit he just spouted. He was so obviously trying to sound smart. I’ve always known that because Dad works at a bank, he thinks he’s a bit of a financial guru. When I was younger, really all the way up until I left for college, I bought into it. I thought he was the smartest guy in the world. But now…?
I shift uncomfortably beside Jackson.
“I’m sure Jackson doesn’t want to talk about that over lunch, Daddy,” I say, trying to cover my dad’s social gaffes.
Dad gives me a stern look. “Your mother’s getting lunch ready in the kitchen. Maybe you’d like to go help her with that while we talk business?” It’s stated like a question but I hear the order underneath it.
Oh my God, was he always like this? I don’t remember him being so… so…
Dad’s eyebrows lift in silent question. As in: why are you still standing in front of me when I told you to go, female?
Shannon grabs my elbow and leads me toward the kitchen. Dad starts talking again behind us. I glance back once and find Jackson’s eyes on me, ignoring my dad. I see a question on his face, but this one reads entirely different than my dad’s. His asks: You okay?
So like him. Always concerned with my well-being. I give a quick nod, then jerk my head back toward my dad, indicating Jackson should focus on him. So what if Dad’s not the hero I imagined growing up? We need him now and if he feels the need to impress Jackson, well, that can only work in our favor.
When we get in the kitchen, Mom looks me up and down critically. “What have you done to your beautiful hair, darling?” She reaches over and touches my dark auburn hair. “Your blonde hair makes you just glow, but this brown, ugh, it washes everything out.”
I pull away from her. “What can we help with?” I run my fingers self-consciously through my hair, arranging it to lay flat. It’s gotten longer since I cut it, maybe two inches past my shoulders now. Maybe I should have put it up. Mom always thought up-dos looked better with my facial structure.
Mom’s still frowning as she looks at me. I start to fidget but then remember how much she hates that too. I force my hands to still. My back to straighten. Shoulders back, chin up. Posture was always important to her.
“You can start by taking the appetizers out.” She nods to a couple of trays of precisely cut cucumber sandwiches. I hurry over to the silver platter and grab it, but then slow as I carry it with perfect poise to the dining room.
About ten minutes later, we’ve carried most of the food out and are sitting around the dining room table. Mom busted out the fancy china, silverware, crystal glasses—she went all out. Now awkward silence fills the room as we hand around a plate of dainty cucumber sandwich appetizers and Mom brings out bowls of soup.
Oh, and did I mention the soup is orange? Like thick, mystery orange. I take a sip and it’s cold. As in, from the refrigerator cold. What the— My eyes open wide but I manage to swallow it. My eyes shoot to Shannon but she just shakes her head and dutifully swallows a large sip of the cold orange concoction. What the hell is this shit?
“So Gerald,” Jackson’s voice breaks the silence, “has Callie told you about the impressive work she’s doing at CubeThink?”
I stir the soup with my spoon and bite my lip.
“Well, she definitely caught your eye,” Dad says. “My daughter always has been a looker.” He smiles at Jackson, a sort of knowing-between-men kind of smile. Except—ick, he’s my dad, and he’s talking about me like, like I’m some kind of—
“She’s quickly risen to a position as one of the top programmers in the company.” Jackson’s voice is more than clipped. Seems like his patience with my father is running out. I wonder what they talked about while I was in the kitchen helping Mom finish up the meal. Shannon and I worked on prepping the main course, not the so-called soup.
“I can just guess how that happened,” Dad murmurs under his breath as he takes a spoonful of the soup before his face twists in disgust. “For God’s sake, Martha, what is this?”
“It’s pumpkin gazpacho, sweetie. I saw this recipe on a famous chef’s Pinterest and knew I had to try it. Isn’t it fabulous?”
Dad shoves the bowl away, the look of distaste not leaving his face. He grabs two of the quartered cucumber sandwiches and pops them in his mouth.
I’m wondering if this means I can push the soup aside as well when I notice that Jackson hasn’t moved in a while and his knuckles are growing white as he grips his soup spoon.
“Did you really just intimate that your daughter slept her way to her position? Right here at the dining room table in front of her. In front of your whole family?”
The clank of spoons against china stops. The entire room falls still and Dad’s cheeks flush. I can’t tell if it’s with anger or embarrassment. I can’t remember the last time anyone called him out directly for anything he’s said or done.
Maybe that’s why I remember him in a different light. He seemed normal to me. My whole world did. It’s what I accepted because it’s what everyone around me accepted. Dad was the king of his castle and that was the way it was meant to be. Any threat to that was a threat to th
e foundation of life as I knew it.
“I— I,” Dad blusters, “well I—”
“Because I know any well-mannered, cultured man would never say such a thing of his own daughter.” Jackson’s voice is dangerous and his stare no less so as he glares down the table at Dad. “Callie rises or falls on her own merits within my company. She’s incredibly intelligent and talented. Just a week ago her out-of-the-box thinking and insight led to a breakthrough on a problem that had been holding back production for months. She’s only a few classes away from graduating from Stanford University. May I ask where you yourself matriculated from?”
Dad sits up straighter in his chair, his features darkening along with the blush that’s taken up residence in his cheeks. “I— I—” he stutters again before getting his bearings, “—I’m a proud graduate of National University.”
“I’m not familiar with that institution.” Jackson’s smile is affable.
“It’s the premier college in the northernmost part of California,” Dad says stiffly. Aha. Northernmost part. I can almost picture the map. He’s got to mean north of, and not including, Sacramento. The part of California where it’s almost all forests, mountains, and tiny communities. The biggest town is Redding, a nice enough little place, but you blink a couple times and you’ve passed through it.
“Impressive.” Somehow Jackson manages not to sound condescending, though I don’t know anyone else who could’ve pulled it off. “But certainly you’re proud of your daughter who is only a few classes away from graduating from the number one college not only in California but the entire West Coast.”
Jackson’s eyes land on me, his irises matching the dark blue-gray of the fitted Henley he’s wearing. In this moment, I love that he didn’t dress in a button-down shirt and khakis to try to fit in with my parents. His dark, casual sexiness as he relaxes in his chair, elbow on the table while he eats my mother’s horrible soup and bluntly confronts my father’s dismissal of my accomplishments… Well, it makes me want to drag him away from this horribly awkward situation, tie him to a bed somewhere and have my wicked, wicked way with him. I picture the goodies that arrived from a certain adult online store right before we left. On a whim I stuffed the toys in my suitcase and now all I can think about is breaking them in. Just thinking about them makes me feel calmer. Less like the stupid, stupid little girl who let herself be trapped in this house for so many years, allowing the abuse to continue—