chapter
One
2014
Daddy had whistled his way past me and out the door two minutes ago, ready to drive us both to work. Work—as in my first postcollege job. Where I would be working for my father. Or rather, working for someone who reported to the someone who reported to my father. I felt certain that all the employees who’d earned their positions at Jeffrey McIntyre Custom Homes were thrilled shitless to have me coming on board.
Checking the three-way mirror nestled into the sconce-lit alcove of the mudroom, I scanned myself one more time. Sensible three-inch Ferragamo pumps (nude), sensible DVF wrap dress (chocolate), sensible Michael Kors bag that felt like luggage on my arm compared to the lip-gloss-and-ID-holding crossbodies I was used to flinging over my shoulder.
In my dark shades, I looked like my mother. I might not mind if I weren’t twenty-two and in no rush to look “amazing for fifty-seven”—a commendation she received often from envious peers. Mom wasn’t opposed to availing herself of the best personal trainers and cosmetic procedures money could buy, and her stylist was booked out months in advance despite fees that would choke a horse. Her entire social circle did the same, though few got her results. Hence the envy.
Despite my lack of enthusiasm to ever be middle-aged, the mirror told me how I’d wear it when it came. Could be worse. For some blasted reason, that thought unnerved me rather than inspiring appreciation for my genetics. I felt hollow, as if there was nothing of me about me. But that was nothing new.
In my giant bag was a red leather portfolio with my initials etched into a gold-plated square right in the center, Mom-gifted to commemorate my Very First Day. Like kindergarten. I’d added a legal pad, HR-required documents, pens in three colors, a mechanical pencil, and an outdated finance calculator that I hoped to God I wouldn’t need because I’d been into gluing rhinestones to everything when I took precal freshman year, and it was blinged to hell and back.
I looked like I was playing dress-up: Professional Business Chick edition.
Suck it up, McIntyre, I told myself. Time to adult.
• • • • • • • • • •
As Daddy parked in his reserved spot, I stared up at the hewn limestone, raw timber, and glass structure that gave the impression of eighteenth-century Spanish architecture, but newer. Way newer. The office building housing JMCH was a testament to its own distinctive design abilities—just like my parents’ Southlake home, which looked as though a European castle had plopped smack down in North Texas, turrets and all. It lacked only a moat and a drawbridge—something my father had pretend-lamented every time a new boy showed up at the door when I was in high school.
“Ready, Princess?”
I halted a groan before it began. I had exploited my youngest-child, only-daughter status my entire life, batting my lashes to get my way from age two if video footage could be believed. My father ate it up, and I kept shoveling. It wouldn’t be fair to hold that against him now. But.
“Maybe it’s time to drop that nickname, Daddy. Considering the fact that everyone in there has correct preconceived notions of how I got this position.”
He chuckled. “You’re beautiful, degreed, and perfectly suited for this position, Prin—Erin.”
“I have a bachelor’s degree in psychology. That doesn’t exactly scream I know everything about building custom homes.”
“Your name’s on the building, honey.” He pointed. “That does all the hollering necessary.” He patted my knee before exiting the truck.
Which is exactly my point?
I slid down from the passenger side of his tank-sized F-450 King Ranch, holding my dress to my thigh to prevent giving a free show to anyone staring out one of those gleaming, stone-framed windows. “No need for a free show!” was a thing Nana, Mom’s mother, began chiding me with when I was eleven, no matter how confusing that statement was then, how mortifying at thirteen, or how infuriating by seventeen. I’d never been able to get it out of my head.
Daddy’s monster pickup could hold five big guys, tow a bunch of lesser pickups, or haul a small herd of elephants, but most of the time it hauled my parents and Jack, their spoiled English bulldog, around town or on occasional forays into Fort Worth or Dallas. During the week, Mom drove a Mercedes SUV. To counter the environmental damage they generated, I’d requested a hybrid car for my graduation gift. I probably should have asked for a bicycle.
When we entered the JMCH building, heads swiveled and whispers hummed across the marble floor of the open atrium. I felt like a hayseed beauty queen on a 4-H float and fought an intense urge to wave like parade royalty just to be a smartass. But I couldn’t blame them for staring. I was the boss’s daughter. Privilege and entitlement wrapped in money. The expressions my new coworkers wore ranged from wide-eyed curiosity (the receptionist, who looked like a twelve-year-old wearing half a pound of mascara) to veiled animosity (some guy glaring down from the open gallery of the second level as though his sworn enemy had just breached the castle walls). Sheesh.
I thanked God that I’d always had a knack for facial recognition even if names escaped me, fixed a sensible, friendly smile on my face, and droned, “Nice to meet you,” or “Nice to see you again,” to anyone who made eye contact. I even bestowed a diplomatic smile toward the man on the second floor. He turned and disappeared.
“Great,” I muttered. I already had a hater, and I’d barely set foot in the damned door.
We boarded the elevator and I whooped an internal Thank you, Jesus when Daddy pressed the three, relieved to skip a face-to-face encounter with Mr. Hostile for now. Polished marble gave way to plush, footfall-absorbing carpet as we turned toward the two huge, windowed offices at the back. Daddy rapped twice on the open door to the smartly decorated corner office of his CFO and walked in without waiting for a response.
Hank Greene was my uncle in all but actual kinship. His family and mine went way back; he, Daddy, and Bud Sager had launched JMCH before I or any of my three older brothers were born. From last-minute perusing of the website, I’d learned that Bud had retired a few years ago and his nephew, Ted, was the current Vice President of Operations. At least nepotism wasn’t a new concept here. Yay?
“Erin—how are you, honey?” Uncle Hank asked, smiling and coming around the huge mahogany desk, which was so shiny I could see my shoes reflected in the glossy front panel as I stepped forward.
I stretched out my hand and opted for a professional greeting. “Mr. Greene—it’s nice to see you again.”
He and my father shared corresponding smirks. “Mr. Greene, is it? Ha. Ha.” He took my hand and patted it with his other, much like Daddy had patted my knee earlier. They might as well boop me on the head and hand me a face-sized lollipop, for chrissake.
“She’s worried people will think she’s only here because she’s my daughter.” Daddy made that valid concern sound absurd.
Hank blinked and chuckled. “Now, now. Worse things to be accused of than being the beneficiary of a little harmless familial bias.”
He adjusted the thin pewter frames that perfectly offset his thick graying hair and manicured brows. No doubt his wife was responsible for that flawless coordination. Miranda Greene was as much of a fashionista as my mother, if not more. The Greenes had two children—one boy, one girl—both in college now. They’d been mostly raised by a live-in au pair before au pairs were even a thing. Hank and Miranda attended championship games and recitals, but the au pair, who’d looked like a Swedish model, spoke several languages, and knew CPR, had been the one shuttling the kids to sports practices and music lessons until they could shuttle themselves.
Miranda didn’t volunteer like Mom did or have a job that I knew of. Years ago, I’d asked Mom what Miranda did all day, thinking maybe she worked at home, writing romance novels or day-trading stocks or managing a fashion blog. I was about to enter high school and was considering career options.
“Oh, she works all right,” Mom said, her tone superior. “She slaves twenty-four-seven at the career she trained for—husbandry.” She’d tapped the canvas Whole Foods bag she’d just brought in before leaving the room. “Put these things away, would you, sweetie?”
I hadn’t known what she meant, but the youngest of my brothers, Pax, snorted. He was standing in front of the stainless Sub-Zero fridge, door open—per usual if he was in the kitchen.
“What,” I said, confused. “I don’t get it.”
“Husbandry—accent on husband. Comprende?” He grabbed the orange juice carton labeled PAX—proof that Mom had given up all hope that he’d ever learn basic manners—and chugged it.
The mental lightbulb clicked on and I laughed and groaned, but husbandry sounded like a repugnant existence—looking after some man, day after day, forever. I loved Uncle Hank and Daddy, but they were not my idea of life goals.
“Dad started warning me about girls majoring in husbandry when I was your age. He gave me a box of Trojans and literally said, ‘Wrap it before you tap it.’”
“Eww, gross.” Fourteen-year-old me couldn’t imagine any girl dumb enough to have sex with my eighteen-year-old brother at all, let alone for the purpose of having to do it with him only the rest of her natural-born days. Back then Pax’s favorite pastime was farting all the way down the hallway like a puttering antique car that backfired once he reached my bedroom doorway. His other hobbies had included belching mangled lyrics to songs I liked, stealing food off my plate at dinner, and trying to hug me into his armpit right after lifting weights.
Hard to believe he was now a twenty-six-year-old minor league ballplayer, recently engaged to one of his groupies (she “did hair”—her words—at a Supercuts near his apartment in Albuquerque and had recognized him when he wandered in for a cut). He’d rejected all my parents’ efforts to convince him to finish school or “get a real job” and seemed determined to grow up at his own pace. While Daddy hadn’t officially despaired where his youngest son was concerned, he’d long since begun directing his unsolicited career advice on the older two—Leo, a construction foreman at JMCH, and Foster, a junior associate at a Dallas law firm.
Last Christmas, Daddy grilled Foster about how soon he might make partner.
“Dad, that’s a decade or so away. Jesus.”
“Don’t cuss in front of your mother,” Daddy said, as if Foster was still a kid. “If ten years is average, your fancy-schmancy degree oughta bring that down to six or seven, eh?”
Foster side-eyed Pax and mumbled, “Living six hundred miles away. You lucky bastard.”
“Luck’s got nothin’ to do with it, bro,” Pax answered, using the tongs to grab a second slab of ham off the platter and plopping it onto his already-full plate.
The management of me had been left to Mom for the most part, though my parents had joined forces in attempting to talk me out of majoring in psychology, even after I’d declared it. At first, I thought it was because they didn’t consider the study of the mind and associated mental illnesses a real science. This was the philosophy of some people in their circle, no matter how many of them were high-functioning alcoholics or consumed anti-anxiety meds like candy while feeding their kids whatever amphetamines would control their nonconforming behavior and boost their GPAs, because God forbid anybody try a little talk therapy along with the pills.
It wasn’t until winter break of my sophomore year that I figured out my parents’ chief motive for urging a change in my course of study even though I had never expressed any interest in swapping majors. Events had occurred the prior semester that had solidified my desire to be a therapist. My boyfriend’s best friend had assaulted and stalked my roommate and raped one of my sorority’s little sisters. I was the person they’d both turned to first. I’d listened and advocated and stood by them when some of the Greek leaders just wanted it to all go away. I had never in my life felt so influential and necessary and useful.
Not that I ever discussed stuff like that with my parents, but still.
One morning over breakfast, out of the clear blue sky, they brought up other majors I might like better. Again. “Public relations or marketing would be fantastic for a people person like you, Princess,” Daddy said, slathering a bagel with nonfat cream cheese.
“Or management—you’d be a wonderful manager.” Mom grinned like she’d discovered the Holy Grail of nondescript careers.
I tried to connect the dots in the parental logic but couldn’t. “Psychology is fantastic for a people person like me,” I said, remembering Jacqueline’s quiet revelation in our dorm room and the sorority meeting during which Mindi held my hand so tight that my fingers went numb. “I want to help people. I don’t see how marketing would fulfill that desire.”
“Well, yes, but—”
“I know it will take a little longer.” I frowned, wondering if they were stressing over the cost. But they hadn’t balked at paying Foster’s exorbitant law school tuition, so that didn’t add up. “I’ll need at least a master’s if not a doctorate—”
They exchanged a quick glance then, identical hesitant expressions, and click, I knew. The career paths they’d suggested didn’t require demanding advanced degrees like psychology did. They didn’t think I could do it. That was the only explanation. They didn’t believe I had the intellectual capacity or maybe the work ethic required to go to graduate school. I put a bite of egg in my mouth and chewed robotically to cover my muteness.
Daddy had steered Leo toward summer construction internships while pushing Foster toward law school, and I’d eavesdropped on enough conversations with and about my brothers to know why. Leo was the football jock who couldn’t care less about school; Foster was reading by age three, and by ten he would throw a tantrum if some hapless teacher gave him a B. He’d been his class salutatorian in high school (twelve years had passed and he was still bitter about coming in second), graduated college in less than four years, and started law school at twenty-one. Pax had been Pax—as smart as Foster and more athletically gifted than Leo, he just about drove Daddy off his rocker with his lack of drive to do any more than scrape by academically, play baseball, and hook up with as many girls as possible.
I’d been the popular cheerleader with a healthy social life and a B average. In college I’d traded cheering for sorority life and kept my adequate-but-not-exceptional GPA. They’d forever been on my brothers’ asses about education and career ambitions and working smart as well as working hard. But with me, they advocated sorority alliances and my volunteering efforts and maintaining a part-time job to help pay for my shoe-buying habit and give me work experience. Every semester I brought home a B average, and that was good enough. I never got the lectures about earning an A in any class I could.
When I swallowed that bit of egg, it lurched down my constricted throat like lightly chewed rubber, determined to stick where it was. I coughed, not quite choking, and Daddy pounded my back a couple of times. I didn’t retain the rest of the conversation, but I’d never forgotten the unspoken Oh, dear between them, my silent comprehension of it, and the difficulty swallowing—an occurrence right up there with suddenly being unable to breathe or finding your heart pounding after an unexpected scare. We don’t notice reflexive motions like heartbeats or breathing or swallowing. They just happen. Until they don’t.
I wallowed in self-pity for the following semester, thinking maybe they were right, maybe I wasn’t capable of graduate work, but then I stepped it up and started studying harder. Despite the demanding upper-level coursework, my grades were solid and my GPA inched higher. But my parents never asked when I was planning to take the GRE. They never suggested a tutoring course as they’d done before Foster took his LSATs. So I resolved to handle all of that myself. To show them that their little girl was a perfectly capable, motivated, self-sufficient woman.
And then the past year happened, and I fell into an emotional spiral I couldn’t pull out of no matter how hard I tried. Still full of faith in my chosen career, I made appointments at the campus counseling office, but it didn’t seem to make any difference. I began skipping sessions and eventually stopped going at all. I saw a private therapist off campus, once, but he targeted current stress and anxiety—as though the enormous guilt weighing on my soul day after day was a by-product of being a frazzled college senior instead of the other way around. I didn’t return, and the fact that therapy had failed so miserably made me question what the hell I was basing my future on and why I assumed I could help anyone when I couldn’t even help myself.
The worst part? I was completely cognizant of all of it—the plunging lack of interest I had in every aspect of my life. The way I walked around like Eeyore with a small, persistent gray cloud always overhead. I was sinking lower every day, and struggling only hastened the descent. A few of my more perceptive Chi-O sisters tried to cheer me up, but ultimately they didn’t get it and I had no desire to elaborate. Once, maybe twice, I almost called Jacqueline—the one and only person I could have blurted the ugly truth to. But she was hundreds of miles away and caught up in her happy life and I couldn’t bear to drag her down. So I sent her carefully constructed, upbeat texts, and left superficial voicemails full of amusing stories and lies when I knew she was in class or studio and couldn’t answer or call back.
Finally, I used every ounce of energy I possessed to do what I’d always done best. I slapped on my sunny Erin mask and let everyone off the hook so they’d stop asking if I was okay, stop with the apprehensive “Are you sure?” inquiries and the benevolent “I’m here for you” avowals when I said I was fine. And every one of them looked relieved as hell.
My grades kept slipping and so did my GPA. I crawled across the finish line and graduated as planned, but I neglected to sign up for the GRE in time for fall deadlines. I abandoned partially completed grad school applications without submitting them. I failed to turn in reference requests to professors who’d expressed prior interest in recommending me.
Now I had to prove myself at this job because otherwise I had nothing, and I damned sure hadn’t trained for a job in husbandry.