I didn’t answer. I walked back to the bedroom with my laptop and shut the door.
I had work to do. Real work. The kind that paid the money everyone else at that table was already spending in their heads.
The next two days were miserable. Susan did not leave. Instead, she announced she’d stay “for a few more days” to help around the apartment and maybe see some sights while she was in town.
Her version of helping involved rearranging my pantry without asking and shrinking my favorite cashmere sweater in a hot wash cycle.
“How was I supposed to know?” she said, blinking innocently while I held up the ruined sweater. “It looked old anyway.”
Mike spent those days creeping around the apartment in boxers or gym shorts, trying to keep the peace and failing with everyone involved. At night he and Susan would sit in the kitchen whispering strategy while I worked in the bedroom.
I caught pieces of it through the wall.
“She’ll cool off,” Susan said. “She’s stubborn, but she’ll come around.”
“We need to get started on the condo. Contractors won’t wait.”
Then Monday night everything finally blew up.
I came home late from work, exhausted and in no mood for nonsense. The apartment still smelled like those rotten apples. Mike had not thrown them out. He had only shoved the leaking bag deeper into the corner of the hallway, where the floor now stuck to the soles of my shoes.
In the kitchen, the whole family was gathered like they were hosting a holiday dinner: Susan, Mike, and Emily, who had apparently come by to show off a designer mock-up of her future kitchen.
“Well, look who finally made it home,” Susan said. “We’re having tea and pastries. Emily brought éclairs from that fancy bakery.”
Emily, a bleached blonde with pouty lips and a brand-new phone in her hand, barely looked up from scrolling.
