Page 18 of Pride and Protest
“Do you want a ride? I think the trains are shutting down.” He pulled her hair away from her sticky lip gloss.
Liza thought her heart would stop from the tenderness of the gesture. “Not for a couple of hours, I think. I’ll be fine.” Liza smiled. Shedidwant a ride. She just wanted him to insist.
But he didn’t.
“Sure. Well, keep warm and dry.”
“I will.” Liza tried to keep her eyes from stinging.Who do I have to be to get a man to extend just a little extra effort? Janae?
She parted from him and made her way to the platform. She didn’t know how long she stood in the train station as she tried to make a memory of the nicest man she’d met in a while.Wasthis the moment everyone talked about, when you know?She pulled her phone out and tapped her sister’s picture. The phone rang twice, and Janae answered laughing.
“Hello?”
“I take it the job interview is going well,” Liza said.
“David was just telling me about the time he stole fiftygolf ballsfrom the store,” she replied, still chuckling. “I mean, for what?”
“Because he would neveractuallybe held accountable for his actions?” Her sister was silent on the other end of the line. “Sorry, Janae, I don’t care about golf balls. You should get home, though. It’s already snowing.”
“Oh, stop fussing. It’s not supposed to get bad until the evening. I’m fine.” Her words slurred.Is this girl drinking at a job interview? Oh no.Janae and alcohol always ended up in a pool of tears and a relapse of depression.
Janae had had the perfect life at one time. She had a bouncing baby boy, a promising career in finance, and a town house in Bethesda. Everything was perfect. She even had the obligatory drugged-out, womanizing, football-player fiancé, Trevor Nolan. It all ended one day when Trevor ran a red light into a busy intersection with Little Trevor and another woman in the car with him. Janae’s son was dead before he’d made it to the hospital. On a busy street in broad daylight, there were no eyewitnesses. Trevor would never play football again, and the other woman walked away without a scratch. Janae was so devastated that she couldn’t work and was let go. She moved in with Bev and Granny to get back on her feet, but it had been slow going. Janae was kinder, gentler, and more fragile than anyone she’d ever met. For a long while after, Liza wondered how God could have allowed this to happen to someone so unambiguously good.But now Janae was drinking again, and the pain was going to wash over her, and it would be at least three weeks of locked doors and bleak silence. Three years later, Janae had never seen a therapist, despite Liza’s nudging. She just drank and disappeared into herself. She was one year sober—until today. Liza had to get there.
“Janae, I’m coming for you, okay?” Liza couldn’t hide the fear in her voice.
“Liza, you are so dramatic. But come. I’ll wait for you here.” Janae rattled off the address for Pemberley Development before hanging up, and Liza took a seat on the metro. She had gotten only five stops when a watery voice sounded over the intercom.
“I’m afraid this is our last stop. The train ahead of us is stuck in the snow. We cannot move forward and have no timeline for when the train ahead will be moved. Please try to make other travel arrangements.”
Liza did not know how much the weather had changed in her hour underground. As she climbed the stairs, she was greeted with a near whiteout. Her thin ballet slippers seemed like a cruel joke now. Pemberley was still about a mile and a half west, according to her phone’s navigation app. She squared her shoulders and braced herself for the cold.
The glass revolving door swooshed her into the deserted office building, and a heavenly warmth blasted down from above. She glanced at the directory. The offices of Pemberley were on the top five floors. She stepped into the elevator and pressed all five. When the doors opened at the first stop, Liza saw Jennifer, David’s icy sister. She was just as sleek as ever, and her eyes narrowed in recognition at Liza.
“Do you need a job too?” Jennifer said, stepping inside the elevator. She sounded perfectly polite and genuinely uninterested at the same time.
“I do.” Liza’s voice was deceptively cheerful. “But I try to stick to light clerical stuff, you know? Nothing that might damn me to hell for all eternity.”
“Ha. Being rich was my original sin.” Her tone was slightly less bored.
“Okay, Eve. Do you know where my sister is?”
“One floor up. Probably sitting on top of my brother by now.”
“Excuse me?” Liza asked, shocked.
“Oh, come on, let’s not pretend. She’s a beauty queen. She knows her effect on men. Dorsey’s the only man not swayed by her... face.”
Liza did not miss the touch of pride in her voice, the hint of ownership. “Your brother seems like quite the willing participant.”
Jennifer sighed with a bit of a laugh at the end. “You are right in that.” The elevator doors slid open, and Liza stepped out.
“Down the hall and to the left. You can’t miss the dry humping.”
The doors closed behind Liza. The office was uniformly gray, with random pictures of smiling children or pithy coffee mugs on top of desks.
She turned the corner and saw her sister, a clear cup of white wine in her hand. She sat in a glass-walled office the size of the entire apartment at Longbourne.
“Liza, you came!” Janae—rosy-cheeked and glowing—glided across the empty cubicle maze. Janae gave Liza a heavy hug, and Liza held her sister’s wrists together, checking for signs that it was all about to break loose.
