Total pages in book: 156
Estimated words: 144696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 723(@200wpm)___ 579(@250wpm)___ 482(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 144696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 723(@200wpm)___ 579(@250wpm)___ 482(@300wpm)
“Dumping me over all of this?” I shook my head. “No, we’ve got other shit to worry about.”
India regarded me for a long moment with an uncertain smile. “Sophie Scaife. I would have never guessed it.”
My mind seized on something she’d said before. “Jessica was the one feeding the subscriber list to Gabriella, wasn’t she?”
“She was. She came to me from the mail room. And I believe she’s now creative director of Gabriella’s new magazine.”
That hit me like a punch in the gut, and I know it showed on my face.
India somehow managed to look sympathetic while smirking. “That was the job she offered you, wasn’t it?”
I nodded. “I had to pick between her and Neil. Neil won.”
“Isn’t he going back to England?” India frowned slightly.
“Yeah, I’m going with him. I don’t have a job here anymore. I’ll probably never work in New York again now that I’m blacklisted at Elwood and Stern as well as with Gabriella and her crew.” Somewhere along the line, I’d forgotten to think about my unemployment from that angle. I guess being caught up in the pregnancy and Neil’s cancer had kept me from looking at it from such a grim perspective.
“What will you do?” I appreciated that India had asked, instead of just assuming I’d be living off of Neil.
I mean, I would be living off Neil, but that wasn’t my life’s ambition.
Yeah, Scaife, what are you going to do? I heard Holli’s always surprisingly practical voice in my head. I raised my hands and let them fall together in my lap. “I have no idea. I’ll probably try to write freelance or start a blog. Right now, I’m just worried about the move.”
Oh, and the fact that Neil might die and also, we just went through an abortion. I knew I sounded lackadaisical about it, but there really wasn’t much more I could say or feel about either subject.
India looked concerned. “Well, you were good, in the short time you were here. And I’m sorry I accused you of spying. You did some unethical things, but who here hasn’t? If you ever need anything, a reference, somebody’s number, give me a call.”
Wow, I hadn’t been expecting that. “Sure. Um. Thank you, India.”
“Just—” She stopped herself, then, as if against her better judgement, she warned, “Be careful with Elwood. Men like that... a girl can get swept away very easily.”
Jesus, wasn’t that the truth?
I spent the rest of the day at home, emailing back and forth with Neil’s lawyer about immigration statutes. It was basically a non-issue for me to come into the country for six months, but after that I had to really start getting things nailed down. I wasn’t sure how great I felt about the prospect of permanently immigrating anywhere. I’d never considered myself patriotic before, but the prospect of leaving New York and the US to live in a totally different country was shockingly lonely to me.
And the packing would be unbelievable.
As the day wore on to evening, I had an even worse task to face: my mother.
Neil was going to come by and pick me up at eight for a late dinner, and I’d wanted to do at least some packing before he arrived. But the longer I sat in my room, looking helplessly at all my stuff and not having any inclination to do anything with it, I had to admit defeat.
I had to call my mom.
Sometimes, there are just things you have to do to clear a path to the other stuff you need to do, my mom was fond of saying, usually when she’d been overseeing the cleaning of my room. I was pretty sure she wouldn’t see an abortion as something I’d done to “clear a path,” so I was going to make damn sure she never found out.
I also decided that if I did ever end up raising a daughter, I damn sure wasn’t going to screw with her thinking about her body and what she could do with it.
At the mercy of my out-of-whack hormones, I had to try twice before I called. For a while, I just laid in bed with the phone in my hand, crying.
Finally, when the threat of Neil possibly showing up and interrupting the call and everything getting super weird became more and more possible, I got myself together and dialed the number.
“Sophie!” My mom greeted me. “I was getting worried. I need your flight information so I can get your uncle down to Marquette to pick you up.”
“Yeah, about that...”
I heard something clatter and I could perfectly picture my mom, probably slaving away over banana nut bread batter. Her honey blonde hair, streaked with platinum, would be flat-ironed, the front pinned back from her huge, smoldering brown eyes and bombshell pouty lips that I did not win in the genetic lottery. At size twenty-eight, my mom looked like a Midwestern Donatella Versace, a comparison she’d embraced with glee once I’d pointed it out to her.