Startled at the question, one I wasn’t expecting and catching me off-guard, I stutter, “Yes, of course. I sent it before I left.”
“They didn’t get it.” He marches to my desk and stands in front of it, fury radiating off him. “You know what that means? It means Landry Security is now on hold.”
My eyes go wide, my heart stills in my chest as he looks at me with a mixture of anger and pity. My head spins as my mind is yanked from one thing to another so quickly, I feel sick to my stomach. “You’re kidding me.”
“Does it look like I’m kidding? Everything we’ve worked on for months now is in jeopardy because we don’t have insurance. We can’t move forward on anything, and when we do get things in line, our premiums won’t be locked in. They’ll likely be three times higher than they would’ve last week. Damn it!”
“Graham, I’m sorry,” I rush, jumping to my feet. “Let me find the confirmation sheet from the fax.”
He slams a paper in front of me, shaking my pencil holder. “Here it is. It clearly says ‘line busy/no answer’. Did you bother checking it?”
“I thought I did,” I whisper. I have no idea how I missed that because it’s obvious. “I must’ve picked it up and just filed it.”
“You just cost Ford’s company weeks, Mallory. Weeks. Their offer was predicated on a date—which was Friday. I made that very clear. Now we have to go back through the process of getting it inspected and approved.”
“Graham, I’m sorry.”
He takes a step away from me. “I should’ve done it myself.”
Tears lick my eyes, red-hot bubbles of liquid pooling at the corners. My hand shakes as I try to steady myself. “What can I do? There must be something we can do?”
“I’ll take care of it. You can go ahead and go.” He looks at me as he starts to walk away. “I’ll be working late.”
“Graham, I . . .” I look down at the envelope from Vanessa and don’t know what to do. “You had someone here to see you.”
He looks at me with a gaze of pity. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”
“But I need to talk to you—”
“I have enough to deal with today, Mallory. Whatever you’re dying to talk about will have to wait.” He turns on his heel and disappears in his office.
With tears streaming down my cheeks, pieces of my heart in limbo, I grab my bag. As I’m going out the door, Ford is coming in.
“Hey, Mall . . . ory,” he says, then stepping back out of my way as I rush past.
Graham
“Fuck!” My voice booms over the sound of the door shutting. Reaching up, I tear away at the knot in my tie and instantly think of Mallory and the way she does it for me. That only angers me more.
My eyes pull shut and I try to regulate my breathing. I suddenly know what seeing red means. Everything is pulsing so quickly through me that I’m dizzy.
I don’t fail. I don’t make mistakes of this caliber, ones that cost thousands of dollars and weeks of time. But I trusted her to do it. I thought she understood the importance.
“Hey.” I whirl around and see Ford standing in the doorway. He watches me warily. “What the hell just happened?”
“About what?”
“About what?” he repeats. “About Mallory running out of here practically bawling.”
The look on his face tells me much more than any adjectives he uses to describe her. I’ve never seen him look at me this way, like he’s second-guessing me.
“She was probably crying because I pointed out her fuck-up.”
“I didn’t say she was crying, Graham. I said she was bawling.”
Choking back a lump in my throat, I look at my brother. “I just told her I’d take care of it.”
He shakes his head. “I have a feeling you said a little more than that.” As he walks deeper into my office, he shoves his hands in his pockets. “No one is more upset about this than I am. It’s my company, my bottom line at the end of the day. But there are worse problems to have.”
“I don’t fail,” I say through clenched teeth. Despite my narrowed eyes, my hands shake as I place them on my desk. Her face floats through my mind, the shock written all over her features.
“No, you don’t and you didn’t this time. But you are about to.”
I hang my head.
“I’ve been around the world,” he reminds me. “I’ve seen real problems, real issues, and it makes things like this seem pretty inconsequential in comparison.”
He gives me a second to respond, but I don’t. The anger that was spilling over a few seconds ago wanes, the flames of fury doused with a dose of reality marked by Ford’s words.
“So what? We will pay a little more for insurance and we’ll start awhile later. That’s all fixable,” he says. “As long as our family is happy and healthy, everything is fixable.”
I raise my eyes to meet his and regret it as soon as I do. For maybe the first time ever, one of my brothers is putting me in my place. He could forego all the words and just look at me like that and his point would be well made.
“What you just did,” he says, “may be a whole lot harder to fix.”
As the smoke begins to clear, I see the situation with a clarity that makes me sick. “I . . . I don’t know what to do.”
“You better fucking get a plan together, G.”
“If I were her, I wouldn’t talk to me.”
“If I were her, I’d tell you to go straight to hell,” he points out. “But I have a feeling she may be more forgiving than me.”
When I don’t move, he steps closer. “Graham, if you don’t reach out to her now—not tonight, not tomorrow, now—you just might end up in the same boat as me.”
“What boat is that?”
“A boat with more pride than sense. It’s a lonely fucking place, brother.”
I whip out my phone and press her name. It rings three times before I’m sure I was put to voicemail. Glancing at Ford, he winces.
I call her again and am sent to voicemail on ring number two.
“I’m out of my element here,” I say out loud on the verge of panic. “What do I do?”
He stands stoically in front of me. “You have to talk to her.”
“But she won’t talk to me.”
“So, go to her.”
It sounds like simple logic, an answer that should’ve been obvious. “I don’t know where she went.”
Scurrying by my brother, I sit at her desk. Pulling open her drawer, I rifle through her things until I find her calendar. “She doesn’t have yoga tonight.”
“She’s probably at home,” Ford offers. “Did you think of that?”
“I . . .” I fight the calamity in my brain. “I don’t know where she lives.” His jaw drops and I groan. “We just started doing this thing. I’ve never been there.”
“That’s an issue for another day.”
My body tenses as the door opens and Raza walks in. She’s all smiles, hips swinging, until she sees the look on our faces. “I’m sorry. I thought this would be a better time.”
“Better than what?” Ford asks as I continue to rifle through Mallory’s drawer. It’s a mess, but instead of irritating me, I find it sort of comforting.
“There was a woman in here earlier. I came in to ask about a couple of things, and she and Mallory were in a heated conversation.”
Ford and I exchange a glance as I stand. “Who was she?” I ask.