Chapter 12 - The Voicemail
Wesley must have told Gloria the second he got home, because my studio phone rang at nine the next morning. A number I didn't know. She'd tracked down the landline I listed for client inquiries.
I let it go to voicemail. The message ran three minutes.
Her voice started tight and controlled, the way it sounded when she was laying down the law for the daycare kids. Then it cracked open.
"You think you can just leave? Walk away from my family, from my son? You think you're somebody now because you've got some little shop in some town nobody's ever heard of? Let me tell you something, Nora. You were always just a guest in this family. You were never one of us. You were never going to be one of us. And Wesley is better off without you dragging him down with your sad little freelance hobby and your sad little story about your dead mother."
The message cut off at the voicemail limit.
I sat in my chair and listened to the silence after it. Then I played it back once more. Not to hurt myself. I'd passed that point months ago. I played it to hear the thing Gloria couldn't hear in her own voice.
Panic.
The matriarch was losing her grip, and the harder she squeezed, the more of it ran through her fingers.
May you like
I saved the voicemail and dropped it in the folder.
Guests don't do the dishes. Guests don't prep the food. Guests don't run the books. And guests, when they've had enough, are absolutely allowed to leave.
