Page 4 of A Love Most Fatal
“Yes,” Willa says. “Please, Ness, it’ll be like twenty minutes tops. It’s at 2 PM at the school.”
“If it’s so short, why can’t you go? Or better yet, your husband?”
“We’re both busy,” she says, like this explains it perfectly. “Getting together the paperwork for the Monson bid is taking longer than I expected, and Sean’s got fires to put out at three sites tomorrow. But we missed the last conference and really can’t miss this one.”
I sigh for so long that she asks if I’m still there. Working in a family business means we all have a job; if it doesn’t get done, the rest of us are affected.
“Can he do it on the phone?”
“No, this guy is a real tight ass. He also has a tight ass, if that at all sways you towards saying yes.”
I take the phone off speaker as Leo laughs from where he’s still sprawled out on the mat.
“Artie won’t be able to play if we don’t get this sorted,” Willa explains. “Please, can you just go talk to him? His godmother and beloved aunt is just as good as his own mother if you think about it.”
I can’t help but laugh at the absurdity of it. This sort of request is not infrequent from my older sister. If she wasn’t so damn good at carrying the weight of our company’s legal department on her shoulders, I would begrudge her more. I roll my head until my chin is resting on my chest.
“Fine.” I mutter, and can practically see Willa grinning through the phone.
“Thank you forever.”
“You’re welcome,” I say, then add “forever,” before hanging up.
2
NATE
I’m running late.Again.
Punctuality is important to me, it really is. I’m just not always very good at it.
I have very good intentions, and I tend to leave myself more than enough time to get where I’m going, but in the ever-moving current that is a day, something always comes up. There’s a longer line at the post office when I need to return an Amazon package, or the man I play pickleball with on the weekends wants to play “just one more quick game” and I agree, even though I know it’s never quick. Inevitably, I’m rushing, and today is no different.
Freeway traffic isn’t normally so excruciating, but city planners love to make everyone miserable by closing entire lanes in the middle of the day. Lovely, really.
It’s a term week, which translates to a week off for the kids to do whatever it is middle schoolers do now that they have phones and a week for teachers to prep for the last term of the year. Also the allotted time for the final parent-teacher conferences. I schedule all of mine on Monday and Tuesday, making for two mammoth days of meetings with parents. If they miss, they miss, and they can go ahead and send me an email. But ArtieDonovann’s mom begged (literally) that I reschedule for today,any time, really, and she promised she wouldn’t miss it, swore on her mother’s life she’d be there, etc., etc.
I was home for the day when she called, and I’d just realized that I’d forgotten my laptop in the classroom, so I told her I would make the allowance just this once. I’d be going to campus the next day anyway, and Artie is a good kid, although he is on my shit list this semester.
The guys I usually play pickleball with at the Y were meeting at noon, so I thought I would have just enough time to get in some games before booking it over to the school. However, I did not account for the spirit of Satan being in the entirety of the city’s driving population today, so now I’m going to be late.
My phone keeps ringing, my mom most likely checking in to see if I’ve found a date for my cousin’s wedding yet, but my phone is in my gym bag in the back seat. After it starts ringing a third time, I give in and answer on my watch.
“Ma?”
“Hi, sweetie. How are you?” she asks before launching into vivid detail about the ham she’s making for her book club tonight and just how awful the lines were at the grocery store this morning. “It sounds like you’re in the car. What are you doing? I thought you had the day off,” she says after a couple minutes.
“I have a bit of work to tie up,” I say.
With no preamble, she starts in on my cousin’s wedding and how it’s important that I don’t show up alone because of how it will look to the rest of the family (whatever that means) and I can barely hear her, so I’m fiddling with the volume control on my stupid watch, all while pulling into the school’s parking lot right behind a black Land Rover, which abruptly slams on their brakes. This, in turn, gives me no time to brake, resulting in mecrashing the front of my Prius into the back of this car probably twelve times the cost of mine.
And a parent, no doubt.
“Shit, fuck,” I say, and my mother gasps through the watch’s little speaker. “Mom, I gotta go, I’ll talk to you later.” I press the screen of the watch until the call ends and pull into a spot next to the car. She gets out first, an absolute force of a woman storming to my door with her arms up.
I climb out of my car and try not to think about the fact that I’m still in my gym clothes while this woman looks like she is about to step into a meeting with high-level executives. She looks pissed, too, like I’ve ruined her day along with every other shitty driver in this godforsaken city.
“What the hell happened?” She asks when I haven’t said anything for half a minute, just staring at her. I close my mouth, which was hanging open slightly, and look at the back of her car. There’s a dent, but it’s a small one.