Page 27 of The CEO I Hate

A different waitress reappeared with our drinks, and I shifted the conversation to semi-safer topics. “How’s Mom?” I asked Connor.

Ever since we were kids, he’d always been the best one to answer that question. And it was truer than ever now that he was the only one of us who lived near Mom. She and I talked regularly, but it was mostlyjust to check in—make sure she was all right, ask if she needed anything. Connor was the one shereallytalked to.

“Actually, pretty good lately,” he said. “Nearly finished with her dissertation. Playing tennis with a ladies’ group on the weekends. And she’s taken up drawing.”

“She signed up for a nude drawing class, right?” Finn cut in, wearing a smirk.

My eyes almost bugged out of my head.

“They’renot nude,” Connor said. “The model is.”

“Same difference.”

“Which part is Mom doing?” I asked, horrified.

Finn burst out laughing. “As long as she’s having a good time, who cares? She’ll probably end up flaking on it in the end, anyway.”

Connor frowned, annoyed. “She’s been doing really well lately, you know.”

“Sure,” Finn said with a dismissive wave. “She’s great. Until she’s not anymore.”

Connor didn’t have an argument against that. None of us did.

We all remembered what it had been like when we were growing up. Back then, we were happy just to have days when Mom could be considered functional—which meant she got out of bed without prompting, showered and dressed, and went to work. Those were the good days.

On bad days, she didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Sometimes didn’t eat.

According to Mom’s doctors, depression was probably something she’d struggled with her whole life. Low-level, quiet, easy to miss.But when Dad left? It detonated. She shattered, and it took years—decades—to gather the pieces.

Getting her the hell out of the house she’d once shared with Dad had been an important step—and her new house was the first thing I’d bought when VeriTV really took off and the money started coming in. First big check, first priority.

Psych care. Meds. Therapy. It all helped. It felt like we were finally getting the chance to see her bloom into the woman she should have been all along. The one buried under grief and survival.

She’d made incredible progress…but progress didn’t always move forward in a straight line. There were still plenty of things that could trigger her in exactly the wrong way, pushing her into another depressive episode.

So we were always watching.

Always waiting.

“The anniversary is coming up,” Finn pointed out, “so I’d rather her be in a good mood.”

That was fair. Her wedding anniversary was always a tough day for her.

“We should probably take turns checking in on her around that time,” Connor said. “Hopefully, we can keep her distracted.”

So there are no hiccupswent unsaid.

“The last thing we want is Mom in a funk,” Finn said flatly.

The door opened, and a group of people waltzed in, chatting animatedly. I looked over, spotting Mia and the other writers.Shit.

9

MIA

“You’re sure you guys want to eat here?” I asked as I clocked the peeling wallpaper and the thick coating of dust on the fake plants by the door.

“Don’t worry,” Jerome said as we waited to be seated. “The food is great. And anyway, we’re mostly here every third week for the view.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “Trust me, the eye candy is as good as the queso dip.”

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