Page 4 of Butterfly Sisters
Julie finally met her eyes. “Rebecca met with them.”
Her mouth hung open. “Rebecca.” It wasn’t a question but a statement. Rebecca-with-the-list-of-accomplishments took her client. Correction: wasgivenher client. And Phillip didn’t even bother to stop just now to let her know personally. Instead, he went all the way down the hallway and told Julie to break the news. Had Julie known? She couldn’t have…
“Did he say why he had Rebecca meet with them instead of me?” she asked, trying to make sense of all this, suddenly racking her brain for anything she might have done to change his mind. She’d said something slightly risqué to Phillip about the Macey Group a few days ago, but he’d laughed at her joke… And then there was that one discussion in the hallway over the merits of their new digital real estate software. Had she said something to offend him then? “I could’ve easily come in earlier.”
Julie shrugged helplessly, clearly reading the stress on Leigh’s face.
“I’m going to go ask him why he didn’t just call me,” she said, stacking up the utensils and napkins for the lobster poppers and placing them on top of her things.
“You can’t,” Julie said. “He’s stepped out for an all-day meeting.”
“That figures.” Her shoulders slumped as she slipped her laptop into her carrying case.
“At least you can have a little time to collect your thoughts?” Julie said with a half-smile.
Was Leigh reading too much into everything? What was going on? Suddenly, her friend’s awkwardness made sense. She must have been caught in the middle. Julie would tell her everything. But not here. Leigh could go out with her tonight and find out all the details, and then she could make her plan for how to get back in Phillip’s good graces.
“This issue aside, I needed to talk to him anyway to alert him about my leaving this weekend,” she said to Julie. “Rather than just putting it into the corporate calendar, I wanted to tell him personally that I’m taking time off next week.”
“I haven’t known you to ever take a day off.”
“It’s a family… emergency,” she said. Maybe it wasn’t an emergency—she wasn’t sure—but it had probably better be, given that she was clearly on thin ice with her boss. “Now that I think about it, it might not be the best time to mention that I need a few days, since he’s already reassigning my clients.” She clicked off the screen and set the remote in the center of the table.
“Maybe just quietly slide it in on the calendar…”
“Yeah,” she said, still shell-shocked by Phillip’s abrupt change of plans.
Leigh hadneverhad anything like this happen to her at work and the disappointment hit her hard. Rebecca was clearly a superstar, but wasn’t Leigh as well? Had she reached her peak in the company? Was Rebecca the new-and-improved Leigh? Leigh 2.0? If so, where did that leave her?
She suddenly felt short of breath and lightheaded. She gathered up the rest of her things. “I’m going to step out for a little while, get some air.” She handed Julie the lobster poppers. “You can have these.”
“Thanks,” Julie said. “I’ll put them in the lounge.”
“All right.” Leigh took out her phone and slung her bag over her shoulder. Then, with a wave to Julie, she left the building without a clue as to where she was headed—both figuratively and at this very moment.
TWO
“It’s Meredith! You’ve reached my voicemail, so I’m obviously off doing something incredible. Leave a message.”
“Meredith, it’s Leigh again,” she said, pacing along the sidewalk outside her apartment. She’d wandered there while still trying to process what had happened this morning. “I’m sorry I missed your call. I was in a… meeting. Please call me right back.” She hung up and went inside, grabbing the elevator to the eighth floor—home.
Stepping inside her apartment, Leigh kicked off her shoes and dropped her heels and her handbag on the mat, along with the laptop bag that had begun to feel like a boulder with a strap. She set the phone down on the small coffee table that held a brightly colored ceramic bowl Nan had designed for one of her pottery lines, the latest home décor magazines and an unread novel she’d been trying to start but hadn’t had a moment for, and flopped onto the sofa, trying not to feel sorry for herself.
Her phone pinged with a text, shooting her back to a sitting position. She grabbed it and peered down at the screen:Did you get Meredith? I still can’t get her.
It was her mother.
Not yet, she typed back.
Another message floated onto her screen:Keep trying.She has to be at the cabin for this.
She responded:You know I will.
Her mother’s choice of the lake house as a meeting spot was interesting. What did Nan’s cabin have to do with whatever it was Mama had to tell them? Going back there would be enough to deal with, without this mystery news.
Leigh’s fondest memories of the house on the lake were when she and Meredith were little girls. The waterfront cabin had been in the family since her grandparents had bought it in their sixties. After her grandfather had passed away, it had been just Nan there, and, living alone, she had delighted in seeing her granddaughters every holiday.
Leigh had spent long summers running barefoot down the old trails, the overgrown paths of Willow Swamp Loop being her favorite. In their early years, she and Meredith raced along the bank, and she’d always stop to catch her breath on the boardwalk that crossed the swamp. The humid Tennessee summer air was so thick that it formed droplets of water on her hot skin and doused her blonde hair, causing her sister’s to spiral up in wild, frizzy strands. They’d run all the way back home and jump into the lake, the cool water providing instant relief from the relentless summer temperatures.
