Chapter 8
I jabbed the elevator button again.
This time, the doors slid open and I walked in.
Chandler stood outside, watching me.
"So what's your plan?"
I had no answer to give.
The elevator doors closed, sealing me off from everything behind.
Back at the hospital, Charles was awake, sitting up in bed, crayons in hand, and lost in his drawing.
He'd drawn a little house, and in front of it were three figures standing together.
One tall, one short, and one tiny.
He pointed at the tallest figure.
"Mommy, this is Daddy," he said.
"This is Mommy.
"And this is me.
"We all live together," he added, his voice full of hope.
I crouched down, looking at the drawing.
The lines wobbled, the colors spilling outside the shapes.
But the three of us were holding hands, all smiling so happily.
"You drew this so well," I said, my voice a little hoarse.
My throat tightened.
Charles proudly held up his drawing.
"Mommy, when is Daddy coming back? I want to show him," he asked, hope lighting up his face.
I reached out and ruffled his hair.
"Soon."
I said slowly.
That night, after Charles fell asleep, I sat by his hospital bed and unlocked my phone.
I opened my WhatsApp conversation with Ethan.
The last message I sent him was forty days ago.
[Charles has a fever. Can you come home?]
No reply.
I scrolled up to even older messages.
[Charles said 'Daddy' for the first time today.] He read it, but didn't respond.
[The preschool needs emergency contact info. Can I put your number down?] He read it, but didn't respond.
[Ethan, the credit card's limit is used up this month. Charles needs his vaccines.] Two days later, he finally replied with a single word: [Okay.]
Scrolling all the way through a year's worth of chats, I realized Ethan hadn't said more than twenty words to me the whole time.
I locked my phone and sat there in the dark for a long time.
The next morning, Dr. Norris came to the hospital to take Charles's blood sample.
Charles was scared of needles and cried for a bit, but a lollipop quickly cheered him up.
Before leaving, Dr. Norris said, "The results will be ready in two days and will be sent directly to Ms. Miller."
I nodded.
That afternoon, I took Charles home from the hospital to our apartment.
It was just a two-bedroom place in an old neighborhood in the northern part of the city.
Not the one Ethan picked out for us.
He'd originally set me up in a private villa on the west side of town.
When Charles turned two, Ethan stopped coming home, and the villa's maintenance fees were cut off.
I moved out with Charles and rented this place myself.
The rent was 1,500 dollars a month.
With Charles's formula, diapers, preschool tuition, and the nanny's wages, the 30,000 dollar limit on the secondary card was just barely enough.
If Charles got sick, I had to use my own salary to cover the costs.
When I opened the door, the living room was cluttered with Charles's toys and my design drafts everywhere.
A bowl of instant noodles still sat on the coffee table. I hadn't gotten around to tossing it.
Charles was curled up on the couch, hugging his favorite dinosaur plushie. After a few episodes of cartoons, he'd drifted off to sleep.
I crouched down to cover him with a blanket, then slid into a chair at the dining table and opened my laptop.
The Riverside Project proposal was still saved on my hard drive.
Every single source file, visual, construction schedule, and material list was saved right on my laptop.
Victoria could hand the Riverside Project to Maisie all she wanted, but the heart of the whole thing was still mine.
Without my files, all she had were incomplete drafts.
She couldn't pull it off.
I opened my email and started writing.
The recipient wasn't Victoria or Maisie.
It was Andrew Sutton, the development director of the Kensington Land Group, and the client for the Riverside Project.
Last month, during the initial review of the proposal, Andrew said something to me directly.
"Ms. Lane, you're the only one I trust to take charge of this project. I wouldn't trust anyone else with it."
I kept the email short.
"Mr. Sutton, there have been some recent changes in the Riverside Project's design team, so I might not be in charge for now. Just wanted to give you a heads up in case this causes any issues."
After sending the email, I closed my laptop.
My phone rang again.
It was Victoria.
"Sophia, did you just email Andrew Sutton?"
News traveled fast.
"I did," I replied.
"Do you even realize what you're doing? You're reporting over my head. Are you trying to embarrass the whole design team?" Victoria snapped.
"Victoria, I wasn't the one who started this," I replied calmly. "I've been working on this project for five months, and you just reassigned it with a single comment about me being 'unstable,' without so much as a warning.
"What do you call that? That's what I call bypassing protocol."
There was a brief silence on the other end.