Chapter 3
My phone rang.
It was Doris.
"Hello, Iona?" Doris said.
Her voice was laced with laughter, sounding like honey spiked with poison.
"So, do you like the 'new home' I gifted you?" she teased. "I heard you asked Eugene for this house yesterday, so I had our wedding photos put up last night. Pretty surprised, huh?
"Oh, and by the way, the grapevine in the yard was too much of a nuisance, so I had it chopped down. Hope you don't mind?"
I didn't say a word, simply listened quietly.
"Iona, you'd better know your place. You're no match for me," Doris said. "You couldn't win against me five years ago, and now, you're even worse.
"Eugene is mine, and everything in the Calhoun family will be mine, sooner or later. What do you have to compete with me? You're just an ex-con."
I gave a quiet, mocking laugh.
"Doris," I said. "Did you forget? I'm a computer science major."
On the other end, Doris's laughter faltered for a moment.
"What do you mean?" Doris asked.
"Nothing," I replied.
I walked up to the oversized wedding photo, reached out, and gently brushed my fingers over Eugene's face in the picture.
"Just so you know," I said, "some things are off-limits to you. Like grandma's house and the people who matter to me."
With that, I hung up.
Then, with everything I had, I yanked that obnoxious wedding photo off the wall.
Crash!
The sound of breaking glass rang out, harsh and loud, in the empty room.
I didn't stick around the old house any longer.
I called a moving company and had them pack up and throw out everything that belonged to Doris and Eugene.
That included the expensive custom-made bed and the entire wall of designer clothes in the walk-in closet.
Then I called a renovation company with just one instruction.
"Restore this place to how it used to be," I told them.
*****
Once everything was done, I headed back to my rental apartment.
I needed a job.
I needed money.
But more than anything, I needed a platform, somewhere I could finally reclaim everything that had been taken from me.
I went online and applied for a few jobs.
As expected, there was not a single response from them.
That criminal record of mine was like a brand, making sure every door stayed closed to me.
I wasn't discouraged.
I jumped into an online programmer community and took on some anonymous freelance projects.
They were mostly just patching up software and fixing bugs.
For me, it was a piece of cake.
Three days later, I earned my first paycheck since I got out.
It was 3 thousand dollars.
It wasn't much, but it was enough to get me by for a while.
*****
One night, I was deep in code when there was a knock on the door.
I peeked through the peephole and saw Eugene standing outside.
His arms were full of bags, filled with supplements and groceries, and he looked absolutely exhausted.
I didn't open the door.
He kept knocking for a long time.
"Iona, open up. I know you're in there," Eugene called out. "I made you some soup. Come out and have a little.
"Iona, don't be like this..."
I put on my headphones and cranked the music up to full blast.
I had no clue how long the knocking went on, but eventually it stopped.
I took off my headphones, and the room was dead silent.
I walked to the window and lifted a corner of the curtain.
Outside, Eugene's Bentley was still parked downstairs.
He was leaning against the car, smoking one cigarette after another, with a pile of butts scattered at his feet.
The cold winter night wind whipped around him, and he was only wearing a thin shirt and suit.
He looked pretty miserable.
My heart was stone cold; it didn't even twitch.
There was a time I stood in the snow for three hours, pleading with him to trust me. I was way more pitiful at that time than he was now.
My phone buzzed.
It was a text from Eugene.
He typed: [Iona, I know I messed up. Please give me a chance to fix things.]
I deleted the message and pulled the curtain shut.
*****
A week later, I finally got a call for an interview.
It was from a startup called Stranger Technology.
The CEO, Hugh Stafford, was the one interviewing me. He looked like he was younger than I was.
He was rocking a hoodie and black-rimmed glasses, looking more like a college kid than a CEO.
He looked over my resume and frowned.
"Iona Calhoun?" Hugh asked.
"Yeah," I replied.
"Your resume is pretty basic," Hugh remarked.
Aside from my name and age, the work experience section was completely empty.
"But I checked out the projects you posted in the online community. They were top-notch," Hugh said, setting my resume aside and fixing his gaze on me. "So, why leave the work experience section blank?"