“I’ll start in the mailroom. Even if it will be a complete waste of my education.”

“You won’t start anywhere. End of discussion.” My father hadn’t looked up once during our conversation that was fast turning into an argument.

The posters printed with infographics for every division sat unseen on the easels around his office. The reports filled with statistics I labored over remained unopened. Not that my father’s reaction surprised me. I knew it would be an uphill battle. I just hadn’t realized how steep the hill was.

“I graduated top in my class and interned at the Valley Falls Company.” I learned early on that when all else fails, go with indisputable facts. My father would get frustrated with not having a counter-argument and walk away before conceding defeat. “My MBA is from Wharton, the best business school in the country.”

“I should have insisted you attended Harvard. You would have had a better chance of finding a husband.”

Words failed me. It happened more often than I cared for when dealing with my father. He had backwards ideas on what he expected of his daughters. His beliefs had bypassed chauvinism and were staring down the throat of misogyny. My older sister, Kirstin, had already failed him by running off to the middle of America and walking away from our father’s wealth. Fortunately her trust fund established by my grandfather was out of my father’s reach.

I took a different approach. Credentials I thought my father couldn’t ignore. “If anyone else with my credentials walked into this building, you’d offer them a job in five minutes.”

“Anyone else isn’t my daughter. The answer is no.” My father looked up, but stared out the window, ignoring both me and my carefully crafted presentation.
This was what my father always did. Placed a goal in front of me and as soon as I achieved it, he moved the goal. Nothing I did was ever good enough. I swung my arm out and swept the posters to the floor with enough force that one or two might have hit some papers on his desk, including my reports, on the posters’ flight to the floor.

Father still didn’t look at me. I didn’t mean for my outburst to happen, but he barely noticed me, much less my tantrum. “My answer’s final, Kera. My daughter will not work for the company. Perhaps if you marry someone more worthy than the man your sister is engaged to, your husband might take over the helm. But. My. Daughter. Will. Never. Work. Here.”

“You misogynistic ass! Archie Bunker looks liberal compared to you!” Something kicked down the filter in my brain and years of frustration and anger boiled over. “You want to know why Kirstin left? She left because of you. Not me. Not Grandfather. Not Mother. But you. And want to know why she stayed away? That’s on you too. You’ve got one daughter left, and you’re losing that one too!” Anyone sitting outside my father’s office would have heard my shouts.

It was bad enough that I dared get my MBA and wanted to work for the family business. But I committed the worst of all the sins. I embarrassed my father. At work. He couldn’t come up with an excuse why Kirstin hadn’t been home in over a year and was planning on marrying a man who used to live in a double-wide before our grandfather moved them to a house. Grandfather claimed it was because the tornadoes having an unnatural attachment to trailer homes. My outburst revealed the great Fontaine secret of the 21st century. Kirstin left home and dropped the Fontaine name.

Father picked up the phone on his desk, still not looking at me. “My daughter requires an escort from the premises.”

“Don’t bother.” I bent down and grabbed my posters. No way I would leave them for him to pass on to a department. In the same motion, I also swept up the reports. “You’ve made your feelings clear.”

Once I had everything haphazardly shoved back into the bag I used to carry the items, I hurried from his office and raced passed his admin and her looks of pity to the elevator. As the doors slid open, two of the overly musclebound men my father hired for reasons beyond mere security greeted me.

“Stand down boys. I’m leaving.” I stepped into the elevator. Instead of turning around to face the door, as convention dictated, I glared up at the behemoths. “You know racing to do his dirty work isn’t exactly a good look.”

The men ignored me. One of them pressed the lobby button. I wondered if my father even knew their names. Probably not. Why would he know the names of a mere underling who obeyed his every command? “He’s a tyrant, you know? And all tyrants fall.”

The men looked over my head, ignoring me much the same way my father ignored me. They even ignored me as they sandwiched me between them and walked me out of the elevator and into the parking garage then to my convertible. I left the top down and could have dumped my things in the back seat, but I wasn’t ready for my hard work to fly out of the car and onto the street for other cars to run over. Instead, I popped the trunk and threw in the bag and my purse before slamming the trunk back down with a satisfying thud that echoed around the garage.

“Thanks for the help, boys.” I pushed past both of them, but their bulk hampered my huffy exit and I had to walk around them instead of between them. By the time I sat down behind the steering wheel, they had moved enough so I wouldn’t run them over with my car unless it was deliberate. I raised my arm and waved to them with one finger as I sped out of the building.

Traffic hampered my dramatic exit and I had to sit in the driveway before a kind soul waved me ahead of them onto the street.

You’ve reached Kirstin and Mike. No one can come to the phone right now, but please leave a message after the beep.

“Gah! Kirstin, where are you?”

Beeeeeeep

“Fuckinshitdamnit, stupid beep. Kirstin, where are you? Why am I even asking that question? It’s not like you can answer it. Or the one after it. Hey buddy, blinkers aren’t optional, use them! I lost it with Dad. Completely lost it. I can’t do this anymore. Since you left, things have gotten worse. I used to ignore some of his shit, but no more-”

Beeeeeeep

“Damn it!” My shout garnered a few looks from the drivers in nearby cars, but I ignored them and shouted at my phone instead. “Call Kirstin!”
Calling Pierces.

“No. Call. Kirstin.”

Calling The Tens.

“No. No. No. Fuck. I’ll just do it myself!”

Calling Tuck.

“Oh for the love of…” Before my phone could dial a random person I didn’t want to talk to, I mashed my thumb against the screen. Thank God for stop lights. With the minute granted to me by the red light, I redialed my sister’s number and listened to her voice telling me to leave a message. The beep sounded just as the light turned green. “It’s me. Again. I’m done trying to work with Dad. If he isn’t going to play fair, then I’m not either. Call me back when you can. Love ya.”

I ended the call before I turned into a version of a super villain in one of those cheesy movies Kirstin loved to watch. This wasn’t about getting back at my father. It was so much more. I would prove all of his stupid opinions about me were wrong, and I wanted him to regret the moment he kicked me out of his office.

He kicked me out of his office. The act still hadn’t registered in my brain yet. What kind of father would kick their own daughter out of his office? Mine. How pathetic was that? And I couldn’t say what was worse, that he kicked me out or that I expected him not to when I showed up. Yeah. Part of it was on me, expecting a leopard to change its spots. But he was the asshole who called security to escort me out.

I shook my head clear of my thoughts and focused on driving home. Sadly, I still lived with my parents. I had plans to move out, but after Kirstin ran off, my parents put an end to that plan. At least they had compromised and allowed me to move into the carriage house. I wasn’t in their house, but it was still part of the property.
Whatever I decided, it needed to happen away from my parents. My mother didn’t cared one way or the other, but she’d say something to my father. Once he found out, he’d put an end to anything I came up with.

The landscape shifted from office buildings and sky rises to trees and houses as I drove closer to home. After a forty-five minute commute, I wasn’t any closer to figuring out what I would do as I pulled up to the gated driveway of my parents’ home.

I could always call my grandfather. He helped Kirstin, he would help me too. But he was a last resort. If I had to go to him, it meant I hadn’t explored all of my options.
I could try Kirstin again. Maybe she would answer this time.

I smashed the button that opened my phone contacts then dialed Kirstin.

What was it they said about insanity? Something about doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results? They might have to put my picture next to the definition.

You’ve reached Kirstin and Mike. No one can come…

Nope. Still not picking up. But it didn’t matter. I pulled my car next to the stairs I had to climb to get to what wasn’t much bigger than a studio apartment in the city and jumped out while Kirstin’s recorded voice invited me to leave a message. In the sixty seconds it took me to drive from the front gate to the carriage house, I made a decision.

“It’s me again. I’m leaving Mother and Father’s. It’s time to cut the strings, right? Between Grandfather’s trust and my savings, I have more than enough to buy my own place if it comes to that. Not that they’ll realize I’m gone for a few days. Father will think I’m hiding and licking my wounds, and mom, well, let’s face it, Mom hasn’t cared about anything we’ve done in forever. Anyway, I’ll call you later when I figure it out.”

I didn’t stop to pass go. I didn’t stop to collect $200. I didn’t even stop to get my presentation out of the trunk. Instead, I ran up the stairs, thinking about everything I would need to fit in my car and making a mental list of the items I wouldn’t mind leaving behind and the things I couldn’t live without.

Three hours would have to be enough time to pack up my belongings and stick them in my car. If I was lucky, I’d be on the road before my father left work. He was just as likely to stay over in the city as he was to come home for the night, but my mother had one of her fundraisers tonight. Somehow, I avoided having to attend, but my father hadn’t been as lucky.

As I stood in the middle of my bedroom, I surveyed my belongings. Why did I have this much stuff and what was I going to do with it all?

I was gonna need a bigger car.