totally suited Marie.
Marie picked up her glass of red wine and took a sip. “Now, let’s talk about this rationally,” Marie said. Anna chuckled, knowing those words had never come out of her sister’s mouth. Rational and Marie were like oil and water.
“What have we got here, really?” Marie asked. She began cleaning up the mess of breadcrumbs and dip splatter that Anna had made in her whirlwind of stress eating.
“I’ve been fired for six months.”
“Well, I imagine it’s all in how you look at it. You think fired. I think…six months vacation.” Marie shrugged. “Sounds like a dream to me.”
“Imagine telling me to get a life and then handing me a list…I mean, what is she thinking?” Anna asked, not really listening to her sister. She was not dealing with this well, she knew that. She would feel calm for a second, then there would be an explosion in the back of her head and all she could think about was not going in to work tomorrow and how dumb it all was. How ridiculous. What was she supposed to do?
“Camilla is just looking after you like she always has.” Marie walked back over to the sink and dumped the crumbs.
Anna laughed a dry little bark. “Couldn’t she just slip me a twenty or…?”
“She’s still doing that?” Marie asked, turning from the sink surprised. “She never slips me twenties anymore.” When Anna had gotten a job at Arsenal at age eighteen, Marie had been sixteen. And when Camilla started taking Anna under her fine and gracious wing, Marie found a place there, too. Now both women looked at Camilla as someone much more than a boss or a friend. She was family of sorts, like a favorite aunt and it made the pain of this six-month betrayal even worse.
“No, no twenties, but anything would be better than this,” Anna said glumly. She fiddled with the breadbasket and because it was empty, she used her finger to scoop up more of the hummous she wasn’t actually tasting and put it in her mouth.
“You work too much,” Marie said, snatching the basket and dips away from her. “And frankly, it’s not like you are really fired. You are being slightly overdramatic here and, as a woman with a fine appreciation for dramatic, I can tell you there is no need.”
“Yeah, but do you know what can happen in six months?” Anna asked her sister. “With Andrew in charge of Goddess, I may not have a company to run when this little vacation is over.”
“Come on, Camilla is going to be there,” Marie said skeptically.
“Sure, but she hasn’t been a part of the day-to-day life of Arsenal in years.”
“Anna,” Marie interrupted sharply. “Do not sell that woman short.”
Anna blew out a big breath and rolled her eyes. Camilla was hardly the one who needed to be defended here. Anna was the injured party, why couldn’t her sister see that?
Marie poured more wine in her glass. “What’s really got you so upset?” Marie asked quietly.
“You mean it’s not enough that life as I know it is over?” Anna asked and took a sip of her wine. Marie hummed and leaned on the counter. “It’s not enough that the fall line for my pet project is going to be run by a spineless imbecile?” Anna was working herself up; she could feel her heart rate doubling. “How about I really have no idea what she wants me to do? What am I supposed to do for six months?”
“How about sleep?” Marie suggested.
“I sleep,” Anna protested, but Marie obviously didn’t believe her. “Okay, so I sleep for a week, then what. Get a life? I don’t have any idea what she means.”
“That—” Marie lifted her glass and looked over the edge at Anna “—is the saddest thing I have ever heard.” Marie drank and the buzzer on the stove went off. She turned around to deal with what had become a very elaborate midnight snack.
Anna sat in her barstool and felt lost. She felt as though she was eighteen years old and her mother was leaving all over again. What was with the older women in her life abandoning her like this? Just when she felt like she was accomplishing things, someone she loved and trusted ripped the world out from under her feet. Get a life? It made no sense.
“So,” Marie was saying as she pulled a casserole dish out of the oven. The air filled with the smells of oregano, basil and buttery pastry crust. Despite having eaten everything within arm’s reach, Anna was starving. “You do what she needs you to do. You read some books, take naps, help your sister renovate.” Marie looked merrily out of the corner of her eye at Anna.
“You can’t take my lemons for your lemonade,” Anna laughed ruefully, but the gorgeous tart Marie was putting on the counter to cool distracted her. “What is that?”
“Tomato and basil tart,” Marie said and pulled out some dishes. “I am thinking of adding it to the menu at Marie’s.”
Tired and sad and lost and hungry, Anna looked at her sister buzzing around her kitchen and felt a sudden deep appreciation for her. Marie had finally moved back to San Fransico a few months ago and, after working in others’ kitchens for most of the past eight years, she had figured out, as Anna knew she always would, that she was not a good employee. She put down her savings on a little restaurant in a funky new area of town and was planning on taking the San Francisco dining world by storm. And she would, Anna was sure of it. Marie took everything by storm.
Not like Anna, she thought bitterly. Anna gets fired.
With a groan she put her head on the counter. She had not set out in this world to be an advertising executive. But she was one. A damn good one. And the only place in the world that she wanted to be was Arsenal.
Her childhood had been filled with a hundred moves. A thousand little changes over that span of years that made Anna feel as though her whole life was built on quicksand. The only concrete thing, the only real thing besides her sister was Arsenal. Ten years of work and steadfast devotion to the woman who gave her a chance to build her life and the odd twenty dollar bill when things got tight.
She had just gotten to a place with Goddess that would ensure Arsenal would always be in her life. It was all she wanted, something real to keep her going.
“Oh, come on,” Marie laughed. “You know, I still remember the day when you told Mom you weren’t going to move away with her again.” Marie was leaning against the counter again. Anna sighed heavily hoping to push away the pain that always accompanied that particular memory.
“She had that crappy car, that…” Marie paused, trying to remember.
“Hatchback,” Anna supplied, her voice muffled as her head was still on the counter.
“She had gotten fired again, remember? And we were going to go south…some relative that we hadn’t already hit up….”
“Her aunt in Arizona,” Anna said.
The memory was there, no point in trying to push it away. Anna, Marie and their mother, Belinda had lived in a tiny one-bedroom apartment off Haight-Ashbury—an apartment that smelled constantly of fried chicken and wet dogs. But they had stayed in that place for a year. Anna finished her whole senior year there. She made friends. Sort of. She fell in love with California. With staying put. When Belinda had come home and said they were moving
