His hand shot out and shoved my shoulder, hard. I stumbled backward, off balance, and my hip slammed into the desk edge with a burst of pain that made me gasp. My desk chair rolled away and I half fell, catching myself on the desk, my hand smacking down right next to my keyboard.
The Zoom window was still open, camera still on, all eight clients watching. For a second, nobody moved. The silence was absolute.
Then one of the executives—I think it was the CEO—said, “Miss Bennett? Are you… is everything alright there?”
I looked up at the screen, saw my own face in the little preview window, flushed and shocked. Saw my father in the background, still standing in the doorway, his friends frozen behind him.
“I’m fine,” I managed. “I apologize for the interruption—”
The screen went black. Not just black—disconnected. All the participant windows vanished. The call ended.
“Shit,” I whispered.
“Well,” Dad said behind me, casual as anything, “looks like your important meeting is over. Come on, everyone, let me show you the master suite.”
They filed out like nothing had happened. Like they hadn’t just witnessed a grown man shove his daughter during a work call. I stood there, hands shaking, hip throbbing, staring at the empty Zoom screen.
My email pinged.
Subject: Contract Termination – Healthcare Portal Redesign.
I didn’t need to read it. I knew what it said. Something about an unprofessional work environment. Something about concerns regarding project stability. Something corporate and polite that meant, We saw what we saw. And we do not want any part of it.
Six months of work. $45,000 in projected income. Gone.
I pulled up my client roster. The healthcare project had been my anchor, the big contract that let me take on smaller, experimental work. Without it… Without it, I had maybe four months of operating capital before I would start missing my own bills. Four months to find new clients in a market where everyone wanted to see your previous work, where reputation was everything, where a terminated contract would raise red flags.
I sat down slowly, wincing at the bruise already forming on my hip. The old Skyler—the one from this morning—would have cried again. Would have gone downstairs and tried to explain, tried to make peace, tried to smooth everything over because that’s what kept the household functional.
But that Skyler had died in the rose garden. This Skyler just felt cold.
I didn’t go downstairs for the rest of the day. I heard my parents and their friends laughing on the patio, heard the clink of glasses and Dad’s booming voice explaining his short game strategy for the putting green that didn’t exist yet.
At 7 p.m., I packed up my laptop and left through the front door without saying goodbye. I drove to a coffee shop in downtown Austin, found a corner table away from the windows, and tried to figure out how badly I was screwed.
The answer: pretty badly.
No major client. Bruised hip that hurt every time I shifted in my chair. Parents who had made it clear they wouldn’t leave voluntarily and had apparently lawyered up for a fight I couldn’t afford.
My phone rang. Dad. On the caller ID.
I almost didn’t answer. But muscle memory from two years of conditioning made me pick up.
“Skyler.” His voice was different now—annoyed, not angry. “Where are you?”
“Coffee shop. Working.”
“Well, get back here. The irrigation system for the putting green isn’t working right, and the installer already left. I need you to troubleshoot it.”
Of course he did. Because in addition to being his landlord, his ATM, and his punching bag, I was also apparently his tech support.
“I’ll walk you through it,” I said, putting the call on speaker. “What’s the error message?”
For the next fifteen minutes, I patiently guided him through the settings on the irrigation controller. Press this button. Turn this dial. No, the other direction. Yes, I’m sure.
“Got it,” he finally said. “The zone timer was set wrong. Fixed now.”
“Great. I’ll—”
But I stopped. Because I had heard something in my earbuds that made my blood turn to ice. A rustling sound. Then Dad’s voice—but not directed at me. Directed at someone else.
The phone was still on. He had tried to hang up and failed. The buttons on smartphones could be finicky when you had dirty hands from gardening. He had fumbled it, set it down instead of ending the call.
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