I was not homeless.
Not broke.
Not asking my parents for support.
But to my father, Victor Calloway, unemployment was less a temporary setback than a character defect.
To my sister, Brielle, it was entertainment.
She leaned against the front door in a red sweater, watching snow collect on the shoulders of my coat.
“Guess you can go back to your little apartment now.”
I looked at her.
“Good morning to you too.”
She smiled.
Victor pointed toward my suitcase.
“Enough sarcasm.”
“I didn’t invite you here so you could spend Christmas looking miserable and embarrassing everyone.”
I almost laughed.
“Embarrassing everyone how?”
Victor stared at me as if the answer were obvious.
“You lost your job.”
“Yes.”
“Brielle is getting engaged tonight.”
“I know.”
“Her fiancé’s family will be here.”
“I know.”
“They are serious people, Eliza.”
That one amused me.
“What am I?”
Brielle answered before he could.
“Currently?”
She lifted her champagne.
“Freelance.”
Victor laughed.
My mother, Helena Calloway, did not.
But she still said nothing.
That was her talent.
Silence while someone else did the damage.
I looked through the open doorway.
Half the Christmas meal was already prepared.
I had arrived two days early to help.
The cranberry sauce was mine.
The pie was mine.
The turkey currently sitting in Victor’s refrigerator had been paid for with my card because Helena had forgotten to order one.
Three weeks earlier, Victor had called me privately asking to borrow money.
Not much by Calloway standards.
Enough that he did not want Brielle to know.
I had transferred it the same day.
None of that mattered now.
Victor said:
“You need time to get yourself together.”
“I am getting myself together.”
“Then do it somewhere else.”
I looked at Helena.
She finally spoke.
“Maybe a little space would be good for everyone.”
There it was.
A sentence shaped like neutrality.
I nodded.
“Okay.”
Victor seemed disappointed.
He had expected resistance.
Brielle definitely had.
“You’re just leaving?”
“You asked me to.”
She laughed.
“Don’t come back in three months acting like we ruined your life.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
Then she added:
“And when Adrian and I take over the company, don’t suddenly remember you’re a Calloway.”
That made me stop.
Her fiancé, Adrian Vale, came from an old Wintermere family.
Polished.
Well-connected.
The kind of people Victor admired because they never had to explain where their money came from.
“Take over what company?” I asked.
Brielle smiled.
“Dad’s.”
Victor looked pleased.
“I’m moving her into a larger role after New Year’s.”
“Executive strategy.”
Brielle raised her glass.
“Future of Calloway Development Group.”
Something cold settled inside me.
Not jealousy.
Not anger.
Recognition.
My grandfather would have hated that sentence.
Henry Calloway had built the company.
Not Victor.
Henry started as a carpenter, moved into commercial renovation, then small development projects, then full-scale construction and property management.
By the time Victor joined, the business was already successful.
Victor expanded it.
He deserved credit for that.
But over the years, the story changed.
At dinners, Victor called it “my company.”
At charity events:
“the business I built.”
Henry never corrected him publicly.
He would only glance at me.
Sometimes smile.
Grandpa Henry had died eight months earlier.
At his funeral, a lawyer I barely knew approached me after everyone else left.
