Not satisfaction.
Sadness.
My brother was not some monster from a story. He was enabled. By my parents. By girlfriends. By a family system that never required him to stand on his own feet.
Maybe finally, he was learning.
I did not reach out.
Not yet.
But I did not close the door forever either.
While my family dealt with the wreckage, my career kept climbing.
On April first, my promotion to senior manager became official. David announced it at the quarterly all-hands meeting, calling me out specifically for the Meridian deal.
“Myra Seward closed the biggest contract in our company’s history,” he said, “while handling a personal situation that would have derailed most people. She never missed a deadline. Never missed a meeting. That is the kind of professional we want leading teams.”
If only he knew what “personal situation” really meant.
The forty-five-thousand-dollar bonus hit my account on April fifteenth.
