How She Came Home

Chapter Fifty-Four

Two weeks dragged by without work or Freen, and ordinarily Becca would have been fine with dinner or drinks or brunch with Mind and Nam to fill that hole of socialising, but she was stubbornly holding onto the wounded betrayal of Mind calling her mom and ignored them both. 

Rawee left the following day, a brittle warning for her daughter and an exasperatedly amused look in parting before she caught a flight back home, and Becca briefly considered seeing if she could flaunt her mom's orders but thought better of it as the mortifying image of security bodily removing her from A-Corp came to mind.

Instead, Becca resolved to wait out the two weeks and let them see she had every intention of being serious about her work. 

Every day, she woke up and completed a workout before briefly speaking to Freen and then spent at least an hour on the phone with Irin, the CFO filling her in on as much information as possible while Becca coached her from her end. 

They still made a good team, even if Becca had been frozen out of the meetings, and Becca felt a small sense of satisfaction at the slight victory. It was short-lived though, because two weeks was a long time to be removed from her office and the inner-workings of the business.

She had lunch with Irin on Thursday and was glum and unconvincing at trying to bribe her to bring a laptop connected to the A-Corp server to Becca's house. Irin was sheepish but no pushover and Becca admired her more for that before brushing aside the topic of work and trying to evoke some sense of normalcy from their lunch.

Boredom started to settle in, holed up in her house with nothing to do. She tried her hand at cooking, scrambled eggs turning rubbery, muffins raw in the middle while starting to blacken on top, tended to her garden and read a dozen books outside in the cold, drinking coffee bundled up beneath a blanket as Athena lolled at her feet. 

Becca wasn't used to taking time off work to spend time with herself and it was unsettling to be in the house with no one around and nowhere to go.

Of course, there was nothing stopping her from buying a ticket to Bali and spending two weeks in the sunshine, pool-side with a cocktail in hand, but Becca had never been one for relaxing holidays. 

She had never been one to relax at all, her mind needing stimulation, needing to be kept busy, and she felt like she was going insane with nothing to do. In the end, Becca fetched a dusty prototype for one of their upcoming nuclear batteries - an older model that they'd quickly upgraded - and disassembled it in the attic offece, piecing it back together and trying to work out any other improvements as she cross-referenced hard copies of current blueprints.

That took up most of a day and she left Irin a long voicemail with her findings before ordering takeout for dinner and watching Pride & Prejudice for the fifth time that week. 

Her phone rang halfway through the movie and she set down her wine glass and stared at Nam's name on the screen before softly sighing and answering it. She wasn't as pissed off with Nam but they came as a package deal and Becca had missed her in the days she'd been left alone.

"Hi."

"Oh. You finally decided to pick up."

Wincing slightly, Becca slunk down on the sofa, pouting as she reached for the remote and paused the movie. "I've been busy."

"You're sulking."

Becca didn't deign to reply and Nam softly sighed.

"How've you been? You've had us worried."

A stab of guilt cut through her and Becca's lips twitched ruefully, "I'm alright. You?"

"She feels bad."