The morning after the reunion, my phone looked like a fire alarm.
Thirty-eight missed calls.
The screen glowed on my kitchen counter, vibrating every few seconds as if the little rectangle was personally offended I hadn’t picked it up yet. “Mom”. “Dad”.
“Chloe”. The Harris Family Forever group chat. A couple of aunts whose numbers I hadn’t saved but still showed up as the same area code I grew up in.
It was barely seven.
Denver light was just starting to creep through the slats of my blinds, thin and pale. My coffee machine hummed in the background, dripping into the same chipped mug I used every weekday when I wasn’t driving to Utah to be told I didn’t exist.
Another call came in. The phone skittered a little on the counter from the vibration.
I watched it without moving to answer.
Last night, my mother had lifted her wineglass in front of fifty‑two relatives, smiled at my sister, and called her the daughter who always loved her family.
Then she’d turned her head, glanced at me like I was a stranger who’d wandered in off the road, and said I had never helped with anything.
I hadn’t said a word.
But I’d walked away.
And now my phone looked like a tally of every person who wanted me to pretend nothing had happened.
I wrapped both hands around my mug and took a slow sip, letting the heat burn a path down my throat.
I wasn’t picking up.
Not yet.
—
My name is Natalie Harris. I’m thirty‑six years old, five‑foot‑six on a good day, and I live alone in a two‑bedroom apartment just off Colfax in Denver, Colorado.
The place isn’t big, but it has good bones—a little balcony that catches the morning sun, a kitchen counter just wide enough for me to spread out my spreadsheets, and thin walls that make it easy to hear when my neighbors slam their doors.
For nine years, this apartment has been my command center. It’s where I’ve logged into online banking at two in the morning, where I’ve whispered card numbers into the phone for hospital billing offices, where I’ve texted my sister “It’s covered” more times than I can count.
By day, I’m an auditor for a mid‑sized financial firm downtown.
It’s not glamorous. There are no corner offices with floor‑to‑ceiling windows, no glossy magazine spreads about the “woman changing finance.” It’s fluorescent lights, endless documentation, and clients who forget they hired you to find what’s wrong.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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