I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream at the gate agent, who was currently announcing the final boarding call for Flight 882 to Aspen. I just stared at the screen, and for the first time in my twenty-nine years, the familiar, crushing sadness didn’t come. There was no wave of inadequacy, no desperate urge to fix it.

Instead, there was only calculation. A cold, hard arithmetic settling in my chest.

They thought they were discarding me. They thought I was just another appliance they could unplug and toss aside when it stopped being useful. They didn’t realize they had just declared war on the wrong defense contractor.

I turned around, the wheels of my carry-on gliding silently over the terrazzo floor. I wasn’t going to Aspen to join them, begging for a scrap of their affection. I was going to bury them.

I walked through the terminal, the noise of the holiday crowd fading into a dull roar behind the pounding in my ears. I am twenty-nine years old. To my family, I am Briona, the struggling freelance IT consultant who lives in a studio apartment and drives a five-year-old sedan. They think I scrape by. They think I need their approval to feel significant.

They have no idea.