She offered to stay on for a transition period, but Elizabeth and Sunny
didn’t want her to. If Chelsea was leaving, better she do so right away,
they told her. They asked her not to say anything to the three
employees who reported to her on her way out. Chelsea protested. It
didn’t feel right to flee like a thief in the middle of the night. But Sunny
and Elizabeth were firm: she was not to speak to them.
Chelsea walked out of the building and into the Palo Alto sunshine
with conflicting emotions. The dominant one was relief. But she also
felt bad that she hadn’t been able to say goodbye to her team and to
tell them why she was leaving. She would have given them the official
reason—that she was moving to L.A.—but Sunny and Elizabeth hadn’t
trusted her to do that. They’d wanted to control the narrative of her
departure.
Chelsea also worried about Elizabeth. In her relentless drive to be a
successful startup founder, she had built a bubble around herself that
was cutting her off from reality. And the only person she was letting
inside was a terrible influence. How could her friend not see that?