Copyright © 2019 by Trevor McCall
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-7343652-0-7
This book is dedicated to my family.
Without them, I would never have followed my dream.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
About the Author
Chapter One
The elegant Manhattan apartment admitted no sign Christmas was four days away. There were no splashes of red or spirals of multi-colored lighting anywhere. There wasn’t even a tree standing in a corner waiting for someone who lived in this space to find the time to throw a few decorations at its empty branches.
The shrill tones of the alarm from Aubrey Wilson’s cell phone collected in the air of her bedroom in deepening waves. They demanded she get up and face the day. Aubrey’s desire to climb to the top of her corporate world kept her from pushing snooze on her alarm. She hadn’t been late for anything in over a decade.
She wouldn’t start today.
Aubrey silenced the alarm, then rolled over to say good morning to her fiancé, Walter. Since he wasn’t in bed beside her, Aubrey directed her gaze toward the bathroom door. It was closed. In the space between the floor and the bottom of the door, she could see the light was on. Was he in there getting ready?
“Walter?”
She called his name as softly as she could since Walter was not an admirer of ‘loud noises’ early in the morning. He said they interfered with his ability to meditate himself into his prework ‘winning state’. The number of things that qualified as ‘loud noises’ since their engagement was impossible to categorize. This meant Aubrey spent most mornings navigating her apartment like a ninja. It was as she braced herself for the daily ‘loud noises’ speech, that the note fell off his pillow and onto the top of her hand.
Aubrey picked up the note and unfolded it at the crease.
Aubrey,
Woke up early. Decided to get a head start on the Hopkins deposition.
Walter’.
She couldn’t believe it.
He didn’t even tell her to have a safe trip. On second thought, she could believe it. No one would nominate Aubrey and Walter for any “Most Romantic Couple” award. They were a power couple. Their relationship was about success, not syrupy sweet emotions.
Of course, none of that excused the fact she believed that if he were going to leave for work early on the day she was taking an unplanned trip back home to help her mother through her first Christmas without her father, she might have gotten something personal in the goodbye note from him. Something to at least show he cared for her a little bit. She consoled herself in the moment by holding out hope he left her a hidden Christmas present somewhere. After all, he still hadn’t found the present she left him behind his tie rack in his closet. It had been hiding there, unnoticed, for two weeks.
Aubrey climbed out of bed and crossed the hardwood floor in slippers and flannel pajamas. She headed toward the bathroom. Her eyes scanned every surface looking for the present she knew Walter hid somewhere for her. He really went out of his way to put it in a hard to find place. She was certain he got her something. There was no way he could forget the hurt look she had in her eye last Christmas when he ‘forgot’ to get her a present. She knew there was no way he could be that insensitive two years in a row.
She tried to match him in his complete obsession with his career, his obsession with making money, his obsession with climbing ladders, but no matter how much effort she put into every day nonchalance, Christmas remained a soft spot for her. It had been her father’s favorite time of the year. The way he made a production of it would make even the coldest heart melt. The love of Christmas, instilled in her by the magic her father found in the holiday insisted, even to her supremely rational mind, her fiancé, the man she was going to marry in less than three months, could not have forgotten to get her a present. Not again.
In the time it took the water to warm for her shower, she searched the cabinets under the sink. The water had long since been warm when she removed all the matching towel and washcloth sets from her marble shelved bathroom closet, to see if he hid something behind them.
Nothing.
‘That’s okay,’ Aubrey thought to herself, ‘Walter thinks I’m as obsessed with the cappuccino machine as he is, so he probably left it in the kitchen.’ Aubrey challenged herself to enjoy her hot shower and not think about Christmas presents again. At least not until she made it to the kitchen where the infamous cappuccino machine awaited.
Refreshed, Aubrey stood in her closet planning what to wear to work. It was cold. Over three fourths of the country had snow in the forecast for Christmas. There would definitely be snow in Virginia when she got there late tonight, and she wouldn’t have time, after her half day of work, to come home and change before heading to the airport. However, she knew how much judgment she’d face from her boss, Victoria, if she showed up in a pullover and fleece lined leggings. So, she reached for the gray suit and the thin cream-colored top that made her feel so confident when she wore it. She might freeze to death in a blizzard, but she would look good doing it.
Her eyes skimmed across the Christmassy colors in her wardrobe that she owned even though she never wore them. As she dressed in her respectable business costume, she wondered what made her buy those Christmas things. She couldn’t remember. It was as though her body subconsciously supplied her with a way to celebrate her parents and her hometown. Maybe she should take some of them with her. Except, her packing was complete. She didn’t want the hassle of opening her carry-on to fit a few of the holly jolly pieces into it.
As she entered the kitchen area of the austere Manhattan apartment Aubrey shared with Walter, she felt her heart deflate. She took in the extreme cleanliness of the area surrounding Walter’s prized cappuccino machine with a miserable sigh. There was no Christmas present hiding in plain sight on the counter.
He hadn’t even gotten her something for him and pretended it was for her. Like when he gave her one of those robot vacuum cleaners for her birthday two years ago because he thought it was so wonderful the floors could stay clean with neither of them lifting a finger. Or when he got her the cappuccino machine this past year to celebrate their three-year anniversary. So romantic of him, wasn’t it? What girl wouldn’t want a robot vacuum cleaner for her birthday? What girl wouldn’t want a cappuccino machine for her anniversary, especially when that girl only took her coffee black? She was just like her father when it came to the way she liked her coffee.
Aubrey sighed again. She wouldn’t give up on Walter yet. Perhaps, he would ship something to her mother’s house in Virginia. Maybe, just maybe, it would be there waiting for her when she arrived. Regardless, there was no present hidden in the apartment. Aubrey wasn’t going to spend any more time thinking about it. She had to get to work.
Aubrey’s boss, Victoria, hated it whenever she beat everyone to the office in the morning. She didn’t want to admit her employees loved her company less than she did. She demanded loyalty like an unhinged king. No one dared cross her. Aubrey was her favorite but wouldn’t label it a privilege. It was best to beat Victoria to work.
*
The cab driver barely waited for Aubrey to pull her suitcase from the backseat and close the door before he pulled back into traffic loo
king for his next fare. Aubrey couldn’t resist. She called out, “Merry Christmas”, to his disappearing taillights. In her head, she imagined her dad saying something pithy to her. It would be his way of making fun of her for making fun of the cab driver over his lack of Christmas spirit. It would be a ‘pot calling the kettle black’ remark.
Aubrey looked at the dreary gray New York skyline. Like all people, no matter what they believed in, Aubrey thought her father’s passing meant he looked down on her from the sky— especially when she was in one of these moods where she missed him. “Sorry dad, I’ve been a Grinch so far this year. I promise I’ll be better when I get back home to mom.” With that, Aubrey quit talking to herself, something her pithy father claimed was a sign of genius, probably because he was always doing it, and walked inside her building.
It would be more precise to say, the building Aubrey worked at, since the building obviously wasn’t hers. She didn’t own the building. She wasn’t successful enough to own a whole floor in a building… yet. If you asked her, she would be unlikely to claim she would ever own a floor of a building in New York City. Yet, the fact she was only thirty, had only been doing this job for five years, and was already one of the top executives at Cypress Equity, begged to differ. Everyone knew this deal Victoria was chasing for Clarke’s Department Stores was Aubrey’s baby. It had her fingerprints all over it. Aubrey imagined she would get a low six figure bonus when the deal finally closed. Who really knew? Maybe one day she would own an entire building. If she did, she would change the name to Wilson Equity.
The thought sent her mood into a tailspin. How could she change the name of her future building to Wilson Equity, when, in just three short months, her last name would change to Ainsworth? It would have to be Ainsworth Equity. Oh my, that also meant she would be Aubrey Ainsworth. It was hard to believe, but she never put the names together before this minute. Aubrey thought Aubrey Ainsworth sounded horrible. She chided herself for her vanity. A name, is a name, is a name. She waited for her dad to contribute some of his pithy wisdom to her internal monologue, but he was silent. What if he thought Aubrey Ainsworth sounded as bad as she did?
Once inside the elevator with her rolling suitcase, Aubrey hit the button for the twelfth floor. She saw the elderly woman doing her best to cross the distance from the building’s front doors to the elevator in order to get on with her, but Aubrey wasn’t feeling charitable. It might have been the taxi driver. It might have been the fact Walter hadn’t gotten her anything for Christmas going on two years in a row, but Aubrey chose not to do the right thing. She let the doors close in the elderly lady’s face.
As soon as it was done, she felt bad about it. All the way to the twelfth floor she felt bad about it. This tendency in Aubrey to feel compassion for her fellow humans was exactly the thing Victoria wanted to stamp out of her. She brought it up in her three previous year end reviews, and would no doubt bring it up again in a few weeks when she did this year’s review. ‘You’ve got to be more cold-hearted’. Victoria’s advice rang in Aubrey’s mind as though it were a voice-over recorded for a movie.
If she had the courage to stand up to Victoria, she could tell her to skip the lecture this year and let her sign on the dotted line because she knew what Victoria thought she needed to fix. Unfortunately, Aubrey did not have the courage to stand up to Victoria. No one did. In a few weeks, she would sit through her year-end review nodding politely while Victoria chastised her for being too human.
She thought the Mr. Clarke, of Clarke’s Department Stores, was going to stand up to Victoria when they all met in Victoria’s boardroom several months ago to discuss the asking price for his company, but even he folded at the last second. He accepted Victoria’s lowball offer for his company with paltry attempts at raising the price. Aubrey drew up the initial offer, it was part of her job as an expert acquisitions analyst to start the bidding somewhere. It shocked her when Mr. Clarke accepted the figure she pulled out of her hat. She knew it was undervalued by at least a billion dollars. She was sure Mr. Clarke knew it too. Why he accepted such a bargain price was beyond her.
The elevator doors dinged as they opened on the twelfth floor. Aubrey got off, by herself, the way she liked, and headed toward the imposing wooden doors of the global headquarters for Cypress Equity. She had her keys in her hand, just in case, but there was little more than a one in three chance she would need them.
A quick turn of the handle confirmed her suspicions, Aubrey wasn’t the first to arrive this morning. The question was, had Victoria beaten her? Or, was it Beth? The three women seemed to take turns on a merry-go-round named ‘who will be first at the office today’. Aubrey suspected the daily winner was whichever one of them faced the least resistance on the streets during the morning commute. She would have wagered the entirety of her impending six-figure Clarke’s Department Store bonus on the fact that Victoria and Beth got up at 5am every morning, just like she did. An homage to the early bird catching the worm nonsense absorbed by their brains from an unknown but formative source.
A quick glance around the office, and Aubrey’s spirits rose. It was Beth and not Victoria who beat her. The light was on in the office next to hers. Fortunately, the corner office, the one with the magnificent view, was still dark. It wasn’t that Aubrey would be in trouble if Victoria beat her. It was just a matter of having to endure her look of disappointment. It never faded before lunchtime.
Aubrey stopped at Beth’s door with her suitcase. Beth was, without a doubt, Aubrey’s best friend in the world. It’s possible she was Aubrey’s only friend. “Good morning, sunshine.” Aubrey said as greeting.
“What’s so good about it?” The smile on Beth’s face told Aubrey she was having a good morning in spite of her quotation of the pessimist’s mantra. Unlike Aubrey, Beth allowed herself an acknowledgement of the season by crowning her otherwise inconspicuous business attire with a Santa hat.
“Love the hat,” Aubrey said with a smile. She did love it too. It was the kind of thing she wished she could still convince herself to wear. She kept the Christmas Spirit when she first started working here, but after that first review, in which her holiday attire had been used as a recent example of her supposed lack of proper cold-heartedness, Aubrey gave it up. “What do you think Victoria will say.”
Beth thought about it for a minute. “Bet you a dollar she says, love the hat. Same as you.”
“You’re on. Although, even if you’re right, it will mean something different when she says it. Speaking of Victoria, did she call in yet?”
“Yes. She said she would be here no later than 7:00.” Beth glanced at her computer screen to find the time. “That gives you twenty minutes to get ready.”
“For what?” Aubrey couldn’t hide the apprehension in her voice. Victoria knew how to get to her. Walter said she had to learn how to stand up to Victoria. He said it like it was a switch she could flip somewhere near the thermostat on the wall in her office. She wanted to object that if she knew how to stand up to Victoria, she would have done it years ago. Besides, he didn’t know how to handle his work ‘Victoria’ either. Aubrey wasn’t allowed to call or text him while he was working, unless it was an emergency. Walter lived in fear Darren might think he wasn’t one hundred percent focused on billing more hours for the firm.
“She wants to review the core business information on the Clarke deal one last time before you leave.” Beth rewarded Aubrey with a pained look to let her know she thought it was ridiculous Victoria wanted to go over that same information again.
“You know she’s doing that to punish me for going home for Christmas.” Aubrey turned toward her door. She had to get started on putting something together for the meeting. “If you need me, you know where I’ll be.”
Aubrey trudged into her office. She parked her suitcase by the chair in the corner. Her hope was you couldn’t see it from the hallway. She didn’t want Victoria reminded, every time she walked by Aubrey’s door, that Aubrey would be leaving early today. Sh
e then turned her computer on before she took off her coat. She wanted to give Windows a head start.
“Good morning.”
Aubrey let out one of those limbic noises that aren’t actual words. She nearly knocked her computer off her desk. All because of a simple greeting while her back was turned to the door. “Victoria, you almost scared me out of my skin.”
“I can see that. When you’ve had time to take your coat off, and you’ve gotten your suitcase properly stored, grab Beth and meet me in the boardroom.” Victoria walked off without waiting for an answer from Aubrey.
Five minutes later, Aubrey and Beth sat at a ridiculously expensive looking wooden boardroom table. It was a table you imagined once belonged to minor royalty or maybe a swarmy congressman. Anyone who sat down at the table would be forced to think about its cost. This was why Victoria chose it. She wanted to intimidate her enemies and her friends, with the surreal power of her wealth.
“I still can’t believe you’re not going to be with him for Christmas.” Beth picked up the thread of conversation she and Aubrey started when they were in the hall walking toward the boardroom. Beth wouldn’t be letting Aubrey off the hook as easily as Aubrey wanted to be let off.
“Christmas is just another day to Walter and me.” Aubrey was sure Walter felt this way. She, on the other hand, was in a ‘fake it until you make it’ fugue.
“Why doesn’t he just go with you?” Beth had no choice but to poke Aubrey in the face with a good dose of irrefutable logic. She would let them forsake Christmas as a couple if they wanted, but Beth knew Aubrey’s father died over the summer. She also knew Aubrey’s mother wanted her to come home to help her through Christmas. Walter, if he was worth marrying, would be there to support his fiancée in her time of need.
Aubrey rose to Walter’s defense. “Are you kidding? Look at the hoops I had to jump through to get Victoria to give me these four and a half days off before Christmas. His firm would never give him that much time with the New Year just around the corner.” Aubrey said all this with a straight face. Beth, however, shook her head in opposition. “What?” Aubrey asked.
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