by Lila Monroe
Mom greeted me with a brief spasm of a hug before pulling back and immediately launching into a lecture: “Is that really what you’re wearing, Allison? It’s entirely the wrong color for spring, what can you have been thinking? You can’t let the little things slide like this, you’ve only just got Hunter back in your clutches again, you need to lock this down before he—”
Without warning, my anger bubbled over, a pot left on boil for far too long. “This is not the time for this, Mother!”
Mom stopped mid-sentence. What was this, someone questioning her interpretation of reality? “Allison, I know this is hard to hear, but you do have an unfortunate tendency to squander perfectly good opportunities. Now, I’ve brought a nice selection of pastel skirt-suits in the car that should fit you, so you can change quickly and discreetly and it probably won’t be too late—”
“I’m not a child!” I snapped.
“You’re certainly acting like one at the moment—”
“Mom. I will not go to the car with you.” Each word was short and sharp and bitten off with cold, fierce precision. “I am my own person, making my own choices, and if you don’t like them—any of them—you can bite your tongue or you can go somewhere where you don’t have to see them.”
I could hear my volume rising, but I couldn’t seem to stop it, all the years of accumulated resentment breaking through like water through a faulty dam. I went on, “I’ve been working and working and working, trying to make you proud—” my voice broke, “but nothing makes you proud! You act like nothing matters except getting me married off and baking pies and popping out babies!”
Mom stumbled backwards a step, her face blanching deathly pale. My father caught her elbow automatically, but still she faltered. Dad’s eyes were wide, verging on panic—it had been so long since any of us had really talked back to my mother, I think he had no idea how to deal with it now that it was actually happening.
My dad’s eyes helped me rein in my rage slightly, just enough to lower the volume and keep from making more of a scene: “I went to a great college. I graduated with honors. I got a great job. I made a difference in people’s lives. I made an entire life for myself, but I’m still a failure—” my voice cracked, but I soldiered on—“in my own mother’s eyes. As if I have no worth at all, unless I can find a man to value me first. Can’t you see what you’re doing? Can’t you see how you’re making me feel? Don’t you care at all?”
There was a long, tense silence. My dad looked more thrown than a Super Bowl football. Paige looked like she expected a bomb to go off.
My mother sniffled. “I—I—”
“What?” I snapped. I could feel my shoulders going up around my ears. She was going to start in on how ungrateful I was, I just knew it. She was going to get defensive and dismissive and act like nothing I said mattered. Like always.
“I am proud of you,” my mother insisted.
I thought for several seconds that I must have misheard her.
Mom took out a delicate pink silk handkerchief, and blew her nose. Her voice shook as she continued. “I’m proud of you every single day, my dear. I thought you knew. I thought you had to know—you do so well, how could I not be proud?”
Dad placed a comforting hand on her shoulder, another on mine. The weight of it pulled me down, letting the anger start to seep out of my body.
“I just want you to be happy as well,” my mom went on. “I want you to find someone to be happy with, find someone who treasures how bright you shine. I know—I know I can’t be around forever. I know how quickly things can fall apart when—when someone who’s been a part of your life has suddenly gone.”
I remembered suddenly and with shame that Mom’s own parents had died when she was nineteen. She had been considering pursuing a career onstage before that happened and funds had become suddenly too tight to consider it.
She’d always loved ballet.
I remembered the wistful look on her face when we came across some old recital photos in the attic, talking about how Grandma and Grandpa had always supported her.
“I just want you and Paige to have someone to look after you when I’ve gone,” she finished in a quavery voice, dabbing at her eyes with her handkerchief.
I took her hand as gently as I could, looked deep into her eyes. “We can look after ourselves, Mom,” I said softly.
“I know, I know,” she said with a watery laugh and a shake of her head. “I’ve seen you do so many great things on your own. But you’re such good girls—” she clasped my arm earnestly—“you shouldn’t have to. You should be able to lean on someone else, every once in awhile. If you wanted to.”
I felt an unaccustomed surge of tenderness towards my mother, warm and engulfing. “Ah, hell.” I couldn’t stay mad at her. “Come here, Mom.”
She didn’t even take me to task for my language as I enfolded her in my arms, Paige and Dad embracing us as well, our family becoming one giant hug, warm and secure and safe. My mother felt so small and fragile as I held her, bird-boned, delicate. I was so used to seeing her as an all-powerful tyrant, and yet, in this moment…my heart ached for her fragility, for her losses, for the choices she had made that had driven me so far from her.
I couldn’t promise that we would ever be close. She loved me, but she had expressed that love for so long by belittling me and my choices that there was a part of me that feared that all that damage could never be undone.
But I hoped that maybe, just maybe, this conversation was a sign of better things to come.
My hands danced restlessly at my side in anticipation as the crowd’s murmur quieted, their eyes focusing on Hunter as he took center stage.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Hunter began, and the crowd fell completely silent as his slow, measured, dark honey tones reverberated through the warm afternoon air. “I can’t thank you enough for coming out here today and giving me a hand. I appreciate your support more than I can say.”
The crowd gave murmuring sounds of assorted “you’re welcome”s and “of course”es. Looking around at all the smiling faces, you could tell that Hunter was among friends here. These were the people who loved him, who supported him, would believe in him and back him all the way.
I was proud to be in their company.
“We’ve none of us had an easy time of it lately,” Hunter went on. “I’m sure none of you have missed the recent news about Knox Liquors.”
Angry grumbles spread through the crowd in response; Hunter waved them to silence.
“Now, now. What’s done is done. As a very wise lady told me just recently—” his eyes locked on mine, and he gave a wolfish grin—“there’s no point in dwelling on the past when you could be looking towards the future. And what a bright future it’s looking to be!”
Whoops of agreement greeted his statement.
“Now, if you’ve all sufficiently wetted your whistles to form an opinion on what recipes you find most palatable, you’ll find the ballot boxes to your left, with Martha distributing the voting slips; everyone gets three to distribute between the flavors as you wish.”
“What if we haven’t wetted our whistles enough yet?” heckled someone from behind me.
“Then too bad, because we’re all out of beer!” Hunter shot back, and the crowd laughed. “Well, what are you waiting for?”
The crowd hustled over to the ballot boxes, and I did as well, intercepting some of the tidal wave of people before they could swamp Martha entirely with their questions and their voting slips. We helped direct everyone to the ballot box they wanted, and sent them away with plates of barbecue and lemonade until there was enough breathing space to pull out the calculators and tabulate the results.
It seemed every brew had a few diehard fans, but soon a few clear leaders emerged, and from those candidates, one soon began to stand head and shoulders above the rest: a hoppy blend with strong overtones of sarsaparilla and Mexican vanilla that Hunter had chosen to call simply “Dixie.”
“Dixie is the
winner!” Martha announced to widespread cheers.
Hunter was surrounded by supporters, who showered him in hugs, handshakes, and hearty backslaps. A few of the burlier young men hoisted him on their shoulders and began to run a victory lap around the lawn, and I laughed and laughed as I watched them, until I had to sit down on the grass or fall down. My heart felt as light as a feather, and my mind was already dancing with visions of what was coming next, exhilaration and nervousness combining in a heady mix of anticipation and terror.
This had been the easy part.
Next up, the expo!
Chapter Thirty
“Ah, Miss Bartlett. How is that family of yours doing? Any developments in that…emergency of theirs?”
My boss peered at me over his glasses. He was trying to make me feel guilty for not divulging any more information than privacy laws said I had to. Was this just his normal brand of passive-aggression, or was he starting to get suspicious?
“Almost cleared up,” I said as brightly as I could. “Oh look, is that the time, I have to go update the company’s social media presence or everyone will think we’re dead, see you later!”
I fled as quickly as I could, hoping that the words ‘social media’ would have confused him enough to keep from following me.
The best way to keep my boss from asking questions had always been to start talking about something he knew nothing about; better to let the flighty young lady do her thing, he seemed to think, than to reveal he knew nothing about it.
I was back at work, and with Hunter prepping production on a new test batch of the Dixie brew, there was nothing for me to do back at the manor house. Well, I could have stood around admiring Hunter’s profile and simultaneously being bored silly by all the beer jargon he spouted like an overexcited fanboy, but somehow that seemed less productive than heading back to D.C. and catching up with all the work that had piled up for me in my absence (I didn’t think that Hunter’s red alert levels of hotness would qualify as an emergency my boss would be on board with).
Well, trying to catch up, anyway. Enough stuff had piled up in my absence that I was starting to think they’d made my cubicle into a trash can and forgotten to tell me.
No one had done any work on that tampon line while I was gone and the other woman in the office was out sick—too afraid of cooties, I guess—and the client was irate, threatening to take their business elsewhere. I tossed off some copy for it, no big deal—I could’ve done another tampon line in my sleep—and sent Sandra an e-mail outlining what they wanted in terms of art. That barely dented the pile of work, though—it seemed that while I was gone, I’d been designated everyone’s official paperwork monkey, and those forms weren’t going to file themselves.
Lost in the daydreamy reveries of self-filing paperwork and coworkers who actually did their own damn jobs, I was so busy that it wasn’t until my stomach rumbled and I looked up at the clock that I realized I’d managed to skip lunch. I looked at the pile of paper on my desk and decided that I couldn’t risk the time it would take to hop over to the Chinese joint across the street that did the really good chow mein—if I stepped away from this desk for more than five minutes, the paperwork would probably start reproducing.
Cafeteria vending machine it would have to be. Maybe if I was lucky they would still have the Garden Salsa flavor of Sun Chips, and the Snickers would have been replaced recently enough that their peanuts wouldn’t have turned to brittle dust with age.
Yeah, I know, dream big.
I had almost trotted down to the cafeteria when I heard the not-so-dulcet tones of bragging Douchebros, their voices extra loud, like they wanted to make sure that no one suffered the tragedy of not hearing their extremely important conversation.
Worse, their voices were heading directly towards me.
I so didn’t have the energy to deal with their bullshit right now. Their ‘lighthearted’ teasing about my failure to secure the Knox deal, their leering comments about my outfit and my body, their sexist speculations about the way I had earned this job. All of that took way more energy than I had at this moment. It probably took more energy than a power plant produced in a year.
So I hid instead.
I looked around, rapidly locating a blind spot behind some tarp where the maintenance guys still hadn’t finished installing the new water fountain. I’d been annoyed about this for months—how hard is it to put the new one in after you’ve taken the old one out?—but now I sent a silent thank you to them for dragging their feet, and ducked behind the blue plastic.
Oh God, please let this tarp be too opaque for me to cast a shadow. If they catch me hiding out here from them, they’ll never let me hear the end of it.
As they drew closer, I began to be able to make out some words and sentences. Something seemed off about the conversation, though—there were long stretches of silence, something the Douchebros would normally never tolerate. Were they on the phone?
“Yeah, yeah, that’s awesome, Chuck,” Chad was saying as he and his entourage drew level with me. “So you got this takeover offer when?”
My blood ran cold. A takeover offer. That they were discussing with Chuck.
They had to be talking about Knox Liquors.
What would this do to Hunter?
“What’s the problem, bro?” another Douchebro put in. “Sounds like easy money, so why’s he dragging his feet?”
The distant sound of Chuck’s voice grew muffled as Chad covered the speaker with his hand. “Because of Hunter fucking Knox, bro, duh. There’s a lot of legal jazz that means we’d need Hunter’s agreement and voting shares to sell. There’s no way that tool’s going to go for it.”
Relief washed through me, and a spark of hope. So it wasn’t a done deal. There still might be a way to stop this.
“No, no, dude, I totally hear what you’re saying…” Chad’s voice and the footsteps of his coterie began to fade, and then die away.
My mind was already racing ahead of them.
I was furious, yes, and worried, and still guilty—but most of all, I was thinking.
This might not just be a travesty, it might be….an opportunity.
It was time for some espionage.
I cast a surreptitious eye over the rest of the office. Empty. Good. The Douchebros had long since headed home along with everyone else. No one had batted an eye at me working late, since every time I had managed to make it in lately I’d been staying until the wee small hours; I had to, just to keep even vaguely on top of things.
I left my computer running and took the route with no security cameras to Chad’s desk.
Of course he got an actual office room, instead of a cubicle, even though he hadn’t been with the company much longer than me and, numbers-wise, had a much worse track record. Still, however much I resented that, it did give me a tiny bit of privacy once I picked the lock.
During the day, this was Douchebro Central, and in the dim half-light of evening, you could still see the signs of their presence, the chip bags and the energy drink cans they’d left littered across the floor or snagged in the miniature basketball hoop over the door. Because why pick up after yourself when Housekeeping will be in later to do it for you?
I cut off my mental censure before I could really get going; if I let myself, I’d just stand here judging them all night. I went straight to Chad’s computer and breathed a sigh of relief. The asshole never shut it down or even logged it off, but I’d still spent the last few hours worrying that he’d suddenly become environmentally conscious or something.
I pulled up his work e-mail; we used Outlook, so that didn’t require a password either. Quickly scrolling through the recent exchanges—and doing my best not to roll my eyes at his terrible attempt at flirting with Andi from accounting, which was either going to end in a harassment lawsuit or Andi’s fist in his face (Andi did roller derby and she was hardcore)—I located a long e-mail string from Chuck, and began to speed read.
I hadn’t misheard that phone call;
there was nothing Chuck could do without Hunter’s approval for the buyout. He had attached the relevant clause in the board articles, as well as quoted it in the body of the e-mail: because of the family name, Hunter had to agree to a sell-off.
“Yes!” I whispered fiercely, and gave the air a small victory punch.
And then I heard a noise outside the office.
Shit. Shit shit shit. Who else would be here at this time of night? Housekeeping, yes, but they started vacuuming on the other side of the building, I should have had—I checked my watch—a good fifteen minutes yet. And Security stayed down at their desk eating take-out unless they had a good reason to go elsewhere and I had avoided their cameras, I knew I had—
Well, it didn’t matter. Someone was out there, and probably getting closer every second I dithered over what to do.
I closed Outlook and stood. I would have liked to print the e-mails for proof, but Hunter was just going to have to trust me. I cast a quick eye over the room to make sure that everything was still in place as quickly as I could, and ducked out of the office, scurrying down the hall until I was far enough that I felt safe slowing down to a casual walk.
…a casual walk right around the corner, and then almost directly into my boss.
We both jerked back, startled.
“What are you doing here?” I blurted.
“I—I could ask you the same, missy,” my boss stammered before pulling himself together and managing a more affirmative: “What on earth is keeping you here at this time of night?”
“Just working late,” I said innocently. My palms sweated as I lied; I forced myself not to wipe them on my dress and give myself away. “Catching up, you know. There’s still a lot of stuff I need to get done.”
“Your desk is over there,” he pointed out, suspicion beginning to creep into his eyes.