Because of Audrey

by Mary Sullivan

  “Yes, boss?” She refused to call him Mr. Turner, because that denoted his father, but she also refused to call him Gray. Because it was too informal? Because he hadn’t yet earned her respect as a boss? He didn’t have a clue. He was angry with her, though. She’d had no right to order these behind his back.

  “It looks like a rain forest in here. Why did you order these?”

  His tone angered her. He could see it in the way she stiffened. Too bad. She’d angered him with her presumption that it was okay to spend this money without consulting him.

  “They’re here to clean the air,” she said. “And to add warmth to the room.”

  “Let me rephrase. Why did you order these without running the cost by me first?”

  “Your dad gave me control of the office. If I wanted to order something, he let me.”

  “Haven’t I made it clear that we have to conserve? Buying pastries for the employees is one thing, but ordering a forest is another. It’s frivolous and unnecessary.”

  “But they’ll make the place healthier. A lot healthier.”

  “People have worked here for years without health complaints.”

  “But that was before you stirred up who knows what with the renovations.” Her voice had become strident. “I want to purify the air.”

  “Get rid of them.” He turned to tell Audrey to take them back, but she was gone. The stairs behind him were empty.

  “Call Audrey back. Tell her to return them.”

  “She’ll still charge us for the delivery and for her time to take them back.”

  “So, I’m stuck with a bill I didn’t authorize.” He was sick, sick, of being treated like an addendum to the business, as though his authority meant nothing. As though he might as well have not bothered coming back to town to help out, even though he worked his fingers to the bone to make things better and to fix all of the mistakes that Dad had been making.

  “Your father gave me free rein to make sure his office ran efficiently,” Hilary asserted, getting into his face. “He liked the things I did to make the place warm and welcoming for his employees.”

  “Times have changed. I’m in charge now.”

  “Are you?”

  How dare she? He vibrated with fury.

  “In the future,” he said, his tone as cold as dry ice and every bit as capable of burning, “bring your ideas to me for authorization before you spend Turner money. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir.” She stomped away to her desk. Only then did he realize the entire office had been listening. He needed to talk to her about adjusting her attitude, especially in public.

  He entered his office and slid the walls closed, craving privacy, a few moments away from the opprobrium of him ripe in the office like the stink of old cheese. He hung up his coat and opened his briefcase.

  A second later, one of his walls banged open, the sound jarring in the hush of the office. “What—?”

  Hilary marched into the room with a paper in her hand. Once again, Gray had the sense that everyone in the large outer office listened, that the office itself, the very walls, floors and ceiling were holding a collective breath.

  “My resignation,” she said, slapping the sheet onto the desk. “I worked for your father for thirty-five years, and I have never, ever been treated with the disrespect you’ve given me in the past three months. I’m sixty-two years old. I don’t need this shit.”

  In all of his years growing up, running in and out of the office with his parents and working here as a teenager, he had never heard Hilary use profanity.

  She stormed out of his office, leaving him with his mouth hanging open.

  “Wait.” He jumped to his feet, sending his chair rocketing across the office. “Are you serious?”

  “You betcha, mister.”

  “Why did you call me if you didn’t want this company saved? Because that’s what I’m trying to do here, Hilary.”

  “I no longer care.”

  “And these?” He pointed to the plants. “You caused this problem. Who’s going to take care of it?”

  “Whichever poor sucker takes over my job. Goodbye, boss.”

  She left the building amid stunned silence. Gradually, like the hissing of an angry snake, the whispering began.

  He knew how destructive gossip in the office could be.

  All of those visits he’d had here when he was a kid had been happy ones. The atmosphere and the work culture Dad had cultivated had been stellar.

  Remembering what he’d heard while fishing with Dad and Jeff yesterday, he realized that he had just rent a gaping hole into the fabric of the company Dad had woven with care.

  He ran a hand across his forehead. He was sweating again. When Jeff had said that Hilary was formidable, he’d been right. Who would run the office now that the only woman who knew everything was gone? Who would take her place? Gray didn’t know the other employees well enough to appoint one of them as office manager.

  In the larger room, someone sneezed. A second later, so did he.

  What the heck?

  He remembered Arnie wiping his nose a lot during their meeting in his office last week.

  Sam Power entered his office, nose bright red. “She’s right, you know. The reno stirred up all kinds of stuff that’s been irritating us. I’ve had a runny nose for weeks.”

  “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

  Sam shrugged. “I guess we all thought that Hilary would.”

  No. She’d just decided to handle it herself, which, when he thought about it, was exactly what a good employee, a self-starter, should do.

  “Hilary bought some air purifiers and then called Audrey to bring in plants.”

  Bloody hell. She’d even bought machines?

  Hell.

  Had he just screwed up?

  Hell, yeah.

  Where had the guy gone who used to handle anything that life threw at him with skill? He was disappearing, bit by bit, the undertow of his nerves, anxiety and guilt clutching his feet and pulling him under.

  He had the best intentions. They weren’t working.

  The problem today hadn’t been the plants. It had been his perception that Hilary had been undermining him again and spending money the company shouldn’t put out at this time. Employee health was important, but she should have talked to him first.

  But the idea that he should have absolute control over every penny was archaic, too. There was a middle ground that he hadn’t negotiated with Hilary.

  He shouldn’t have taken her to task publicly. While he’d planned to lecture her on her disrespect toward him in public, he’d hauled her over the carpet in front of a room full of employees.

  Hypocrite.

  He would have never done it in his business. Another sign of how he was letting control slip away from him, of how he was letting life lead him around by his fears and anxieties rather than him leading his life where he needed it to go.

  Rather than him getting past the anxiety to make healthy choices.

  He knew a lot about business, but Hilary had more experience in this office than he had in his baby finger. He needed her back.

  To be fair, he was trying. Why wasn’t it enough? Arnie said his ideas were sound. Were they? Was he improving anything? Not while Dad undermined him. Today wasn’t about Dad, though. The way he’d handled today’s argument had been his mistake. Completely.

  Okay, he was the one who had to fix it.

  His goal here was to save the company, but he was losing individuals to the cause. One thing Dad had done right for years was to keep individuals happy.

  He phoned Audrey. “Get back over here and arrange these plants in my office.”

  “O-kay,” she said. “If you insist.”

  Ten minutes later, she walked
into the office. “Can I borrow a couple of the men from the lumberyard to help me move the bigger palms?”

  “Sure.”

  She turned to leave, but he had a thought. “Wait. I saw your Dad at the gym with Teresa.”

  “You did?” Her smile lit the room. “That’s awesome.”

  “Yeah, but I also saw his pickup there. How did you get all of the plants over here without the truck?”

  “I used a Turner Lumber pickup and a couple of the guys helped me load the big plants.”

  “Who authorized this? Never mind.”

  “Hilary,” they said at the same time.

  He brushed past her closely enough for her perfume to stroke his neck with its comforting hands.

  “Why are you frowning?” she asked. “You aren’t going to give me hell like you did Hilary, are you?”

  “Groveling. I hate groveling.”

  “I wasn’t!” she retorted.

  “No, but I will.” He strode toward the stairs. “Hilary resigned. Now I have to get her back.”

  Her laughter trailed him to the first floor. He asked for Hilary’s address from one of the cashiers.

  A couple of minutes later, he stood on her veranda, trying to get past his roiling emotions to figure out what smart things he could say to get his employee to return to work.

  When Hilary opened the door, she wasn’t pleased to see him. “What do you want?” she asked none too graciously.

  “Come back. Please. You were right. We need the plants.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest and said nothing.

  “All right,” he admitted. “You were right. More than right. We need to clean the air.”

  A huge chunk of humble pie lodged in his throat, and he forced out the words that needed to be said. “You make an incredible contribution to the company. You’re irreplaceable. I will endeavor in the future to always treat you with respect, and I will never disagree with you in public again.”

  She seemed to be considering coming back. Dared he hope? “Please?”

  Hilary smiled. “Okay, I’ll come back.” When he would have returned her smile, she raised one finger. “On one condition.”

  Oh, boy, here it comes, he thought. The demands for money, for a longer vacation, for more sick days. Didn’t matter. He’d pretty well give her anything she asked.

  “I want more say in how the new office is arranged.”

  That’s it? She’d surprised him. He was used to more greed.

  “There are a number of ways in which the new setup works—” she inclined her head toward him as though conceding a point “—but an equal number of ways in which it doesn’t.” She wagged a finger at him. “Instead of dismissing my concerns, you should be taking advantage of my experience.”

  “You have a point. I want one concession from you.”

  Suspicious, she asked, “What?”

  “We both have the same goal, to keep Turner Lumber in business. We need to work together to do that and find some middle ground that will work for both of us.”

  “Fair enough.”

  He stuck out his hand. “It’s a deal.”

  She hesitated, as though gauging whether or not to trust him, and then shook his hand.

  “Deal. I’ll come back in at my regular time tomorrow morning.”

  Gray nodded and went back to the office.

  Audrey was just putting the last plant into place.

  “Did Hilary agree to come back?” she asked.

  Gray nodded. “She was very reasonable.”

  Audrey smiled. “She always is.”

  She propped a hand on one of those gorgeous hips.

  “What do you think of the office?”

  “It looks good, great, wonderful.” Hilary had been right. The plants warmed up the space.

  Audrey didn’t leave, but neither did he head to his office, both poised as though to say more but not knowing what that might be. Finally, she slipped around Gray and down the stairs.

  Gray walked into his office with the cloud of Audrey’s perfume keeping him company like an old friend.

  He didn’t get home until well after six that evening, but the moment he walked into the house, he knew something was wrong, as though a supercharged electricity vibrated in the air.

  He found Mom and Dad in the living room.

  “What have you done?” His father’s voice was quiet, disbelieving. Dad stood beside the coffee table, his stature diminished by age, but his outrage a lion springing from his shoulders. Dangling from his fingers was what looked like a legal document. “They want to have a psychiatrist interview me. To evaluate me. So you can have guardianship. Of me and my property.”

  John Spade was efficient. He did quick work.

  They finally knew. Thank God.

  The illness in Gray’s stomach, a hard, burning ball of self-disgust, threatened to explode out of him. He wanted to cry, to literally fall to the ground and bawl like a baby for what he knew he’d just lost—Dad’s trust and Mom’s faith in him.

  Mom sat on the sofa, face pale, eyes as wide as the Eastern Plains of Colorado, her equilibrium and her confidence in the goodness of the world, her unshakeable belief in her son, shattered.

  He wanted to claw his way out of the guilt and shame, to place the blame on Dad’s shoulders where it belonged, to shout, this is real life, Mom. I did it for you.

  He would save the company and get the money from the sale of the land to pay off Shelly, and Mom would never know that Dad had fooled around on her. Because he knew what the DNA test would say—that Dad was Shelly’s father.

  At the same time, he needed to defend himself, to tell them that he’d had no choice, but to do that, he would have to admit what he knew, and that would devastate Mom. He had no defense that could be uttered aloud, that would ever see the light of day.

  “What did we ever do to you to deserve this?” Gray heard his father’s shock and wanted to calm him but couldn’t. His anger with his father for bringing all of this on to the family choked him.

  What he wanted to say, to yell, to spew, was, You screwed another woman while you were married to Mom, and now we all have to live with the consequences.

  All of us, including you.

  He hadn’t admitted to himself until this moment how deep his anger with his father ran for doing this, that underneath all of Gray’s guilt and distress, there was such profound disappointment in his father that it almost eclipsed the scalding anger.

  He could say nothing, couldn’t explain a thing, without incriminating Dad and exposing what he had done to Mom.

  Despite his anger, he still loved his father, but even more, he adored his mother. He would do anything to protect her.

  Since he couldn’t address that issue, he opened his mouth to address the other—how Dad was running the business into the ground—but Dad stopped him.

  “Don’t say a word. There’s nothing you can say to defend this action.”

  “Yes,” Gray bit out. “There is. Ever since I came home, you’ve countermanded every order I’ve given at work, every change I’ve made, even though my intentions have been the best.”

  He faced his mother, forcing himself to ignore how pale and fragile she looked. “Mom, you said that Dad was tired and that he wanted to quit the business. If that’s so, then why won’t he let go? If he wanted me to come home for so many years, why won’t he let me run the business as I see fit?”

  “He won’t?”

  She looked at her husband, who said to Gray, “Because you’re running it all wrong. You want to cheat my employees out of everything.”

  “You’re going to lose the company,” Gray shouted. “You’re going to go bankrupt without significant changes. I’ve tried to tell you every way I know how. The compa
ny is going to go under unless we take drastic measures. You won’t let me take those measures.”

  “So what?”

  “So what?” Gray couldn’t believe Dad’s nonchalance. “Do you want to lose the company?”

  “Maybe I do. You never cared for it.”

  Gray shook his head in genuine bewilderment. “Why would you say that?”

  “You didn’t come home after college to take over. You started your own business.”

  “I needed to know that I could. I needed to prove that I was more than just your son, that I had a sound business sense of my own. That I could be a success in my own right.”

  He stepped forward, but Dad stiffened and he stopped. “Dad, it’s normal for a young guy to want to be his own man and not an extension of his father.”

  “So why not come home after you’d proved your point?”

  “Marnie.” That one word said it all. “I loved Marnie, and she didn’t want to live here.”

  “But a woman should follow her husband where he needs to live.”

  “Dad, that’s old. Men and women negotiate. They do what they can to make each other happy. I tried to make Marnie happy. I met her in her hometown. It wasn’t fair to ask her to leave Boston.”

  He was struck by a suspicion. “Were you deliberately running the company into the ground?”

  With one quick nod, his Dad confirmed it.

  Stunned, Gray asked, “Why?”

  “If you didn’t want it, then what was the point of holding on to it?”

  “For the employees. If you thought I didn’t want it, you could have sold it. If it goes bankrupt, your employees are out of work.”

  “But I’ve given them so much. They’ll be okay.”

  “They won’t if there’s no money in the company to give them.”

  Harrison faltered and stared at the paper in his hand. “Go,” he said. “Just go.”

  Gray left the room and trudged upstairs. Numb, he packed a bag with a few essentials and left the house, passing the living room without looking in, the mood of the place he’d once loved a black hole sucking the life out of him.