A smile broke through the tense muscles of my face. “Thank you.”
I arrived at the open doorway of Mr. Tate’s office. His nephew Jason, my co-worker, was in there. Conversation stopped abruptly.
“Am I interrupting?” I asked
Mr. Tate stood. He always wore pastel colored button down shirts tucked into his suit pants, or into pressed and pleated khaki’s on Fridays, and seersucker suits on Sundays for church. Today, he wore a mint green shirt that clashed with his slightly ruddy cheeks and fleshy jowls. “Jason and I were just catching up.”
Jason smirked at me then turned back to his uncle as he stood. “Yeah. So glad you were able to come by and meet the new commissioner,” he said to his uncle. “You two hit it off. See you for our eight a.m. tee off tomorrow?”
“See you there.”
Jason, blond hair slicked back, passed me. “Josie.”
“Jason,” I returned, my expression as bland as I could make it in the face of his supercilious smirk.
I shut the door behind him. I didn’t like being in a closed room with Mr. Tate either, but I hated the thought Jason might listen in. I ran through the words I’d just heard. “The commissioner?” I asked.
“The PPS commissioner,” he answered and gestured for me to sit, not at one of the chairs at his desk but in the seating area where he had a low couch. Low couches were the enemy of skirts. I lowered myself gingerly and angled my legs to the side.
Mr. Tate couldn’t help himself, his gaze still slithered down my legs to my shoes and back to my thighs and then quickly to my face.
“The PPS?” I pressed.
“Planning, Preservation, and Sustainability.”
“Oh,” I said. “I haven’t met the new commissioner.” I had adored the woman, Carole, who’d been in the position before. She’d worked for the mayor’s office and the zoning department for thirty years. She and I definitely saw eye-to-eye on curtailing some of the more egregious development plans greedy investors had for our small coastal city.
“He went to school with Jason’s father, my brother. Same fraternity. He’s Jason’s godfather. Good to have contacts in the city government when you’re trying to get things approved, am I right?”
“Sure. Though, there shouldn’t be a problem with any approval since we all stick to the historic and preservation guidelines, right?”
“Of course, of course. But you never know.”
My eyebrows had pinched together, and I made the effort to relax them. Mr. Tate had fingers in a lot of pies, and I had an inkling he was one to err on the cheaper and uglier side of design if it meant a small kick back for him from a supplier. I had no proof of that obviously. But call it a gut feeling. I had a lot of gut feelings about Mr. Tate. And the way he came to sit next to me on the couch rather than take one of the chairs didn’t help.
“Well.” I forced a bright smile and brought out my plans. “Here are my designs for the exterior of the proposed East Bay Street Hotel. I think you’ll see that even though it might be slightly more costly, we’ll make up for it in other ways, and it will have no trouble being approved by—”
“The hotel has already been approved.” He waved his hand dismissively at my rolls, and surprise and dread hit me square in the belly. “The commissioner already saw Jason’s plans at dinner last night,” he went on.
“Jason’s plans?”
“This hotel will be a huge coup for the commissioner in his new role. It will bring in lots of construction jobs for the city. They’re salivating.”
“But—”
“Look, honey.” He leaned forward and almost put a hand on my knee, stopping himself just in time.
I stiffened at both the aborted action and his condescending address. His words played over in my head. If they’d already approved Jason’s designs, did that mean I was off the project?
“I know you get your panties in a wad over the historical fancy-schmancy stuff.”
My mouth dropped open, but he continued. “And I get it, I really do. This is Charleston. But we also need to show the world we’re a modern city. We can accomplish that with a few flourishes and detailing to keep the history buffs happy, but at the end of the day we’re a business. The developers are a business. And the builders are a business. The cheaper and quicker we can get things built the better off we’ll all be.”
“The better off you’ll be. Not the city,” I snapped, then immediately dug my teeth into my lip. I shouldn’t be speaking to my boss this way. My palms were damp with panic. “I’m sorry. I …” I looked down at the roll tubes at my feet containing my vision for another unneeded Charleston boutique hotel that was heartbreakingly being built on a site that had once held a residence built by a freed slave. The lost building in question had arguably been built by the first African American architect and had been lived in by the legendary Eliza Lucas Pinckney who’d freed him from slavery. The residence had been destroyed by fire and a subsequent hurricane over a hundred years ago. Sadly, an archeological dig had been held up in municipal haggling, but I’d designed a facade to go with the interior that would pay homage to all those elements. I’d worked on it for months and months. “So to confirm, you don’t even want to see what I’ve drawn up. You’re going to go with Jason’s exteriors?” I asked, my heart slowly cracking. Months and months of research and hard work and the only person who’d probably see it would be the janitor.
His hand went for my shoulder and I jerked back.
“Look, honey,” he said, and I felt a shudder roll through me. “I know you’re a good architect. And I know you’ve been with us some time, and Donovan, well, he has a soft spot for you. But you have to know that I’ll be giving the promotion to Jason. I mean, I started this firm. It’s going to stay in the family. Jason will be Senior Associate, and in time, he’ll be partner. And then it will be Tate and Tate. Donovan is fixing to retire. And look, I’m not saying you don’t have a position here. It’s great, fantastic even, to have a female architect on board. And you’re easy on the eyes. Great to put in front of clients. And talented, of course.” He smiled magnanimously, believing he’d given me a sincere compliment. Then his eyes turned somber again. “But even if it wasn’t a family decision, which it is, I assure you, I don’t know how you could have thought you’d ever really make it to the top in the company and have your name on the door. Not in Charleston.”
“Wh-what… why?”
“Nobody has forgotten Nicolas de La Costa.”
I was cold, my skin prickly, as all my blood seemed to drain away from head to toe. God. “You know I didn’t have anything to do with my stepfather’s business—”
“That’s good to know,” he said as if it was news to him. “Regardless. You know Charleston. A small city with an extremely long memory. Of course, we value you here. And I’m sorry that Jason got this project, but there’ll be others. You’ll have a job here as long as you want it.”
“But not a career.”
“What?”
“You said I’ll have a job here, but not a career.” My voice warbled slightly as I tried to rein in my devastation. “You’ll never promote me, and I have no way to move up.” And after losing the opportunity to work on the East Bay Street project, that seemed insignificant. But damn it. My job. I really needed that promotion. I had to get a grip and focus on what was important. History was being lost. It was more important than my job in the grand scheme of things. I could appeal. As a citizen of the city—