“Forget the water, Linda. I’ll handle them.” I lean down and whisper near her ear. “There’s a bottle of bourbon in the bottom left-hand drawer of my desk. Go take a swig.”
Her shoulders drop down from around her ears. “Bless you, Aiden Cook.”
“Leave a drop for me,” I chuckle on my way into the conference room. “I’ll need it,” I murmur under my breath as I come to a stop at the head of the table, taking in my family members and their shared air of impatience.
Closest to the window overlooking midtown is my grandmother, Shirley, and her grandson—my cousin—Randall. Randall will not look up from his phone once during this entire meeting and frankly, I’m good with that. He tends to say things that make me want to pop a blood vessel, Leland-style. Across from my grandmother and cousin sits my father. Bradley Cook. He looks over at me briefly when I walk in, then goes back to studying the skyline.
“Merry Christmas, everyone,” I say, taking a seat. Leland flops down into the chair beside me like he’s about to get a tooth pulled without Novocain. “I hope you didn’t hit too much traffic coming in from Long Island.”
“Of course we did,” Shirley draws out, fingers wrapped around the straps of the purse in her lap. “This is Manhattan and we’re nine days away from Christmas. The bridges and tunnels are full of people wanting to shop.”
“For which we are eternally grateful,” I say briskly, spreading my paperwork out in front of me. “Where do you folks want to start?”
“Folks?” My father snorts. “Where on earth did you come from?”
Shirley cranes her neck to look out the conference room door, probably wondering where Linda is with her room temperature water. With any luck, Linda is feeling no pain right about now. I’m not going to make my receptionist run around for water when I’m sure my grandmother’s limousine is waiting downstairs stocked with nine flavors of seltzer. “It’s Edna’s influence, Bradley,” she drawls. “The fault lies with you for sending him to live down south with that loon for so long.”
My skin turns hot under my clothes, but I refrain from taking issue with that statement. If Edna were here, she would laugh and say, Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words are just a representation of the speaker’s insides—not me. And not you.
I clear my throat. “Moving on from family matters—”
“I had to send him. You know my hands were tied there,” Bradley slides in smoothly, gesturing to me. “At least he got a decent education while living in Tennessee. I’m not sure how Edna managed to get employed at a prestigious boarding school as an art director, but they obviously knew what they were doing.” I’m caught between skepticism and shock that my father just gave me a rare, if roundabout, compliment, but skepticism wins when he tacks on, “So he occasionally sounds like a country bumpkin. You take the good with the bad.”
“I suppose,” my grandmother murmurs, looking at the door again.
“Yes!” Randall cries out, excited about whatever just happened on his phone.
Shirley smiles at him indulgently.
Leland is blinking so fast and so hard, I already know we’re looking at a doctor visit. The tip of his pen has already ripped a hole in the page of his notebook and he’s only written the date.
“Down to business,” I say quickly when my father tries to continue the conversation with his mother. “Our holiday shopping numbers are not quite back to pre-pandemic levels, but we’re getting there and we’re making up a lot of the deficit by focusing on online sales and marketing.” Shirley snorts at this. She thinks online shopping is tacky. She also thinks shopping in real life is tacky. I have no idea how she does her shopping. “It has been our saving grace through all of this, really, and based on focus groups we’ve been holding, I believe people will continue to shop this way, so we’re increasing the budget for online customer acquisitions.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Bradley asks, turning his chair slightly in my direction. “Don’t people want a return to normalcy?”
“Yes, sir. And what constitutes normalcy changes. It has changed. That’s not to say we’ve completely taken our focus off physical, in-person shopping. As we know, consumers tend to buy more in person or open a line of credit. We’re incentivizing in-person shopping through the newsletter and various television spots running through the holidays in the tri-state.” My bow tie suddenly feels tighter. “As far as appealing to casual shoppers and tourists, we hired a new window dresser, as you requested, and she’s taking things in an interesting direction. I should be able to send you more details once she’s finished with her current design. Now as far as—”
“Oh thank God,” my grandmother interjects. “The last girl was an abomination. Who is the new one? Have I heard of her? Please tell me you stole that genius from Saks.”
Hang on to your smile. “I did not.” I start to tell them about Stella, then hesitate. Not because I don’t think she’s qualified. Not because I’m afraid they’ll disapprove of her past (although they definitely would). But I’m already right on the edge of my patience. If one of them has a negative thing to say about Stella (they definitely would), I’m not going to handle it well. At all. In fact, I’m very protective of her in a way I didn’t realize until now. Or possibly when she called me, sounding breathless and terrified, to say she’d gotten locked in the window space and my heart dropped ten stories to the sidewalk below. Yeah, I was protective then and I’m even more so now.
I’m not casting her name out into the viper pit to be torn apart.
But at the very core of me is a need to people please. Especially when it comes to my family. No matter how unlikely it seems that they’ll be satisfied with anything I do, I can’t seem to stop trying, either. Something will give eventually, won’t it?
“She’s been hired on a trial basis,” I say. “We’re going to unveil her initial design on Friday and go from there.”
My grandmother sits up straighter. “But who is she—”
“Begging your pardon, Shirley,” I say, slapping a hand to my chest. “I have a conference call shortly. Would you mind if we powered through and I’ll update you on the window design situation at the end of the week? Thank you.”
Without taking a breath, I address the next few bullet points, but my grandmother doesn’t say a word for the rest of the meeting, continuing to watch me through eyes the size of dime slits. Toward the end of my marketing recap, I realize I may have made a mistake. In refusing to give them Stella’s name, have I inadvertently drawn their attention to her?
5
Stella
With my heart in my mouth, I stare down at the missed call on my phone.
Connecticut number?
There is only one person I know in the state of Connecticut and she’s housed in their women’s prison. Nicole. She must have found out I’ve been released, otherwise she wouldn’t have called my cell. Is she just calling to catch up? Why didn’t she leave a message?