“Good morning, Hannah,” Mary said warmly, getting up from her chair.
Lex was glaring back at her from across the table.
“Mary, I can’t make it to the office today,” Hannah replied between two shaky breaths, “Something came up.”
Mary pressed the phone against her ear and took a step towards the large window.
“Can you and Lex just get started?” Hannah continued.
“Of course,” Mary stammered. She was tempted to ask what was wrong. Hannah was clearly upset.
“Thank you. I’m really sorry about this. I’m not sure when I’ll be back in the office either.”
“No, no, don’t worry. We’ve got everything covered here,” Mary said, glancing up at the ceiling.
She could hear Lex getting up.
“Lex there?” Hannah asked.
“Eh, yes,” Mary said, rubbing the back of her neck.
“The car will be here in five!” another female voice shouted in the background.
Mary wondered where Hannah was calling from. She could hear her walk around a room. Still home maybe?
“Can you tell her I’ll try to call her later?” Hannah said.
Mary looked over her shoulder. “Okay, yeah.”
“Thanks again,” her boss said, her voice shaky. “I have to go now. Ask Suzy if you need anything, okay?”
Mary walked to the table and grabbed a pen, feeling like she should write something down. “I will,” she replied.
“Honey, Christine is on the phone!” the other woman yelled again. It had to be Mildred North, Mary figured.
“Yes, okay,” Hannah croaked. “Bye, Mary,” she whispered and hung up.
Mary lowered the phone, staring at the screen.
“What was that all about?” Lex asked, placing her coffee cup on the table.
“Hannah can’t make it today,” Mary said, putting the pen down.
“Why not?”
Mary pointed at her phone. “She didn’t say.”
Lex pulled her own phone out of her pocket. She checked it and shook her head in confusion.
“Hannah said she’d call you later,” Mary offered.
She could see the muscles of Lex’s jaw shift under pale skin.
“What did she say about today’s meeting?” Lex sighed, dropping her phone onto the table.
Mary gently placed her own device on the wooden surface. “She said we should go ahead as planned.”
Lex sucked her lips into a thin line, her hands on her sides.
“We’re supposed to ask Suzy when we need something,” Mary explained.
Lex blew out a breath. “Fine. Let’s get started then.”
She started taking off her leather jacket. Mary took in the grey V-neck sweater and black slacks. It was a simple outfit but everything about it looked expensive. Hannah and Lex were family alright, she thought.
There were some big differences between the two women, though. Hannah was open, kind and colorful. Her cousin Lex was the exact opposite, with pitch black hair and an unsmiling face. Even her clothes were dark.
Lex pulled back her chair and sat down. “Alright, I’d like to start with the sales numbers of the last four quarters.”
Mary’s nostrils flared. “I have a presentation I’d like to show you first,” she said as calmly as she could.
Lex gave her a long look. “We can skip the introduction and go straight to the numbers.”
Mary tugged at the zipper of her laptop bag. “No,” she said, struggling to keep her voice even, “Hannah asked me to prepare this for our meeting, so we’ll start with the presentation.”
She straightened and put her laptop on the table. Lex’s stern expression had morphed into an annoyed one. Mary ignored it and sat down. She opened her computer.
Her mood had soured dramatically. Not only was she worried about Hannah, she was also wondering why Hannah had appointed this woman as the new store manager.
Mary clicked the file she had placed on her desktop last night. This presentation was the perfect way to start the transition, no matter what Lex Emsworth thought.
“I suggest you take notes,” Mary said, mimicking Lex’s cold tone. It didn’t feel right, but she pressed on. “I will start with the team, since you’ll be meeting them later this week.”
Lex didn’t look up from her notebook. “Yeah, I think I’ll join you tomorrow morning.”
“Tomorrow?!” Mary blurted out. She was not ready to let Lex Emsworth walk into her store and meet her team. Not yet.
“Yeah, why not? We only have a few weeks. I’m not going to learn much sitting in this room,” Lex said.
Mary pressed her lips together. There was indeed little time. Why had she agreed to Hannah’s ridiculously short timeline in the first place? Shit.
“Very well,” she said coolly, “I’ll talk to the team tomorrow morning.”
“Okay, I’ll be there early so we can do it together. Now tell me about the assistant manager,” Lex replied. “I’m guessing he does most of the day-to-day management.”
“She,” Mary snapped. “The assistant manager is a woman.”
Lex looked up from her notes. “And the name?”
Mary grabbed the projector cable and hooked it up to her laptop. “Karen,” she said, inwardly cursing herself for not having talked to Karen yet.
She would have to warn her assistant manager. Maybe she could send her a text to ask for a meeting after the store had closed. Mary couldn’t let her walk into this storm unprepared.
“Huh, Lex is a good name for a hurricane,” Mary thought and clicked on the first slide.
*****
“Can you sit down for a minute?” Mary asked.
The lines on Karen’s forehead deepened.
Mary gestured at the chair. “It won’t take long. I have to tell you something.”
Karen lowered herself into the chair. “Okay?”
Mary sat back down too, moving her laptop to the side. She decided it was best to just get to the point. “Hannah offered me a promotion last week.”
A big grin slipped onto Karen’s round face. “Congratulations! That’s fantastic news!”
Mary’s own lips only curved up slightly. Her enthusiasm had taken a hit after spending a long day with Lex Emsworth at HQ.
“Thank you,” she said, leaning back in her chair.
“What’s the new job?” Karen asked, playing with a strand of thin, blonde hair.
“Hannah wants me to set up a program to roll out my ideas across all the stores,” Mary explained. She felt herself blush a little. “I’ll be the Brand Experience Director.”
Karen’s eyes widened. “Wow! That’s amazing, Mary! It’s so perfect for you!”
“Yeah, it is kind of a dream job, I guess,” Mary stammered, folding her hands in her lap.
“Why aren’t you dancing on your desk?!” Karen asked, throwing her hands in the air. “You should be dancing on your desk!”
Mary looked up at her, grimacing. “Because I have to leave you all behind?”
Karen waved dismissively. “We’ll be fine! I mean, we’ll miss you, of course, but you can’t stay here forever! You have to keep moving forward!”
Mary took in a deep breath, touched by Karen’s never-ending confidence. The assistant manager had always been supportive of her ideas, even when the rest of the team had had its doubts. Mary was going to miss her friend so much.
“I have to leave fairly soon,” Mary said, wrinkling her nose. She was trying to slowly maneuver the conversation to the topic of Lex Emsworth.
“Oh?” Karen replied, looking surprised for the first time.
“I only have four weeks to train my successor,” Mary continued. “After that, Hannah wants me at HQ fulltime.”
“Okay, that *is* really soon,” Karen pouted. She glanced at her hands. When she looked back up, her eyes were twinkling. “No time to waste then! I have to start organizing your goodbye party!”
Mary shook her head in alarm. “Oh, no! No goodbye party! I’ll cry!” she pleaded.
Karen laughed. “I don’t care! I’m not breaking with tradition!”
“But this is different. I’m not leaving the company,” Mary whined. She moved to the edge of her seat.
“Doesn’t matter! You know we don’t let anyone leave without a proper goodbye!”
Mary let her shoulders drop. “True.”
She exhaled slowly. Reality was really catching up with her now. What had she done? Why had she thought leaving her store and her team behind was a good idea?
“Why do I get the feeling this is not about the chocolate fountain?” Karen asked, referring to an essential component of their traditional goodbye party.
“You know me too well,” Mary sighed, covering her face with her hands.
“We’ve been working together for over seven years!” Karen chuckled. “Yeah, I know all about you!”
Mary peeked in between her fingers and met Karen’s kind, grey eyes. The assistant manager had been working for Leroy for a decade. She should have been sitting in Mary’s chair, but Karen wasn’t interested in becoming a shop manager.
“Raising two kids on my own is as much as I can handle,” she had told Mary in their first week of working the registers together many years ago.
“Spill the beans, Mary,” Karen insisted, interrupting Mary’s thoughts.
“You’re right,” Mary admitted. “I’m worried about the new shop manager. She starts tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?!” Karen blinked. “Damn, Hannah is not messing around. What’s with the urgency?”
Mary folded her arms on the desk. “I’m not actually sure Hannah intended it to go this way,” she said, frowning.
Karen leaned forward. “What do you mean?”
“We were going to discuss the transition this morning, but Hannah couldn’t make it. She called me minutes before the meeting was supposed to start. She sounded pretty upset,” Mary recounted, twisting her ring.
Karen’s lips parted. “Oh,” she mumbled, “I hope everything’s okay.” She turned to look at a picture on the wall.
Mary followed her gaze. The photo of Hannah and her mother cutting a ribbon was part of the furniture. Most days she forgot it was there. “Me too.”
“So, why is the new manager starting tomorrow?” Karen asked. “Why not wait?”
“Hannah asked us to get started without her,” Mary sighed. “And Lex suggested she might as well come over straight away. She’s, eh, a bit different?”
Karen tilted her head to the side. “Different how?”
Mary considered her next words carefully. She had to find a balance between warning Karen about her new boss and being professional.
“She’s less … spontaneous?” she said. “More serious?”
Karen plucked some lint off of her sweater. “She probably just needs some time to get to know us,” she offered with a smile. “First weeks at a new company can be nerve-racking, you know?”
Mary thought that Lex probably knew the company pretty well, being Hannah’s cousin and all.
“Her name is Lex Emsworth,” she explained.
Karen looked up from under thin eyelashes. “What? Really?”
“Yeah,” Mary said.
Karen scratched her cheek absentmindedly. “I wonder what the relation is.”
“Cousins,” Mary replied. “They’re nothing alike, though.”
Karen stared at her, suspicion in her eyes. “Okay, is this a heads-up?”
Mary chewed on her lower lip, glancing around the room.
“That bad, huh?” Karen asked.
Mary nodded slowly.
“Well,” Karen said, pushing herself up abruptly, “I better get home and hope my two monsters let me have a good night’s sleep for a change.”
Mary giggled softly. “Are they adding grey hairs to your head again?”
“Honey,” Karen sighed, “You think I have any blonde left?” She shook her head dramatically.
Mary laughed, running a hand through her own light brown hair.
Karen tucked her hands in her back pockets. “You know what, compared to my two boys, I’m sure the new boss is a walk in the park,” she joked and winked.
“Maybe,” Mary conceded, although not entirely convinced.
“What time do you want me here in the morning?” Karen asked. “Guess the team is in for a surprise when this new Emsworth lady suddenly shows up, huh?”
Mary pursed her lips. An idea had just popped up in her mind. “Actually, do you think we can get everyone to come in an hour early?” she asked Karen.