“Listen,” I said, shoving the last of the brownie into my mouth. “I’m not gonna be that classic, overprotective big brother. That’s not me. You’re a grown-ass woman, and he’s a good bloke.”
“Ew,” she said, twisting her face in disgust. “Both to him being a ‘good bloke’” – she curled her fingers into speech marks – “and to what you’re implying to begin with.”
“Whatever you say,” I said, smiling smugly at her. I could tell I’d hit a nerve, and I wasn’t sure what it said about my brotherly instincts that I was more amused than annoyed or concerned.
Amy grabbed the folder Dad had given me. “What’s he got you doing this time?”
“Change order for the flooring,” I said, trying to banish the thoughts of Morgan that were suddenly front and centre. “They want to do the vinyl instead of the wood to save money.”
“Well that’s fine,” she said. “You just need to make sure you calculate any labour cost changes and flag any timeline dependencies.”
I looked at her in confusion long enough that she groaned and came around to sit next to me, muttering something about “weaponised incompetence”. She leaned over the change order and entered the details for the new flooring into her phone, pulling up the trade listing. “See how it says delivery date of the thirtieth?” she asked, pointing to the date on her screen. I nodded. “You need to put that into the schedule and move things around to accommodate it,” she said. “I’m betting Dad wants you to be able to communicate how that impacts the schedule?”
I nodded again.
“Okay, show it to me.”
I stood up and went over to the little desk in the corner, where I had several folders now piled up, and an A3 paper with the schedule written on it pinned to the wall. I took it down and brought it over to Amy, spreading it out across the surface. She looked down at it and then back up at me, her mouth wide.
“You’re using a paper schedule?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said, “that’s what Dad showed me.”
“Jesus Christ,” she said, grabbing my laptop off the sofa and typing in my password.
“How do you know that?” I asked, gesturing at the computer.
“Please,” she said dismissively, “you’ve had the same password since you were a teenager. MrJackMichelleGellar?”
I felt my face go red, dropping the subject as immediately as possible.
“Here,” she said, turning the screen to show me what looked to be the website for some project management software. “This is the one Chris used. You put in all the pieces of the project and the dependencies, so when you move one thing, it moves all the other things, too. It’s called a Gantt chart.”
“That’s cool,” I said, pulling it towards me. It definitely sounded better than the paper version, which I’d already had to Tipp-ex half to death as things had changed. “Why doesn’t Dad use this?”
“Because he’s old,” she said. “Set in his ways.”
“How much does it cost?” I asked, scrolling down the page. I saw an option for “pricing”, so I clicked it, my mouth falling open when I saw that there was a free plan available. “I’m sorry,free?”
“Probably,” she said. “You’ll miss out on some features with the free plan, but it’ll still be better than paper.”
“Anything’s better than this, honestly,” I said, running my finger along a crease in the paper schedule, trying to smooth it out.
Over the next hour, Amy helped me set up the upcoming project in the software. The good news was that it was immensely better than the paper version; processing the flooring change took about twenty seconds, and I could even export the new timeline to send to Dad. All of the documents were easily scanned in and stored against the project, too.
The bad news was that, despite the novelty of the new system and how easy everything was, I still found it exceedingly boring.
“Can’t you just do this?” I asked Amy as we finished, multiple hours before when I thought I’d be done. “You’re so good at it.”
“Hey, you pay me, and I’m in,” she said, sounding surprisingly keen on the idea. I squinted at her sceptically.
“You don’t think that sounds horrible?” I asked. “Working for Dad? Managing all those projects?”
“Not really,” she said. “It actually sounds kind of … dare I say fun?”
My eyes went wide as I closed my laptop. “You may dare, but I sure as hell don’t. Guess I’d better get used to it, though.”
I stood to start putting everything away, ferrying it all back to my desk before sinking down on the sofa. I’d assumed Amy would follow, but when I looked up, she was still stood in the exact same position, her face wearing the same expression.
