AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He held his hand up. "I didn't even try to stop her."
"I told her it's not necessary."
"Choose your battles wisely, Spencer. How do you think your grandmother and I have been so happy our whole lives? Compromise is the key."
"Right," I said.
What they had always seemed alien to me. Decades of a happy marriage seemed impossible. To my knowledge, they'd never had huge issues, not like my parents. Then again, I didn't know anyone who had issues like my parents. What I never could understand was how—coming from this family—my father had such a skewed sense of loyalty, of relationships. He’d looked at his parents and thought to himself, what?"I plan to do the exact opposite and see how that turns out."
As soon as I stepped inside the living room, Grandmother came in from the kitchen with a tray and three coffees.
"Okay, here we go. My muffins will be ready in fifteen minutes. I'm curious how they'll turn out. I followed my friend Ginny’s time-saving recipe. She uses it when her great-grandkids are hungry. I'm curious if they'll be any good."
Grandfather and I exchanged a glance. I took his advice and chose not to mention anything about the muffins.
"Now, what did you want to talk to us about, Grandson?" Grandfather asked.
I cleared my throat, taking a sip of my coffee. I wanted to choose my words carefully. I was rarely one to dig up the past, but I knew my grandparents would see straight through me and my motivations. There was no point trying to tiptoe around.
"As you know, I've always enjoyed running Whitley Publishing. I liked updating it to the modern world while also paying tribute to its roots. Recently, we've had some challenges with the biography section. The writers we had for that section moved on to other magazines. The ones we’ve interviewed don’t want to write biographies at all. They think it wouldn’t help their careers because it’s a dead-end category. Keeping it up and running will require significantly more effort than I thought. I have my eye on acquiring a small startup that does quality journalism. My team is not 100 percent behind me, and that’s worrying.”
“I've always appreciated this about you, Spencer," Grandfather said. "You're not one to be ashamed to admit when you're wrong."
I leaned back in the chair, looking between the two of them. I was curious where they were going with this.
"You think I'm wrong by insisting I keep the section?"
"I've been out of the loop for a long time when it comes to Whitley Publishing. Your mother was doing such a great job back in the day that there was no need for me to do much else."
I swallowed hard.
"In fact, even after she wasn't with us anymore, she’d laid the groundwork for it to continue running smoothly until you took over.”
Grandmother cleared her throat. “Spencer, darling, you have good instincts. You always did. Remember when the team was against you for wanting to offer free content online?"
"Yes.” I remembered that vividly. “They thought it would ruin us when in fact it brought us a steady stream of subscribers, which then converted to paid subscriptions."
"What does your instinct tell you now?" she asked.
I tapped my finger against the cup. "I might be doing this for the wrong reasons," I admitted.
"Personally, I don't think there are wrong reasons," Grandfather said. "Just rational ones and emotional ones."
"The section was important to Mom," I said. "But I can't deny what my team said. The biography section doesn’t have a lot of growth potential."
"But do you have readers who are interested in it?"
"Yes, a small group. Very loyal one."
"Look," Grandfather began. "Not all projects are moneymakers. As far as I'm concerned, it's not a big deal to keep a section that's important to you even though it's not making a lot of profit. We've got plenty of others that do. As long as it’s not affecting the overall operation, why not?"
My team thought it did harm the company, primarily because I was obsessing over it too much. I didn't share that with Grandfather. Then he might start to worry, and it wasn't what I wanted. Besides, he'd given me the piece of advice I'd been hoping for: it wasn't extravagant to keep up a section just because it was important to me. I knew my team couldn't understand my motivations, but I was glad that my grandparents did.
"You've had hunches about sections you should keep before, and your team wasn't convinced," Grandmother went on. "What was it they said about the book club section? That it was outdated and mostly targeted at old bats?"
I burst out laughing. "I'm sure no one said old bats."
"No, but that's what they meant. Anyway, I think if you really want to do it, then don't let anyone stop you."
