AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The words started coming out of my mouth without bothering to check in with my brain. They were coming straight from my gut. From my heart. They were words that I was barely able to form as they passed through a tsunami of anger and bitterness and betrayal inside my throat. Words that dripped with the hatred of bureaucracy and the not-so-subtle misogyny that I had dealt with my entire adult life from these people. These people I trusted to do the right thing. Theeasything.
How wrong I had been.
“You did this withmein mind, Harry?” I said, my voice low and gravely. I wasn’t going to shout. Yet. “You did this, what, to protect me? Is that what you are saying?”
“Melanie,” he said, using his most condescending tone. He had been using it on me since I was eighteen and had started attending these meetings. “You must understand that we have been watching you and how you ran things for years. It just wasn’t what we thought were in the best interests of the trust as it was laid out to us.”
“Not in the best…” I began, unable to believe what I was hearing. “It ismyfucking store, Harry.”
“Melanie, language,” another board member, Frank, said.
“Fuck you, Frank,” I shot back. “Fuck all of you, in fact. You did this to me on the day before my birthday. The day before. You didn’t do this just because you were worried about anything involving me other than your own financial interests. You did this because your financial interests are all you care about, and you don’t give a shit about me.”
“Melanie, that is enough,” Harry said. “You want the facts? I’ll give you the facts. The store has lost growth by an average of two percent every year for three years, an average of one point three over five and one point one over ten. Do you know what else coincides with that slow drive into the ground? You becoming manager.”
“Oh please,” I said. “It also coincides with Walmart opening up at the edge of town on one side and Costco on the other. You know that Hank. Don’t try to bullshit me. Look at the numbers of any other local grocer in a town where that has happened. Tell me the percentage of loss was even close to what I had.
“And if you look at the month-by-month numbers, we had an absolute crap first quarter, that’s true. But everything after that has been going up. Last year was the same, and we almost broke even. This year we are on pace to break even and go into the black.”
“You’re wrong,” Harry said. “That’s not accounting for vendor contracts.”
“You’re right, it’s not,” I snapped. “But I have already negotiated with the vendors to come back at their same rate. Which with thegrowth we had means we will actually have a higher profit than what I predicted in the forms I sent youtwo weeks ago.”
“I don’t remember that,” Hank said, looking unsure of himself for the first time. “But be that as it may, the board has serious concerns about your preparedness to run the store profitably and responsibly. Your attitude here today proves it. You’re hot-headed and not capable of keeping your emotions in check.”
“What the hell did you think I would do, Hank? Lay down and take it like a good girl?” I yelled. Hank visibly squirmed at that one. Good. “I’m not a child, Hank. This good old boys’ club bullshit is ridiculous. You seem to think that me being a woman prevents me from being able to run my own business, but I assure you that it doesn’t. I know what I am doing. It’s my family’s company, and I should be the one to run it by all rights just as my parents intended.”
“Well, that’s not a possibility now, Melanie,” Chuck interrupted. “The sale is final. We finished the paperwork two days ago. The new stakeholder owns fifty-one percent of the company and all its holdings and will be in town tomorrow to have a meeting with the board. At that time, the future of the board itself will be in discussion, and if you would like to bring up your opinion on that matter to the new owner, feel free to do so. Tomorrow. At the store.”
“Are you dismissing me, Chuck?” I asked, venom seeping from my voice.
“At this time, yes. There’s nothing else to be discussed,” Chuck said.
“No, you don’t dismiss me like I’m a child. I’m a grown goddamn woman whose family has owned and run that store for nearlyeighty goddamn years. Mark my words you deceitful assholes, I will get it back and you’ll be sorry you ever crossed me.” I turned on my heel and slammed the door behind me as I left, earning a stern look from the librarian for the noise. I ignored her and headed back to my car, angrier than I’d ever been in my life.
3
VICTOR
Hello, Mr. McLaren, this is Chuck from the board. Could you give us a call when you can?
I read the text and saved the phone number under the name ‘Chuck-Board’ before sticking the phone on the charger in my bedroom. I would respond to that in a minute, once I was done getting ready. I had just gotten out of the shower and was still dripping wet, a towel wrapped around my waist.
All of my clothes, what little there was, were in the closet on hangers still wrapped in black plastic bags or stuffed in the duffel bag at the end of my bed. Picking up the duffel, I opened it up and went through it to find my underwear and socks and sort them out. I was going to need to wear something presentable, though, since it was going to be my first day going into the store since purchasing it. I wanted to look nice.
I had memories of the store going back to childhood and had always loved it. It wasn’t just a grocery store. It was the kind of grocery store that maintained the small-town Texas feel, perfectly divided up into aisles containing pantry staples.
There had been a video store in one corner that rented out VHS tapes and old video games along with DVDs, though I assumed that was gone by now. There was a section that sold seasonal clothes behind that, selling winter jackets and mittens and scarves in the winter and shorts and sunscreen and hats in the summer. No matter the season, one wall always sported cowboy hats and Dallas Cowboys merch for sale.
As a kid, I thought it was the greatest place in the world. We would go once a week to stock up on groceries and whatever we couldn’t get at the little five-and-dime at the end of our street. Brewer’s Grocery always had the best selection of produce as well, and Mom always wanted to go by and get fruits to make pies. She wouldn’t buy fruit from any other store, preferring either Brewer’s or the stands by the side of the road that seemed to always occupy the stretches between Murdock,Houston, or Austin.
It was popular, too, at least when I was a kid. For a long time, it kept the scepter of superstores away by being so uniquely Murdock that it engendered a sense of community and loyalty. But as the town started to struggle in the late nineties, and younger folks started to move out to make their lives elsewhere, it had apparently fallen on some hard times.
All that led to a phone call four months ago. An investor who had gone to school with me and had been in passing contact over investments in Texas before I moved to Maryland emailed me out of the blue. The board was looking for someone who was local and willing to invest. I saw a chance to make a move and started the discussions. It didn’t take much convincing.
The owners of the store had died years back, and the board was left in control of what to do with the company until such time as the owners’ only daughter was thirty and decided if she wantedto run it. From what I gathered, a combination of distrust of the daughter’s abilities to run the company as well as a bylaw that allowed the trust to sell the company in the event that she wasn’t capable of or willing to take over led them to seek outside investment.
I was more than happy to be that investment. I was suddenly flush with cash and looking for something to do. Considering that my instant thought was to move home to Murdock and get my feet under me where I was able to hang out with my best friends, owning a store in Murdock itself would be ideal. It would give me a project to focus on and tie me back to the community and who I had been before I even met Sarah. It seemed like the best possible situation.
