Rhonda put her almonds away and turned to her computer as I began to get up, our meeting adjourned, until she said, “I saw you rescinded your request for vacation at the end of the summer. Is there a reason?”
“Oh, that.” I tried to look unruffled as I smoothed down the front of my crumpled blouse. At the end of the summer, my aunt and I always took our yearly trip abroad—Portugal one summer, Spain the next, India, Thailand, Japan, my passport cluttered with all the places we’d been together over the years. I had taken the exact same week off every August since joining Strauss & Adder, so of course Rhonda would notice when I decided not to go. “I decided that maybe my time would be best spent here, so I’m not going.”
Ever again.
She gave me a strange look. “You’re kidding. Clementine, you haven’t taken a day off all year.”
“What can I say? I love my job.” I smiled then because it was true. I did love my job, and it was a good distraction from . . . everything, and if I kept concentrating on the things in front of me, the grief wouldn’t catch up with me at two in the morning like it wanted to.
“I love my job, too, and I still took a vacation this year to the Maldives. Had a great massage there—I can give you the number for my guy if you end up going.”
Oh, yes, because I could afford that. Well, maybe now that I owned my aunt’s apartment, I could. I pushed a strained smile across my face. “I’m fine, really—and besides, Boston in the Fall is coming out that week, and you know that author is so persnickety. I’d rather deal with him than make Juliette handle—”
“Clementine?” she interrupted. “Take your damn accrued vacation. That’s why you have it.”
“But—”
“Your request to rescind your request is denied.”
“I’m not going on vacation anymore, though,” I said, trying not to panic. “I refunded my tickets!”
She gave me a look over her red-frame glasses. “Then you have two months to figure out what else you want to do. Half of our collection is travel guides—borrow one. I’m sure you’ll get inspired. You’ll need a vacation, after all.”
“I really don’t think I will.”
In reply, she swiveled her chair toward me again with a sigh, and took off her glasses. They hung from a beaded strap around her neck. “Fine. Close the door, Clementine.”
Oh, no. Quietly, I did what I was told—albeit a little hesitantly. The last time she asked me to close the door, I found out she fired the marketing designer. I sat down again, a bit gingerly. “Is . . . is there something wrong?”
“No. Well. Yes, but nothing bad.” She steepled her fingers and gave me a long look. She wore dark mascara and darker eyeliner around her eyes, and they always made her looks all the more intense. “You are sworn to secrecy, Clementine, until the time is right.”
I straightened in my chair. This was big, then. Was it a new book? A celebrity memoir? Was Strauss selling the company? Did Michael in HR finally quit?
She said, “I’m planning to retire at the end of the summer, but I only want to go knowing Strauss and Adder is in good hands.”
I didn’t think I heard correctly. “You—what? Retire?”
“Yes.”
I didn’t know what to say.
There weren’t words enough to describe my profound—sadness? Disappointment? Strauss & Adder without Rhonda was like a body without a soul—a bookshelf without any books. She built this company with Strauss—every single one of its bestsellers over the last twenty years came from her.
And she wanted to retire?
“Don’t give me that look,” Rhonda said with a nervous laugh. She was never nervous. So she wasn’t pulling my leg. She was telling the truth. “I’ve done my time! But I’m not going to leave if this ship’ll sink without me. I’ve put too much of my life here,” she added, seemingly as an afterthought to her name on the business. “However, only you and Strauss know at the moment, and I’d like to keep it that way. Who knows what kind of piranhas the news will attract once it’s official.”
My mouth was dry. “O . . . okay?”
“In the meantime, I want you to take the lead on most projects and acquisitions this summer, to see how you fare. I’ll be in the meetings, obviously, but let’s just call it a dry run.”
“To see if I can manage with you gone?”
She gave me a baffled look, and then she laughed. “Oh, no, dear, to take my place!”
If I wasn’t already sitting down, my knees would have given out immediately. Me—take Rhonda’s place? I only half listened as she told me how hard I worked, how exemplary I was, how I was exactly the kind of woman she’d been at my age, and that this was the kind of opportunity she would kill for. What better way to foster the future than to give the future a chance to succeed?
“Well, half of my place. When Strauss and I started the company, I took over for the director of publicity and marketing as well as copublisher because we were so small, but I would not wish that on anyone else. After all, they’re not me,” she added. “Depending on your performance this summer, however, I’m inclined to put your name up for the new director of publicity. You’ve been here the longest of anyone on the team, so I only think it’s fair—not to mention I’d be an idiot not to.”
I . . . didn’t know what to say.
As it turned out, she didn’t expect me to say anything, as she put her glasses back on and returned to her computer. “So, you see, I imagine you’ll need to take a vacation before you start your new job—I’ll get you the name of my masseuse in the Maldives.”
My mouth dropped open. I gave a squeak. My head was spinning from all the information.
“Now, can you send me my meetings for next week? Something tells me Juliette is going to forget. Again.”
That was my cue to leave.
I prayed that my legs would work as I pushed myself to my feet. “I’ll get that right to you,” I replied, and left her office.
First, my vacation cancellation request was denied, and then Rhonda dropped that she might retire? And I might take her place as head of the department?
I didn’t want to think about it.
My cubicle was just across the hall from her door—ten feet, give or take. It was neat and pristine—the kind of space that Drew called a one-box walkout. Meaning that if I got fired, I’d need only one box to pack all my keepsakes before I left. I wasn’t planning on going anywhere—I’d been here for seven years—I just didn’t have much I wanted to display. Some photos, a few of my watercolor postcard paintings from around the city—Central Park’s lake, the Brooklyn Bridge from Dumbo, a cemetery in Queens. I had a bobblehead doll of William Shakespeare, and a collector’s box set of the Brontë sisters’ works, and a signed bookplate from an author I couldn’t remember and couldn’t read the name of anymore.