Page 14 of Due Diligence

When I looked up at him, he was staring down at me, arms folded. The dynamic felt…off. It was usually me standing there and reminding Alex how to behave, not the other way around.

“I know you’re upset, but the entire staff is buzzing out there because you just flipped out and sent our due diligence analyst packing, so—”

“So what?”

“I think it’s important you assuage any concerns that this deal could fall apart. Plus, I think they’d like to see that their COO isn’t having a nervous breakdown.”

“I’m not having a nervous breakdown; I’m just frustrated. Jesus, Alex. Not every person who goes to therapy is some kind of ticking time bomb.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

I raised an eyebrow and forced myself to withhold a response. The number of times Alex had made jokes about my outspoken reliance on my therapist might outnumber our inventory of Herman-Miller chairs.

“Look, as COO, it’s my job to make sure we get through due diligence, so I’m going to handle that part,” I said. “I could use some help though. If you—as CEO and leader of the company—can find some free time, maybeyoucould put the staff’s mind at ease.”

“Okay, but what would I tell them?” he asked in all seriousness.

Alex’s question reminded me of a conversation I had with one of my moms back when I was in high school. I was working on a group project, and there was one girl in our assigned group of four. We were supposed to put together a presentation onThe Scarlet Letterby Nathaniel Hawthorne, which we were reading at the time. We all went over to her house one weekend, put together the poster for the presentation, wrote the content, rehearsed it, and then delivered it at school the following week. I thought everything was fine until the teacher asked me to stay after class, along with the other two guys from the group.

According to my teacher, the sole girl in our group said she felt as though she contributed more to the project. While she didn’t necessarily want the teacher to reflect that in our grades, she thought it was important to share.

I remembered feeling pissed off and telling my mom this girl was a liar, because we had all gotten together to work on the project. And then my mom, asked me,Who figured out what materials you needed for the project?She did.And who made sure you all got together on the weekend?She did.And who ordered the pizza when you were working late?She did. This line of questioning continued until my mother basically got me to admit that while we all did the same amount of work on the presentation, we allowed the girl in my group to take on the massive mental load of thinking about the project, preparing for it, and making sure everything was squared away.

This concept was the “mental load:” It was the invisible work that so often falls to women. It was the taxing act of making sure a grocery list was complete and would meet the needs of every person in the family. It was making sure the laundry was done so every member of the family would have clean clothes for the week. Husbands might take on the shopping or might put the laundry in the machine, but it still didn’t help with the mental load.

I was obviously not a woman and Alex clearly wasn’t my husband, but for a decade I had managed his mental load for him. So when he asked me what to tell the staff, I realized I could either take the time to put together the message for him so he could go out and simply say it—or I could save myself the time and deal with the staff later. As usual.

“You’re right,” I said after a beat. I raised both shoulders and held up my hands. “I’ll call Davenport-Ridgeway first, and then I’ll come out. Tell everyone to hang tight and tell them lunch is on me.”

“Thanks, Marcus,” he responded, nodding seriously in a way that made me want to elbow him in the nose. “I know we’re going to fix this.”

As soon as he left my office, I raised my middle finger at the space where he was just standing. His use of the “royal we” just now was borderline insulting.

We.

Bullshit. I was going to fix this—me and me alone.

Last week when I talked to Dr. Jensen, he was concerned about the sheer number of changes I was facing because of the acquisition and the due diligence process. Concerned I might revisit some of my old habits, he recommended we try out a strategy I used for a few years, starting in the eighth grade. That was the year I switched schools because one of my classmates bullied me every lunch period for having two moms. I was relieved to get away from my bully, but had always struggled with change (likely some residual impact from switching from one foster home to the other for so many years). Back then, I started carrying around a composition notebook. Every time I was feeling upset, I would write in it.

These days, I was using a three-ring binder. I kept a few things in there: some of the checklist documents Cassie gave me, some trackers I designed for myself, and at the very end, some blank sheets of paper where I could jot down notes about Cassie, or Alex, or whatever was on my mind. I spent ten minutes before I finally felt ready to move on with salvaging this absolute clusterfuck of a situation.

The first thing I did was dial the number for Corinne Tyler from Davenport-Ridgeway, who had been the main contact for the acquisition up until this point. She and I had spent countless hours in meetings, talking through the fine points of the deal and how the acquisition would go. In that time, I had come to marvel at her competence—and as a result, I felt confident my concerns about Cassie wouldn’t just fall on deaf ears.

“Marcus, how are you?” she greeted when she answered the phone. “I’m excited to hear how due diligence is going.”

“I won’t bullshit you, Corinne,” I said sharply. “I’m a busy man and I don’t have time to be dealing with the whims of your analyst. We’re not going to work. I’ll need a replacement as soon as you can get me one.”

There was a long pause, which I felt no pressure to fill. After a beat, Corinne said, “Talk me through it.”

“How much time do you have?” I asked. “Because I can give you the long version or the short version.”

“Give me the long version.”

“Fine. Well, ten years ago…”

Chapter 5: Cass

I was so pissed off when I left the Libra offices that I almost threw my iPhone onto the pavement. But I was still drowning in so much debt to my parents, the federal government, and two private loan providers, that I managed to remind myself I couldn’t afford to drop a grand on a new phone whenever my anger got the best of me. Instead, I did what any disgruntled twenty-eight-year-old would do when a guy pissed her off: I went to the closest fast-food restaurant; bought the grossest, biggest, and baconiest breakfast sandwich they sold; and scarfed it down in the back of an Uber on my way to Davenport-Ridgeway.

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