Page 37 of Dropping the Ball

I meet his eyes, waiting for him to interject, to reassure me that I was a kid, and I should cut myself some slack. He doesn’t say anything, only nods, and it makes me want to be more honest.

“We were never victims. My father overrode his onsite supervisor’s warnings about a major construction flaw in thefactory. He wouldn’t allow a work stoppage. Two days later, the building collapsed, two hundred people were dead, and more than four hundred injured, but he denied liability for years.”

“When did you change your mind?”

“My last year of college. A professor used Armstrong Industries for a case study in my business ethics class. Halfway through, it was pretty clear: My dad lied.”

He flinches. “That must have been a hard class to take.”

That was an understatement. I look out of the supervisor window, scanning the space Micah will transform over the next two months. “It was like having someone do an art installation inside me where they ripped out my worldview and told me to build on a completely different foundation. I had to deconstruct everything I believed about my dad and the company and find a way to view the world through a different lens.”

“Is that when you and Madison became a team?”

I wince. “Not exactly. This is messy family drama. You sure you want to hear about this?”

“Yeah.” His voice is soft. “If you’re okay telling me, I do.”

I take a deep breath. “Before law school, before Madison and I made up, we got in a fight and I went off on her. Her plan since high school was to get her inheritance and match every payout from the legal settlement, doubling each victim’s benefit. I thought my way was better. I chose law school because I wanted to become the compliance officer at Armstrong. I wanted to make sure our corporate ethics were unimpeachable. I told her she was throwing money at a problem so she could take the moral high ground with my dad, not because she really cared.”

His eyes widen slightly.

“I know it sounds bad, but at the time, I was mad about her shutting me out of her life for ten years, so maybe I was harsh.” I give him a small smile.

“I wouldn’t have guessed that you and Madison weren’t always close. Watching you, it’s like you two are as much friends as you are sisters.”

“It took time,” I say. “Once she realized I wasn’t defending our father anymore, we figured out how to talk to each other. But since Madison’s smart and good to the bones, she started looking at what wouldreallyhelp. She decided to get an MBA focused on entrepreneurial activism. Her thesis was Threadwork. It started with microfinance, but she figured out pretty quickly that not everyone wants to be an entrepreneur. Some want job security with good wages, so she opened the Marigold Institute. It offers four different management training courses. We started with garment manufacturing, but we realized that true opportunity meant giving them access to careers they chose, not fell into. We added hospitality, retail, and information technology.”

“When did it go from ‘she’ to ‘we’?”

“I started volunteering at Threadwork when I could during law school.” I run my finger over my eyebrow. How do you explain something you’re not proud of or ashamed of, just something that needed to be done? “We combined superpowers and bent Gordon Armstrong, scion and CEO of Armstrong Industries, to our will. He comps the office space and donates. A lot. When she asked me to act as director while she’s out with the baby, it was an easy yes, and I started full-time in May.”

For some reason, this pulls the biggest smile of the morning from him.

“Is that funny?”

“That two twenty-something women took down a corporate titan?” He shrugs. “I knew you in high school. Doesn’t surprise me at all.”

Flutters. All the flutters. Back. All back.

I pivot to work. It’s safe. Structured. I know the rules. “That’s why Madison is so driven to make this gala a success. She needs the first one to announce itself in the Austin consciousness with the splash of a Super Bowl halftime show. It needs to be iconic from the start.”

“But you’re not as invested?”

“Of course I am, but my ideas are more helpful on the Institute side, coming up with course expansions, handling the operational details she doesn’t love. We collaborate to plan growth. I figure out how to implement it, but her genius is figuring out how to fund it. How to make other people see the vision.”

He stands and walks over to gaze down through the window. “Nothing less than iconic, huh?”

“Yes.”

He turns and meets my eyes. “Challenge accepted.”

I can’t say anything for two full seconds, mesmerized by his eyes, by everything they promise to deliver.

For thegala.

This is not safe. This isn’t safe at all.

I blink and snap out of it, standing to survey the rest of the supervisor loft. “Thanks for taking the time to show me all this. I better get over to the office and find more reasons for our gala guests to spend money when they’re inspired by your art.” I say the last part as I head for the door, and Micah follows me out.

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