Page 102 of February

“Monica told me.”

“She did?”

“Yes, this morning.” Bridgette wasn’t sure if she should reveal exactlyhowMonica had told her, given that they’d been in her hotel room. “We met for coffee.”

That wasn’t entirely a lie since they had shared coffee that morning, so she went with it.

“Well, that’s what we wanted to talk to you about.”

“I know, Dad. But you need to let me talk first.” She sighed. “You should’ve anticipated the cost for the benefits. It happens literally every single year: they go up. We try not to pass the additional cost onto the employees. Why didn’t you plan for that?”

“Our broker assured us there wouldn’t be a sizeable increase this year,” her mother replied.

“Well, that was stupid of him, and you shouldn’t have believed him. If the cost is too high for the company to take on, you either lower or drop the bonuses altogether, or you have to pass the increase onto the employees; even if it’s just this year because we’re trying to stay in business.”

“Selling is the better option.”

“No, it’s not. And I’m tired of you not listening to me,” she said. “You don’t tell me what’s actually going on with the business until it’s too late; you don’t take any of my ideas seriously; you’re still paying out a bonus when we can’t afford it;and you just want to sell instead of really trying out something that could save us.”

“Where is all this coming from?”

“I’m an adult, Mom. I’m twenty-seven years old. I have a business degree from Tulane. You’ve got me replenishing cards around the state because we had to drop our contractor, and you’ve got no sales team to help us get new customers because we can’t afford it.”

“Honey, we’ve done everything we can,” her dad said.

“No, you haven’t. You’ve never given me a chance, Dad. You’ve relegated me to card design, which is fine most of the time, and I like it, but I have ideas for entire lines of cards that would be unique, and I have plans for online.”

“We didn’t–”

“Want to go online? Yeah, I know. It’s why we’re in this mess, to begin with. I’ve got plenty of ideas on how to keep things feeling local even if they’re available globally, and you won’t even hear them. Why? Just tell me, why? Is it because I’m your daughter, and you can’t see me as an adult who is qualified to make business decisions?”

“What? No.” Her mom shook her head. “We have an idea of how we want our business run.”

“But it won’t be your business anymore, Mom. You’d rather sell it than give me a real chance at running it?”

“We want you to have something left. If you take over and it doesn’t work out, you’ll end up in debt, and so will we. We’re lucky we have someone who’s interested in buying it now, and that will give you some money to–”

“You have that little faith in me?” Bridgette asked as she sat down, losing all of her steam at once. “Really?”

“It’s not that, honey,” her dad said.

“Then, what is it?”

“It’s safer this way.”

“I don’twantsafe. I want this company,” she replied. “I’ve always planned on taking it over one day, and you’re taking that away from me because you’re scared.”

“We still need to be able to take care of ourselves, too, Bridgette. Even if we don’t sell to Arnette, you can’t afford to buy us out and run the business. We would have no salaries coming in.”

“What if we can figure that out?”

“How?” her father asked.

“I can come up with a plan,” she replied. “Just don’t sell to Arnette until I do.”

“We can’t wait that long.”

“Dad, I’m asking you for a few days, at most, here.”

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