Page 68 of February

“Do you like blueberries?”

“Huh?” Monica asked.

Instead of answering, Bridgette stood up, opened the door to be able to walk to her desk, grabbed the brown bag, and brought it back into the room. She dropped it onto the table.

“You can have my muffin.”

Monica’s eyebrows lifted, and only then did Bridgette really understand what she’d just said.

“The blueberry muffin I got from the café.”

“Thanks.” Monica laughed and opened the bag. “I am starving. Anyway, it’s not just food items. There are a ton of local shops here that ship. I imagine a lot of that happened when Katrina hit and things had to close down.”

“Some, yes,” Bridgette replied. “And more and more do it after each bad storm season. Some no longer have storefronts at all because it wasn’t worth the bother.”

“And your parents aren’t interested?”

“No,” she said with a head shake.

“What about you?”

“Me? Yeah, I’ve told them a million times that I wanted to open an Etsy store and get on Amazon. I wanted to make a breakup card line, a too-drunk-to-go-to-work card line, and other New Orleans-appropriate cards. We don’t have to be reverent down here. The shirts alone, you know?”

“I’ve seen a few of them, yes. Classy,” Monica joked before she took a piece of the muffin and brought it to her lips.

Bridgette laughed and said, “I figured we could stamp them somehow as being from here and by local artists, and sales would pick up.”

Monica nodded and took another bite. Bridgette had to look away, though, because watching Monica’s long fingers with perfectly trimmed nails go to her mouth only made her think about those fingers and that mouth being elsewhere.

“Do you have ideas for those cards already?”

“I have a sketchbook, and I’ve jotted down some notes, yes.”

“So, I have an idea, but it’s not what your parents are going to want to hear.”

“Okay,” Bridgette said, curious, as she leaned forward in her chair.

“Things are this bad because they’ve chosen to remain local. You mentioned storefronts closing, and some of them used to carry your cards. You’ve lost a lot of clients that way, and it’s hard to get new customers with no dedicated sales team. Your parents are doing most of that themselves. On top of that, you’re losing rack space. From what I’ve seen, you’re losing it to the big guys, nothing local, which means that soon, the stores won’thave space for you at all because the big guys give them lower rates, and you’ve been raising yours to combat your losses. That’s why the company is going under.”

Bridgette had asked her parents to tell her what was happening a million times, and they’d always told her that things were fine or slow butwouldbe fine. Sure, they’d been teaching her things about the business, but they hadn’t given her the full picture of where it stood.

“So, what do we do?” she asked.

“There are options, I think. One of themdoesinvolve us buying the company and taking the card lines and assets. We can probably find jobs for most of the employees, but I’d want to meet with the ones in the other office before I make any promises. Of course, they’d have to move since they’d be the only remote employees we have at Good Day. We could buy and consider keeping this office as a satellite or the one in Baton Rouge. That would allow the ones we hire to stay on without moving, but I’d need to discuss that with my father. There are a couple of other options, though.”

“Tell me.”

“Well, quite frankly, your parents are making bad business decisions. You’re already overstaffed for what you’re putting out, and they’ve gotyoudoing replenishment runs instead of the office manager they have in Baton Rouge, which means you create fewer cards. They’re also not taking you nationwide or even global. Keeping you offline is a major mistake.”

“I’ve told them that before.”

“I know. They told me.” Monica paused. “Would you consider taking over for them?”

“Yeah, when they retire.”

“No, I mean now.”

“Now?”

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