Page 10 of When You're Gone
“I love you, too, beautiful. I’ll talk to you soon, and I’ll be with you next week.”
Chapter four
Tori
MaggieClark,thevolunteercoordinator for The New Hope Foundation, burst into the conference room with an overflowing stack of binders in her arms. “Thank you all for coming on such short notice,” she said breathlessly as she passed the materials around the table.
Tori had woken up to an urgent email on Monday calling for an emergency volunteer meeting. She was only on the schedule at Clinton’s twice this week anyway, so she was grateful to have somewhere to go and something to do.
“I’ll cut right to the chase. I have bad news to share.” Maggie paused. “There was an electrical fire at camp over the weekend, and we lost the entire mess hall and storage shed.”
Gasps and murmurs erupted amongst the volunteers, but all Tori could hear was a ringing in her ears. Maggie met her gaze from across the room and shook her head twice in dismay. Tori stared back at her friend, wide-eyed and unblinking. From the look on Maggie’s face, this was bad, and everything was about to change.
“Insurance will eventually cover all the costs for the rebuild and the lost supplies. But time isn’t on our side right now.”
Tori swallowed past the lump that had formed in her throat. What the hell did that mean?
“The board is trying to figure out how to move forward. Even if all expenses are covered to get us back up and running, we can expect to navigate a lot of red tape in the coming months. Because of that, we have to cancel the overnight version of Camp New Hope for this summer.”
“No.” Tori was suddenly on her feet, the deep-seated opposition to that idea forcing her out of her chair. She hadn’t even thought about standing up, but her body was moving of its own accord. “No way,” she doubled down, drawing everyone’s attention.
“I’m sorry,” Maggie replied, sadness and sincerity lacing her tone. “The board has already met twice this week trying to come up with alternative options. Even if the insurance claim is processed quickly, construction would happen over the summer and interfere with—”
“So we just have to move the location for this year,” Tori interrupted. She was still standing, determined to come up with a solution to this gut-wrenching problem.
She had attended Camp New Hope for years as a camper, then a counselor, before becoming a volunteer. The time she spent at camp was the brightest beacon of each year. She knew for a fact that they already had dozens of campers registered for this summer. She refused to snuff out that flame of hope for those kids.
“I suggested that,” Maggie lamented, her voice shaking a bit as she spoke. “But the board has gone round and round. Even if we could find a temporary location, we’d have to pay for it. Not to mention replace all the supplies we lost in the storage shed.”
Tori’s anger spiked as she thought about all the prepped canvases and paint supplies that were probably ruined because of the fire.
“How much was lost?” she uttered.
“According to our inventory records, at least $20,000 worth of supplies.”
She closed her eyes before slumping back down into her seat. This couldn’t be happening. There had to be a solution.
“That’s why I called you here today,” Maggie continued, looking around the room at the dozen or so volunteers who had gathered on short notice. “The board has asked us to come up with a contingency plan to turn this year’s sessions into two week-long day camps.”
Tori couldn’t resist voicing her objection again. “That’s ridiculous. More than two-thirds of our campers are from out of state. Offering a day camp is exclusionary and shouldn’t even be considered a viable alternative.”
Maggie let out a slow breath and met her gaze. Tori saw the truth in her eyes—she agreed with her, Maggie knew what she was saying was valid—but her hands were tied.
“There’s no guarantee a day camp can even be offered. They need to see what’s possible and how much money we would need to pull it off.”
A quiet murmuring filled the room as Maggie moved to the podium to wake up the computer and projector.
“Did they even look into alternate locations for overnight camp? What does Jill think about all this?” Tori demanded.
The room fell silent. She knew she was bordering on disrespectful at this point, but she didn’t care. She had met most of the members of the board of directors over the last several years. They believed in the mission of Camp New Hope, but they had careers and personal lives and an existence outside their roles on a nonprofit volunteer board. She wouldn’t put it past any of them to just grasp for the easiest solution and not deal with the additional headache and workload of making last-minute changes.
They may have believed in the mission of Camp New Hope, but she lived it. She owed it to every kid who had already registered for the bereavement camp to push for more than what they were settling for now.
“They did,” Maggie confirmed, not taking her eyes off the screen as she pulled up a deck. “Out of the two local facilities that are available for our weeks, the cheapest rental option is $10,000 a week. Jill has been working on this around the clock, obviously,” she added, referencing the director of the program. “But there’s only so much we can do given our limited budget and the timeline.”
So they needed $20,000, plus another $20,000 for the lost supplies.
$40,000.
