The Men Who Walked Out novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: All-Staff

Rosalind names Gordon Chief Strategy Officer on the all-staff screen and Daphne quits in front of the floor.

My badge didn't open the turnstile at Larkin headquarters.

It had opened it for six years.

The reader blinked red, and a line of people in lanyards stacked up behind me with their coffees.

"Ms. Bradstreet." The guard at the desk got up halfway. "I'm sorry. I got an email at seven. I'm not supposed to."

"What does it say?"

"That you're not here."

He looked miserable, and I didn't want to make it worse for him.

"I just need my laptop and my passport from my desk," I said. "Five minutes."

"I'll walk you up," said a voice behind me.

It was one of the product assistants, a girl who had been at the company eight months.

She swiped her own badge twice and held the gate with her hip.

Elliot had driven me down from Cambridge and was waiting in the lot with the heater on.

He had said "I'll be here" and nothing else.

I had been grateful for that.

On the fourth floor everyone was already heading to the atrium.

"All-staff at eleven," the assistant whispered. "Your mom sent the invite last night. It says there's a major announcement."

I took the passport out of my desk drawer and put it in my coat.

I stood at the glass rail above the atrium with a hundred and fifty of my coworkers.

My mother walked out onto the little stage.

She wore her navy suit.

Gordon stood beside her in a dark jacket with no tie.

His hands hung loose, and he smiled at the floor.

"Good morning," Mom said. "Last night was our thirtieth anniversary, and thank you to everyone who came."

A few people clapped.

"I'm going to be brief. Larkin has grown eight times in ten years. It needs a strategist, not a salesman, and it needs someone I trust completely."

She put a hand on Gordon's arm.

"I'm very pleased to announce Gordon Wray as our new Chief Strategy Officer. Product development reports to him, effective today."

My department.

Product development was my department.

Around me, about thirty people studied their shoes.

"Rose," Gordon said quietly into the microphone, loud enough for the whole room. "Thank you. I'm not sure I deserve it."

He sounded sincere.

"I'll learn the work from the people who know it," he said. "I'd like to start with Daphne."

He looked up, found me at the rail, and held out one open hand.

"Daphne, would you come down?"

A hundred and fifty faces turned.

I could have stayed where I was.

The choice was plain.

Stay at the rail, keep the job, keep the title, keep my name on the door.

I took the stairs down.

Every step rang, and the room went quiet enough that I heard my own shoes.

I reached the stage, and Mom's eyes met mine with no expression at all.

"I'll start with a short answer, Gordon," I said, and I took the microphone from the stand.

"My mother froze my cards yesterday morning."

"She locked my badge before I woke up."

"She told me in front of her staff that if I left behind my father, I would lose my job."

Nobody in the room made a sound, and I was done caring.

"My father left because she moved a man into the east wing and asked my father to give up his seat at the table. I left because he's my father."

"Daphne," Mom said, very softly.

"I quit," I said.

I set my dead badge on the lectern.

The little plastic click carried through the whole atrium.

"I'm sorry, Gordon," I said. "I'm sure you'll do great."

I held the microphone out to him.

He didn't take it.

He looked at the badge on the lectern, and then at me, and for a second his smile was gone.

"I didn't know about the cards," he said. "Rose."

"Gordon, not now," Mom said.

I put the microphone down.

I walked up the aisle between my coworkers.

The assistant who had let me in lifted her coffee cup at me as I passed.

I was at the doors when Mom's heels caught up behind me.

She took my elbow and turned me toward the glass, away from the room.

She smiled for the people watching.

"You have five weeks until your thirtieth birthday," she said, low and pleasant.

"Until then the proxy on your trust is mine."

"I know the terms, Mom."

"Good. Then you know I will vote it however Gordon advises."

She let go of my arm and patted my sleeve, and she walked back to the stage.

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