Ford ignored her comment. “Is she right? Have you really been spending hours of every workday at the spa?”
“I’m not going to defend myself to you.”
“You’re going to have to defend yourself to someone. The fact that you haven’t denied any of this makes me think it must be true.”
“What is it you want me to admit to? Going to the spa sometimes? Fine, I do that. Every woman I know gets regular manicures and pedicures. Most men I know, too. It’s not a crime.”
“No. But if you’re doing it during office hours, every day, then it looks bad. It looks like you’re not doing your job. It looks like you don’t care about the company. And if you don’t care about it, then why should anyone else?”
“Is that what you think? That I don’t care about Biedermann’s? I would do anything for Biedermann’s.”
“So you keep saying. But, frankly, I’m not seeing it.”
“Are you kidding me? Since I took over as CEO, I’ve poured everything I have into this business. I’ve spent every waking moment trying to educate myself on how to be the best CEO I can. I’ve listened to every damn business book published in the last decade, from Barbarians at the Gate to The 4-Hour Workweek, none of which have been remotely helpful, by the way. I’ve worked eighty-hour weeks. I’ve abandoned my social life completely.
“None of that made any difference. The stock price just kept going down. So I decided to buy whatever stock I could in hopes of keeping the price up. I liquidated all of my assets. Sold everything I had. Furniture, art, jewelry. Things that had been in the family for generations. I quietly auctioned it off piece by piece. A year ago, I moved out of the townhouse where I grew up, where Biedermanns had lived for over a hundred years. I sold it and moved into a walk-up.”
To her embarrassment, her voice, which had been rising in pitch steadily, broke on the word walk-up. She knew where she lived was the least of her worries, but somehow it signified all the things wrong in her life.
Knowing she was being ridiculous didn’t make it sting any less when he said, “Come on, you make it sound like life without a doorman just isn’t worth living. Surely it’s not that bad.”
“Have you ever lived without a doorman?” she asked.
“I live in a craftsman remodel down by campus in Palo Alto,” he deadpanned. “I’ve never had a doorman in my life.”
“Well, I now live on the fourth floor in a building without an elevator. I grew up with staff, for cripes sake. Our housekeeper worked for my family for forty-five years. After I let Maggie go, she couldn’t even afford to pay the tuition for her granddaughter’s college.”
Maggie had been like family. No, more than that. To a girl who’d never known her mother, Maggie had been family. And Kitty had had to fire her. Sweet Maggie had tried to comfort her, made her hot tea and murmured optimist platitudes like, I’ve always wanted to travel. Maggie had been too proud to accept a handout once she was no longer employed, so Kitty had done the only thing she could do. She’d tracked down Maggie’s granddaughter and hired her at Biedermann’s.
“Then why did you sell the house?” Ford was asking her. “And if you had to sell it, why not move someplace nicer?”
At his question, she bumped her chin up defiantly.
“Because,” she shot back. “When the stock price started to drop, I couldn’t just stand by and do nothing. So I bought as much as I could. And then when it kept dropping, I couldn’t even pay the taxes on the townhouse. Selling the house was the only option.”
“You should never have invested your personal assets in—”
“I know that, okay?” she snapped. “I was trying to help Biedermann’s and I made a stupid mistake. I’m really good at making stupid mistakes, thank you very much.”
It was just one of many, many stupid mistakes. Sometimes she felt buried under the weight of them.
“I’m just trying to—” he began.
But she cut him off with a belligerent glare. “I don’t need your help.”
He talked over her protests. “If Biedermann’s really does go under, you’ll have lost everything.”
What could she say to that? All she could do was shake her head and blink back the tears. “If Biedermann’s really does go under, then I’ve lost everything anyway.”
But that wasn’t entirely true anymore, was it? She’d have the baby. She’d have the family she’d always wanted. It was a small consolation that was turning into everything.
“So tell me this,” he said. “If you’re so desperate to keep Biedermann’s afloat, why this elaborate act? Why don’t you want anyone to know what you’re doing? Why spend your days at the spa getting massages and facials? You’ve got to know how bad that looks.”
She met his gaze. “I can’t—” she began before breaking off. Then she swept a hand across her forehead, pushing her hair out of her face. “I can’t explain that.”
“Well, try. Make me understand what’s going on here. Give me something, anything, that makes this make sense.”
“This is just what I do.”
Whenever the influx of written material got too much to handle, she took Casey, went to the spa and had her assistant read aloud to her. The paperwork was so overwhelming. Business documents were the worst. She just couldn’t wrap her head around the pages and pages of words. Listening to them read aloud helped. But what kind of CEO had her assistant read everything aloud? Christ, it was like she was a preschooler at story time. How could she explain that to Ford?
Instead she said, “It’s like a … a coping mechanism or something.”
“You mean the massages are a way of relieving stress?”
She all but threw up her hands in frustration. “No. I mean, I was raised never to reveal my weaknesses. You always have to keep up appearances.”
“I don’t understand.”
“No. Of course you wouldn’t. My mother died when I was young. My father was completely loving and indulgent, but Biedermann’s always came first, so he wasn’t around a lot. I was raised by my grandmother, who was already well into her sixties when I was born. It . . “
She struggled for words. Finally she finished with, “It made for an unusual upbringing. I grew up in the 1990s, but really, it’s like I was raised in the 1950s. To my grandmother, appearances were everything. I know she loved me, but in the world she lived in, you never let anyone see your weaknesses. You never aired your dirty laundry.”
And a child with a disability—a child who was imperfect—was the ultimate dirty laundry. She’d been such an embarrassment to her whole family. Such a disappointment. How could she stand disappointing anyone else?
“So, going to the spa is your way of whistling in the graveyard? Of pretending everything is okay when it obviously isn’t? You’re not fooling anyone.”
“I fooled you, didn’t I?”
“You didn’t fool me so much as make me doubt your sanity.” His words were like a slap. He must have regretted them, because he sighed and scrubbed a hand down his face. “Look, you’ve got to defend yourself against Suzy Snark’s allegations. Whoever she is, you’ve got to let people know she’s wrong about you.”
“And tell them what? That I was completely unprepared to take over as CEO? That I have no discernible leadership skills? That I have nothing to offer the company at all? How would admitting any of that help matters?”
“At least people