Authors: Peggy Bird
Since the new building didn’t have the permits to open as a commercial space, Summer had been working out of a cubicle in an incubator building where the bare necessities of office life—a desk, phone service, and Wi-Fi—were provided. Bella would take over the space, as well as all the paperwork from the months of fighting every step of the way to get the business open, when she assumed the responsibilities Summer had entrusted to her.
Before she could leave Portland, however, she had to clean out her parents’ home. It was much more emotionally difficult than she’d expected sorting through the treasures of their long life together. Some of the boxes she found in the basement were untouched from when her parents had moved from Southern California to be closer to her mother’s one remaining sister. Sadly, because both of the women died within a month of one another less than a year after the senior Rodriguezes moved to Oregon, her father had never finished unpacking. She knew it was because he couldn’t face the memories. It wasn’t much easier for her to handle the same task.
She and her brothers agreed to divide everything in the house with Bella getting first choice, starting with her father’s valuable art glass and first edition book collections. They also agreed to let her furnish her apartment in Seattle with what she wanted from the house. Letting her have first pick of the glass and books was a generous gesture. Letting her have the furniture was more out of disinterest than generosity. Her brothers’ tastes—or that of their wives—didn’t run to what had furnished a 5,000 square foot house for two old people, she was sure. She, on the other hand, had come to love some of the furnishings she’d been living with for several years, like the armoire in her bedroom, the wingback chairs and bookshelves from the living room, the tea wagon from the dining room. She was happy to have them. She’d sent photographs of all the remaining pieces to her four siblings, but so far not one of them claimed anything. Which probably meant she would have to sell it all before she left.
Dealing with everything made for long days. During the workweek, she was still helping out at BU/MU getting Darcy back up to speed on current clients and projects. In the evenings and on weekends, she packed boxes and sorted papers. But less than a month after she’d been offered the job, everything was finished. Her parents’ house was empty and ready for the new owner. The furniture for her new apartment had been delivered; the rest had been sold. Papers and art were on the way to her brothers.
She was ready for Seattle.
In one week, the partnership committee would hold its annual meeting and Taylor would be proposed for partnership. Nate Benjamin said the vote was pure formality. After all his hard work for the firm, Taylor was a slam dunk. Under other circumstances, counting the ways it could go wrong would have kept Taylor up nights worrying. But Nate’s reassurance made him confident it would work out.
Besides, his worrying quotient had been pretty much used up by concerns about the consequences of something he’d rather thoughtlessly done at a citywide meeting of community activists three months earlier.
Using the bonus from his CloudCo deal as the down payment, Taylor had purchased a condo in Belltown. And wanting to be active in the management of the complex, he’d gotten involved in the homeowners’ association. Volunteering to be the board’s representative at the annual meeting of homeowners’ associations from across the city seemed like a good way to get to know more about how other neighborhood associations worked.
Unfortunately, the meeting occurred right after he learned from Nate Benjamin, who had been contacted by Summer Olsen, about Break Up or Make Up’s plan to expand into Seattle.
The news unsettled him, which had been something of a surprise. He’d been quite sure the whole Allison affair and how it ended were behind him. And he’d given up his plans for a targeted strike against Summer Olsen and her company, although he still considered her business foolish and lightweight and believed she, herself, was possibly the spawn of Satan.
In truth, he’d not thought of Allison much at all in the past months, having slowly come to realize what he’d felt when he’d read her stupid letter was less the pain of a lost love than a blow to his ego and disappointment at the failure of what he still considered a well-thought-out plan. He had faced the reality that the fondness he’d felt for Allison hadn’t really been passion. When he was being honest about it, he had to admit she’d probably done him a favor by ending things. They had certainly looked good together, and they’d had a pleasant, if not particularly passion-filled, relationship. But just because she was a smart, attractive woman with the right qualifications for the job of wife didn’t mean she was the love of his life. By leaving him, she’d made him realize he could have been about to marry a woman he liked quite a bit but was far from the perfect mate he’d been portraying her as.
No doubt the breakup had stung. It still did. A little, anyway. His pride had been battered, after all. But he had determined it was time to move on. It helped that he’d not run into her at any point since he got the letter, which, given they ran in the same small social circles, was something of a surprise.
He was still convinced the owner of Break Up or Make Up was related to at least one of the minor demons of hell, if not the chief devil himself, and her business had the dumbest name in the world. But her bad taste in business models and names wasn’t his problem.
However, he’d been taken off guard when he heard Nate, at a partner’s meeting, raving about a self-described (he was sure) “exciting new approach to business and personal relationships.” If Nate had his way, Break Up or Make Up was not only coming to Seattle but would be coming to his office. Assuming his colleague would pull off acquiring them as a client, Taylor would have to hear the dumb name at every partner’s meeting for the duration of whatever contract they signed with
her.
And he’d have to keep his opinions on the subject to himself for the same length of time.
The morning after he heard his firm was pitching Break Up or Make Up for work, and still thinking about what it might mean if his boss discovered he’d been the target of one of their infamous letters, he attended the fatal neighborhood association meeting.
He must not have had enough coffee before he went to the meeting. Or enough sleep the night before. Maybe he hadn’t been thinking. Whatever the reason, when the president of the relevant neighborhood association where the new office was slated to open mentioned how another old house in their neighborhood had been sold to someone who wanted to change the zoning to commercial use, he found himself in a discussion about Summer Olsen’s business.
It wouldn’t have created a problem if he hadn’t let drop that he’d heard some of their neighbors in Portland had issues with them. It wasn’t a lie. He had, after all, actually talked to several adjacent residents and been told there was a parking problem. Of course, in Northwest Portland, saying there were parking issues was like saying it rained in the winter. But he didn’t add that part.
However, in his conversation with the neighborhood official, his pointed questions made it sound, he decided afterward, more serious than it really was. He knew the residents of the neighborhood in which Summer had decided to locate her business didn’t like having houses converted to commercial space. And he knew they had a history of objecting to zoning changes and building permits. Several times, the delays they’d caused had convinced a business to look elsewhere for space.
What he hadn’t counted on was the speed with which the president of the neighborhood association had latched on to his casual comments and run with them. Right down to City Hall where she and her allies became the single biggest roadblock to the expansion of Break Up or Make Up. The company got a rash of bad press, the objections of nearby homeowners delayed the zoning change, and the permitting process ground to a halt.
If he’d planned it, Taylor couldn’t have screwed up Summer’s plans any better.
He tried suggesting to his friends in the planning department it was a flap over nothing, but they pointed out the obvious—once the ball of neighborhood objections started officially rolling, there was little anyone could do but wait for it to come to rest at the bottom of the hill. And the spate of bad press made this hill steeper and longer than usual. Nevertheless, Taylor urged the planner in charge of the project to look beyond the views of what he described as only a few neighbors and think about the need to encourage small businesses in the city. He did his best to sound convincing without revealing his role in starting the whole uproar. Because if he did, he was terrified he would lose the partnership he had worked so hard for.
It didn’t seem fair. A couple offhand comments shouldn’t undo years of hard work. Maybe after he’d made partner, he’d figure out a way to undo what he’d done. It was the only thing he could think of.
That and a determination to keep his mouth shut at neighborhood association meetings about anything other than the weather.
• • •
Every time she drove to Seattle, Bella slowed down a bit to smile—no,
grin
—as she passed Boeing Field and the skyline of the city appeared in the distance. The view never got old. The Emerald City beckoned to her, as Oz had to Dorothy. All she needed was a dog, a tin man, a lion, and a scarecrow to make the fantasy real. Oh, and I-5 should be yellow brick and have only one lane.
The day she moved from Portland to her new home, her first glimpse of the skyline was even more exciting to her. There it was. The place where she’d make her new life. A beautiful city with impressively tall buildings and some of the most spectacular water views in the country. It was going to be fantastic.
But first she had to figure out the traffic and a whole new set of city streets on her way to her new residence. Not easy. Sandra Daniels had driven her to the apartment building when she’d originally seen it, and sadly, she hadn’t paid attention to how to get there. Which left her at the mercy of traffic heavier than she was used to, but still going fast enough to make it hard to follow the Google directions she’d printed off before she left Portland. To make it more confusing, her phone’s GPS was giving her different directions from the ones Google suggested.
She got off I-5 at the wrong exit, somehow got turned around, and wound up south of downtown at Safeco Field, which she recognized from having been to a baseball game there. She had no idea where her new home was in relation to the stadium. Finally she decided to ask a human being for directions. A kind convenience store owner told her how to get to her apartment.
Relief was mixed with excitement when she finally found the building. The familiar furniture, which had arrived before she did and was in place thanks to an understanding building manager, was comforting. The half dozen pieces of her father’s art glass collection glowed in the late afternoon light and welcomed her. After moving some of the furniture in her living room around so it was exactly right and unpacking her clothes, she decided to treat herself to dinner at a little neighborhood café up the street. Tomorrow she’d fill the refrigerator and pantry. Then, the following day, she’d be ready to find her way to the incubator building where her cubicle—and her new job—awaited her.
• • •
Obviously, Bella was going to have to quickly get used to tangling with Seattle traffic. Luckily she didn’t have a boss or a staff waiting for her on her first day in her new office because she badly underestimated the time it took to get from home to her cubicle.
Just as she’d found her new apartment eventually, she finally found her new work home. She spent the morning beginning to plow through a file cabinet of paperwork trying to get a handle on the project and its problems. The radio Summer had thoughtfully added to the bare bones office space helped. Bella discovered a new favorite music station and an amusing advice show to give her some background noise while she got up to speed on what Summer had faced trying to open her branch office.
It was unfortunate, really, that her boss was having all these difficulties. Bella had seen firsthand the kind of good work BU/MU and their roster of experts did for people. Having access to all the resources in one place was a blessing for people who were in stressful situations. While writing letters for people who felt unable to do it themselves, she had gotten to know so many nice people. There were sad stories, like the two lifelong best friends who were breaking up a home-based business because the spouse of one of the partners had embezzled money from the company to feed his gambling problem. His wife had known and covered for him. BU/MU’s lawyers handled the business side, the psychologists the emotional part. Bella had written the letter to the offending partner from her childhood friend who’d been damaged, getting all her hurt feelings onto paper, freeing her to move on. Hopefully.
It wasn’t all tragic stories and broken relationships, however. Sometimes she’d been asked to write fun, even funny, letters. There was the man who wanted a letter written to his neighbor’s dog in the voice of his dog. It was a proposal of marriage—well, of mating, actually. It not only turned out to be successful but so funny a community newspaper picked up the story and gave BU/MU some free publicity.
Another favorite was the one she’d written for a twelve-year-old girl who asked for help with a letter to send to the boy she wanted to be her valentine. He was a ball boy for Portland’s NBA team the Trail Blazers, and the girl saw him at every home game because she and her father had season tickets. The letter made the local news with both BU/MU and the Blazers getting television coverage.
Her favorite letters to write were the ones sent to make up after a fight, a separation, or counseling. They were always so hopeful. Often the clients came back with stories of success.
But now, she would be doing something much different and much more difficult. She’d been part of the team helping individuals to heal before. In this assignment, she was flying close to solo, helping to heal a business. She was determined to get a handle on what had derailed the expansion and get it back on track.