WILLOW HAD FALLEN asleep on the sectional sofa in her office, her stomach aching from hunger and aggravated by the smell of baked crust, but she hadn’t wanted to interrupt Lucia and Ben. Their voices rose and fell, and laughter punctuated the conversation, reminding Willow of the time when Ben was the only one who could put Lucia in a good mood. He’d been Willow’s last hope for keeping Lucia in Quartz Hollow all those years ago, but her daughter had a stubborn streak Willow couldn’t blame her for. If anything, she’d inherited it. Willow had underestimated Lucia’s desire to get away. Willow admired what a valiant effort she’d made, considering how miserable she had been for much of that time away. Lucia couldn’t deny it; Willow knew, the way mothers always do. Last night was the happiest Lucia had sounded since she’d arrived home.
Mya had stayed in the woods and probably spent the night in her lean-to. Willow sat up from the couch and her feet landed on the reading material that had put her to sleep last night. She gathered the accounting report and placed it on her desk. Normally she read the annual report as soon as she received it, but she hadn’t been as punctual this time around, figuring it hadn’t changed much since last year. In fact this past year the profits were higher, since they’d signed a few new clients, and she’d increased the price on a few of her top clients, Zoe included, a systematic adjustment made when clients experienced significant strides in their careers. Other than equipment replacement, building repair, new hires, insurance hikes, and other day-to-day costs, Willow hardly worried about major losses, not like the loss of an entire crop. She stared at the bottom line on her accounting report and subtracted three-quarters of the seventeen million they’d made last year to project next year’s potential loss if the new formula for Zoe didn’t work and she blackmailed major clients. Willow worried that was a conservative estimate, but it was a prettier scenario than going into the negative, which would inevitably happen if the crop failed to produce again. How had this become her life, and so suddenly?
Willow’s office phone rang and she looked down first to screen the call. Grateful it was her assistant and not Robert, she picked up. “Brenda?”
“How are you?”
“I’m fine, and you?”
“Great,” she said. “I’ve got next year’s orders squared away and I’m dropping by with those receipts this afternoon, along with two new client profiles. Did you know Leya Miner was a ballerina before she began modeling? I didn’t know that.”
Willow did know that. Leya had already appeared as a contestant on a modeling reality show when Willow interviewed her, an example of a model in progress. The industry had matured, the superstar models had aged, and Willow believed the time had come for a new face that would secure book deals, clothing lines, cheap perfumes, major catwalks during fashion week, and perhaps a talk show or two. All signs pointed to Leya’s being ready, but now her ascending career might be stopped short. What would happen if Willow no longer had a product to sell to these women? Would they just drop off and never fully actualize their talents?
“You there?” Brenda said.
“Sorry. What time were you coming by?”
“When’s best for you?”
“Late afternoon,” Willow said. If anyone anywhere in the great wide universe loved her at all, then Ben would be in touch beforehand.
“How’s six? Too late? I’ll stop by the factory for an evening check-in too, if you want.”
“Sounds fine,” Willow said. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” Brenda hung up.
What else could she say without raising Brenda’s suspicion? She wasn’t ready to confide in her, and knowing Brenda she’d go into a doomsday scenario—she loved apocalypse theories, said they gave her comfort. Willow never quite understood it, but she wasn’t against comfort. She could have used some at the moment. She placed the phone on the floor and let the operator act as her bodyguard against possible interruption. She could tolerate the sound of a prerecorded voice but not the sound of a live human being in need of something from her.
Willow collapsed into the chair at her desk. If she sold the company and the factory, she could avoid the total destruction of Lenore Incorporated. Ben might discover that the plants couldn’t reproduce ever again, and it wasn’t like Willow could order new ones from a catalog. Grandmother Serena had turned a single plant into acres of a thriving business, and Willow might be the one to destroy it all. She could liquidate. They could all travel the world for years at a time. Go to Borneo again. Travel to Iceland for the first time. The girls had loved Scandinavia when they were little, so they could go for an extended stay there. And Paris. Who ever tired of Paris?
But a person can’t travel forever. What would they come home to if not the business? What would become of the Lenore women after them who would never know the flower or the fortune? Wealth could be wiped out in a single generation without a source to replenish it. Willow’s chest buzzed like a beehive. She massaged her breastbone to calm down. She couldn’t leave her girls with nothing. And her future grandchildren and great-grands. A multibillion-dollar business split three ways meant nothing to Willow, not after a lifetime of building that number, but it would mean something to Lucia and Mya. If they knew how much Forbes had underestimated her holdings and how much they’d inherit, they might urge her to liquidate. But Willow didn’t have it in her to kill the family business. She wanted to retire and look on as her daughters ran Lenore Incorporated successfully.
Willow searched under her desk for the black trash-can-looking device that Brenda had so expertly used all these years. Now she couldn’t remember what the hell it was for. Why was she looking under her desk in the first place? She tried to sit up too fast and hit the back of her head on the bottom of the desk. She balled her fists to keep herself from shouting. She looked on the other side of her desk, and apparently that was where Brenda kept it. The black thing was what she needed to get rid of these papers and it was already plugged in, thank goodness. She straightened the edges of the accounting report and fed it into the slot on the black trash can—that was what she’d call it for now, until she remembered the name for what she was doing. It was exactly what she should do, just in case her daughters came looking.