Chapter Twenty-Eight
The next morning, I sit at my desk in the Ryser Cares office, my eyes trained on the window.
I texted the team asking them to meet me at the office, but for all I know, they could have blown off the message and decided I wasn’t worth their time anymore.
Thinking about the way they looked at me yesterday still sends a ripple of guilt through me.
I push the thought out of my mind and focus instead on what I’ll say when I see them. If I see them.
I check my phone—no messages—then glance back at the window when I see a flicker of movement, but it’s just the geese. I sigh and check my phone again. Still no messages.
Randy arrives first. When he steps through the door, he gives me a quick, perfunctory nod in greeting. I’ll take an acknowledgment of my existence as a positive sign.
“Hey,” I say as he takes his seat at his desk.
I open my mouth to ask how he’s doing, but the apology I’ve been rehearsing in my head spills out instead.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the office might be closing.
It wasn’t decided yet, and I hoped the festival might convince them not to if it went well, and…
we’d just decided not to tell everyone about the funding until after the festival, so I just sort of…
applied that same logic about telling you. ”
He gives a humorless chuckle. “Yesterday made it clear how everyone felt about that logic,” he says. A note of remorse passes over his face. “I’m sorry I gave you bad advice.”
“Not your fault. It was the advice I wanted to hear.”
Something like understanding passes between us.
We sit in the office quietly—me obsessively checking my phone, Randy reading his book.
One by one, the others filter through the door.
First Jen, then Arun, and finally Tessa, her eyes curious but wary.
They take their seats at their desks, as if it were any other workday.
But instead of the warm, casual atmosphere that usually permeates the office, this one is uncertain and heavy.
“I’m sorry for keeping so much from you,” I begin.
“I really loved working with you all, and I was afraid telling you what was really going on would ruin it. And, selfishly, I wanted to keep pretending Ryser was interested in helping Greenstead, because…I didn’t want Marina knowing Ryser was as bad as they are.
Because then it would mean I’m a bad person. ”
“You’re not a bad person,” Tessa says. The words leave her with some reluctance, but still, she says them.
“I know,” I say, though it still sounds strange to say. “Or, I’m trying to get better about knowing that. But…these last few months, working with you has made me feel like…I can do something good.”
“That goes both ways,” Arun says quietly. He’s looking down, picking at a thread on his narwhal shirt. “Before you came here, I’d gotten so used to thinking I couldn’t do anything.” The others murmur in agreement.
“Of course you can,” I reply. “That was just Ryser trying to tell us we’re failures, and we’re not. We’re also not powerless. They were so afraid to fire us before, remember? We knew too much?”
“I don’t know if that’s true,” Jen says. “It was just a theory.”
“But we do know a lot, don’t we?” I ask. “We’ve all seen sides of Ryser they wouldn’t want the public to know. Peter Guo’s articles have shown there’s a lot of interest in exposing Ryser for who they really are. So…why don’t we?”
“Why don’t we…?” Randy echoes.
“Use the information we have to expose Ryser?” I suggest. “It’s not like they can fire us again. We could show everyone how little they’ve done to actually support Greenstead. Maybe that would force them to really help rebuild our town.”
Tessa’s eyes flicker with interest. But Randy, Arun, and Jen exchange doubtful looks.
“What could we do, though?” Randy asks. “We don’t have access to the company systems anymore.”
“I have emails,” Tessa says. “Things I forwarded to myself when I had to submit stuff for our finances. Our budget’s pretty small, and it’s only gotten smaller over the years.”
“I’ve printed some things,” Jen remembers.
She opens her desk drawer and rifles through some papers before passing a page to Tessa, who reaches over her desk to pass it to me.
“Corporate sent us reimbursement guidelines for the claims we processed. I only printed them for reference, but…take a look. There were so many stupid rules that meant we had to deny most of the claims that came in.”
I scan the paper, reading the narrow limits of claims they would consider, the excessive burden they placed on claimants to prove that the issue they raised was directly related to the mustard flood, the absurd levels of proof they required: photo or video evidence, multiple witness statements, a professional assessment by a certified home inspector.
The guidelines were clearly designed to be so narrow that almost no one would qualify for a claim.
Ryser designed these rules to make sure they paid as little as possible, all while outwardly pretending their claims program was helping to rebuild Greenstead.
“I have some texts and emails from my dad,” Arun says. “There’s a lot he’s told me over the years that could be useful.”
“This is all great,” I say. Already my mind is piecing together how to fit all of this into an impactful proclamation against Ryser.
“Could they sue us for this?” Randy asks.
I shrug. “If they want more bad press, sure.” I can’t be sure of anything, but a retaliatory lawsuit against the individuals living in the small town they wrecked would be at odds with Ryser’s usual deflect-and-deny approach. I’m willing to take the gamble.
“But is it enough?” Jen asks. “To really make a difference?”
“I have something too,” I say. “The communications department has a database where they keep all their cheat sheets for the terms we’re supposed to use to downplay everything Ryser does.
A lot of it revolves around how to make Ryser look as innocent as possible…
but it also includes tons of stuff about everything Ryser’s guilty of. ”
It came to me last night when I was trying to think of what we could use against Ryser.
Good old Bill, the Brand Learning Library that played a part in getting me banished to Greenstead in the first place, is an external platform.
Amanda gushed about how this enabled us to benefit from a world of features Ryser didn’t have, from its (un)intuitive interface to its (laggy) animation abilities.
Last night, I visited Bill’s website and checked to see if the communications department’s log-in still worked.
It did.
I’ve never loved Bill more.
I log on to Bill now and show the Ryser Cares folks around his wonderful, clunky platform. I point out the documents I think might be most useful, and we gather all the other information we have: Tessa’s emails, Jen’s printed documents, Arun’s emails and texts.
Next, we reach out to our Greenstead contacts.
We sift through the long list of denied claims and call people asking for their side of the story.
I call Marina, and though our conversation is heavy with unsaid apologies, she agrees to come down to the office after work and contribute whatever she can to our growing pile of Ryser evidence.
When she arrives, she details the extensive damage her house took due to the flood, and how the records the previous owners shared with her showed that Ryser had covered only bare minimum repairs but refused to compensate the owners for the more extensive damage, again citing their excessive criteria for what qualified as a claim.
The effects of the damage had only multiplied as the years wore on, and by the time Marina purchased the house a few years ago, for what felt like a steal, it was on the verge of falling apart.
Marina shows us the inspection report detailing the many repairs her house needs.
She outlines how she’d submitted claims to Ryser Cares out of desperation, hoping their policy might have changed, only to discover the criteria were even more strict.
I’m the one who sends the email to Peter Guo.
I include a link to the repository of evidence we’ve gathered, all the proof of how little Ryser actually cares about anything besides profits and maintaining a pristine image.
We even include a statement from Randy, alluding ominously to his knowing a secret that could spell trouble for the company: I heard two executives in particular having a discussion that would raise some serious concerns.
I wouldn’t even feel comfortable repeating it, unless I had to.
It’s pure bluffing, of course, but if it can scare Ryser into action, it’s worth a try.
When I hit Send, the finality of what I’ve done makes my heart hammer. I’ve waged a direct attack on the company I’ve spent the last decade of my life defending. Any chance of mending that bridge with Amanda has gone up in flames.
It’s terrifying. But it’s liberating at the same time. I feel like I’ve done something truly important. It’s not a feeling I often get. But I like feeling this way—powerful. Good.
I assume Marina and the Ryser Cares team must be getting a similar rush, but when I announce that the email’s sent, they just tell me to let them know what I hear back.
Marina says she has to go and leaves without another word.
The rest of them start putting away the documents they’ve gathered, like there’s nothing more to say.
I reluctantly close my laptop, watching them tidy up with their impersonal, businesslike focus.
I was hoping for a little more camaraderie.
Not that we’d go out for drinks like the night we did after the awards event, or cavort around riding roller coasters like we did after our Solar Summit meeting, but…
something to commemorate the moment we took a stand against Ryser.
But that’s what friends do, I realize with a twinge. That’s what we were, and now, after yesterday, we’re not in that place anymore. The Ryser Cares team has accepted my apology, but that doesn’t mean we’re automatically whisked back into that same carefree ease we had before.
I also still need to apologize to Marina.
I need to be really, truly honest with her.
I don’t want to lose the friendship we’ve just rebuilt.
I don’t want to go another decade without talking to her and then catch each other up on all we’d missed out on.
Now that I’m back in her life, I want it to stay that way.
And I believe it can. I believe we did something today that’s going to make a difference. The others may not have much faith in it—or in me—but I’m choosing to believe goodness will prevail. I’m choosing to believe I fall on the side of goodness, even if that hasn’t always come naturally to me.
All I can do now is wait.