Chapter Thirty-Three
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Here’s what’s funny about crises at work: they never wait their turn. When one comes, the rest follow, like eager little chicks trailing after the mother hen.
The article comes out on Friday, around ten o’clock in the morning: The Truth About Josephine Davis, Revenant’s Reclusive Founder and CEO.
Written by Nora Lindberg for Forbes.
I don’t see the piece right away; there’s a lot going on. Derrick is coming into town next week ahead of the B Corp review, so I’m scrambling to get my odds and ends taken care of. Not to mention Camila’s wedding is in two weeks, and our South Congress store is scheduled to open in one hour.
One. Hour.
Cami is already there, making sure every box is checked with the social media and sales teams, ready to go as soon as the doors open at eleven. I’m wrapping up a meeting when I spot Eugenia through the glass wall. She’s aiming me a shifty look.
She’s had some trouble with that freckled intern lately. Read: she fell in love with him, and frankly, I’m not that alarmed by her expression considering he is in the meeting with me. When we finish up and Eugenia hands over my belongings so I can make a quick exit from the building, she says, “Is everything… okay?”
“Uh, yeah?” I say. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
“N-Never mind,” she stutters, falling into pace with me as I head for the door.
“Do you want to come with me?” I ask. “It’s going to be great. Cami texted me there’s a line already, which shouldn’t be a problem because I was so paranoid about not having the right inventory selection this time I told our new director to seriously overcorrect—”
“I can’t, we have an intern thing,” Eugenia interrupts.
“Okay, well, enjoy!” I turn back and shoot her a cheery smile—failing to interpret the dead silence of every single one of my employees staring at me from their desks—as I disappear into the elevator.
In my car, I put on Ryn Weaver and turn up the volume, humming along as I make my way to South Congress. It’s a beautiful late-summer day, not a cloud in the sky, the air dry, scorching hot. I park in the retail section of an apartment complex and make my way up to street level, a giddiness running through me as I spot the customer line.
My phone rings. I fish it out of my purse and see Will’s name.
“Guess where I am?” I keep my voice low.
“Josephine.”
“I’m in line! It’s, like, fifty people deep!” I shriek-whisper.
“Josie, you should get somewhere private.”
“I’m not planning to stay here,” I say. “I’m about to head to the back entrance. But I wanted to see. Most of the time, our customers are behind a screen, but these people are real. And they’re here, ” I go on, enchanted.
“That’s great, J,” Will says. There’s an edge to his tone I haven’t heard in a long time. “I’m happy for you. But seriously, Nora Lindberg from Forbes just released a piece on you, and it doesn’t sound to me like you’ve read it yet, so maybe you should step away from—”
“Josephine Davis?”
I pull the phone down from my ear. The girl ahead of me has turned.
“Hi!” I say, extroverting my hardest. I was prepared for this today. People perceiving me. I practiced my warmest smile in the mirror this morning. “Thank you so much for being here.”
The girl frowns. She holds up her phone screen to me, and that’s when I see the article title for the first time: The Truth About Josephine Davis.
“Is this true?”
If there’s one thing we’ve come to expect from female founders, it’s that they know the power of their personal brand. Customers fall in love with the often young, always smart, unreachably aspirational founder just as much as whatever product or service she’s peddling.
And nine times out of ten, it works. So why, I asked myself, is Josephine Davis hesitant to let her customers get to know her?
I talked to former Revenant employee Margaret Dwyer, who was the director of retail experience before she was fired after the Revenant pop-up a few months back. She told me her opinion: Josephine Davis is not very nice.
The employees all hate their CEO, according to Dwyer. Davis is rude, demanding, authoritative, and quick to pass blame. Even worse, Dwyer claims that Davis’s own CBO and college friend, Camila Sanchez, has fallen out with her former best friend to the point that Sanchez is planning to leave the company for good.
Kyle Waterhouse, a consultant at the Carlisle Group who had a handshake agreement with Revenant, further substantiated Dwyer’s opinion, saying, “Davis fired us, too. That seems to be her calling card when a person makes one single mistake.”
I myself have reached out to Davis in a professional capacity on multiple occasions to request an interview, with no response.
The bottom line is: no one is above the news cycle, especially someone in a position of influence, and just because Davis avoids press doesn’t mean there won’t be a public reckoning when the truth comes out.
My very worst nightmare, come to life.
I don’t want people to think of me when they think of Revenant. It’s the surest way I could gut my own company.
I tried my hardest to stay out of the spotlight, and it still didn’t fucking work.
I guess Nora Lindberg got tired of waiting for me to reply.
Coming back to myself, I realize I’ve taken the phone from the girl’s hand so I could read the piece. She’s looking at me now with a thoughtful, curious expression, her brows pinched, her lips tight.
“Is it true?” she asks me again.
“Parts of it are… true,” I say. My voice sounds like it belongs to someone else. “But I’m Camila’s maid of honor.”
“Is she leaving the company?” another girl asks from behind the first.
“Yeah,” I say. Still too disoriented to think rationally. “I need to…”
I hand the girl back her phone, then turn around, making a beeline for the edge of the store block. I take a sharp ninety-degree turn. My phone rings again: Will. I don’t answer. As much as I’d love to hear his voice, the knowledge that he read that article—written by his former lover, who unknowingly eviscerated his brand-new girlfriend—is mortifying to me.
I run to the back entrance of the store. Start knocking on the metal door. I can already feel my breath coming short. My body feels like an overripe grapefruit, the pulp inside of me withered and sour.
Camila answers. She’s dressed in Revenant clothing, her makeup perfect, her hair in big, tousled waves. The expression on her face is familiar. Down-turned mouth, jumpy eyes.
It’s the same face she made anytime she had to leave campus to take care of a crisis for one of her family members.
She grabs me by the shoulders and pulls me into the back room of the store. “You know it’s not true,” she says. “And I know it’s not true. You’re my best friend. That has never changed, and it’s not going to.” Her words are blunt but soft.
“Why would Margaret say we had a falling-out?”
“I don’t know.” She shakes her head. “I never said anything even close to what she claimed in that article.” Cami shifts, dropping her hands. “I did… I did tell her I was planning to resign this fall. I regretted it as soon as I made the decision to let her go, but, like, I’ve never been good at keeping secrets! It killed me. I had to tell someone.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I say. “I just need to make sure you aren’t… I didn’t drive you away, did I?”
“ No. ” Cami pulls me into a hug. “Listen to me, Josephine. Leaving Revenant is the most difficult decision I’ve ever had to make, and all my reasons to stay were because of how much I love you. You’re the first family member I ever got to choose. I swear to you.”
I squeeze her tight, her words skimming over me like warm sunshine. “I believe you.”
“And before you go spiraling about the whole office hating you, that’s a load of crap.”
I pull away, wincing. “Unfortunately, Cami, if someone did have a problem with me, I think you might be the last person they’d tell.”
She groans. “I want this reporter’s fucking receipts.”
“Let’s just—” I take a deep breath. “Focus on the store opening first.”
Footsteps head in our direction. We both turn to see Pam, the new director. She shoots me a look I can’t parse. “It’s 11:02, and people are bailing on the line.”
“Let them in,” I say. Music is already playing throughout the front half of the store. The refreshments and macarons we got for opening day are probably staged by now.
Pam nods, turning back around. I make to follow her, but Cami grabs my elbow. “Maybe you shouldn’t,” she says. “Be here.”
I shoot her a confused look. “Won’t it look bad if I’m not? We should be together in public right now, shouldn’t we?”
“It’s just that I know the internet,” Cami says. “Better than you do these days, and I think everyone’s going to find it performative if we act like best friends today. It might be better to just operate like we’re above it all, at least for one day. In the meantime, I can work on a statement that specifies what that article got wrong. I mean, I wasn’t even asked for a comment. ” She shakes her head. “That’s some shitty journalism.”
“The reporter reached out to me five or six times over the last few years,” I admit. “I ignored her.”
Camila frowns. “Just because you didn’t respond to a member of the press doesn’t mean you deserved this, Josie.”
It’s like she can read my mind. She knows me that well, knows I’m already internalizing my responsibility. If I had just responded to Nora Lindberg. If I hadn’t ever engaged with the Carlisle Group to begin with. If I’d worked harder. If I hadn’t been so distracted.
If I had never loved Will Grant.
“Go,” I say. “I’ll drive back to the office.”
Camila pulls me in for one more hug. “Don’t let strangers tell you who you are.” She walks back toward the storefront. “I’ll bring you a macaron.”
“Pistachio,” I specify, aiming for lighthearted.
“You got it.”
As I’m turning back for the exit, my phone lights up again.
Derrick.