Chapter 20 #2
“The shop’s fine, you said it yourself,” Dad says, kissing Marlowe’s hand. “Alma and the girls could run it in their sleep.”
“You should, Mom,” Nicolette says. “You and Raymond need some time. I can keep an eye on things.”
I keep my eyes on Lulabelle’s coloring page, where she’s moved on to a maze.
“It’s a delicate time,” Marlowe says. Does she want Dad to press her, or does she want him being more impressed?
“The truck was a significant investment at Georgie’s request. It’s done well in spite of everything, but we’ve had to hire another worker because she couldn’t run it on her own.
And she still doesn’t have her inventory down, considering how many runs she has to make back to Mullet Ridge for supplies. It requires constant oversight.”
Every new word is like a hand cracking across my face.
I send her the numbers every day! I know the truck’s doing well! And what started as breaks for me to see Logan have become the very real supply runs that allow me to work such long hours at two different locations.
Yet somehow, I’m still a disappointment to her. An inconvenience.
She wanted a husband and instead she got stuck with me.
And that husband of hers is hanging on every word, never once defending me.
It doesn’t occur to him that of course a single person can’t run an entire coffee truck moving such a high volume of product every day by herself without ever taking a break.
He doesn’t tell her that the truck doing well isn’t in spite of me but because of me.
Angry tears prick the back of my eyes, but I will not let them fall.
And when I see my dad get that dreamy look on his face, my disgust is so overpowering the tears vanish completely.
“The truck,” he says.
He had this look when he invested in a time-share that he and my mom never got to use but he and Marlowe do occasionally. He had it when he poured every penny he had into that restaurant in Columbia.
I’m going to be sick.
“You know what we should do,” he says, leaning toward Marlowe, “is scale it. One truck is a hobby. What about a fleet? We could start small, maybe five or six trucks, and hit every factory lot and farmers market in three counties. Then grow from there. That’s a real money—”
“No,” I interrupt. It comes out fast enough that Lulabelle looks up from her coloring, and everyone at the table turns on me.
“You don’t want that,” I say, and I get how strange and urgent I must sound for such an innocuous conversation, but it’s not innocuous.
It’s insidious. “It’s a bad idea. I know it sounds simple, but it’s not.
You need someone running every truck who you’d trust with cash and a four-thirty alarm, and you need those same people to be able to handle high volumes fast and read a customer well enough to know when an order is going to be the wrong fit, whether the customer knows it or not.
And then you have to understand the customers, create connections with the owner or management, make sure they’re willing to accommodate you, even promote you—”
“Someone thinks pretty highly of herself,” Marlowe says.
The table goes quiet for half a second.
“I’m joking,” she laughs, smiling at my dad and the table generally.
“Of course you’re protective of what we’ve done with the truck.
But we found Olivia easily enough, and we could find more like her.
It’s not as though baristas who can drive a truck are irreplaceable.
And you can leave the networking to me.”
Just like that, I’ve been put down and put away.
“Well,” Dad says, not defending me, not backing her. To her, that means we’re at a stalemate, but it’s in a game I’m not even playing. “It’s something to think about.”
“It is,” Marlowe says. “We can talk about it next week in Columbia …?”
Dad grins. “Perfect. I have an idea for new specialty syrups.”
And now they’re both dreaming, which I’ve never seen before.
Marlowe’s nodding along, agreeing that yes, a fleet, properly managed, properly overseen could work.
She’s building herself a permanent seat at the table of Raymond’s next big idea, making herself indispensable to a dream they’re stealing from me!
A dream that doesn’t get to belong to either of them.
But she’s part of it now without my say.
The worst part is that if she can be the one who manages it, who oversees it, who knows where every dollar goes, it will absolutely work.
And to Marlowe, that means they’ll work.
I understand her reasoning completely.
“Mommy,” Lulabelle is saying to Nicolette. “Can you help me with the word search?”
Nicolette pats her hand. “Ask Auntie Georgie to help you, sweetie. We’re talking business.”
I’m frozen.
Frozen, but I don’t feel numb. On the contrary, I feel the pain of every word.
This is worse than that time in third grade when my dad took me ice skating and forgot to bring me a sweatshirt or gloves, so I shivered for an hour, clutching the edge as my dad skated laps around me, grinning each time he passed.
He didn’t see how often I fell on my butt or hips or elbows or how my bruises deepened with every fall.
My phone buzzes on the chair under my thigh, and I wish I could answer it. I’m almost positive it’s from Logan, and I could really use him right now.
And yet, I can’t. I can’t rely on him to save me from this life. I can’t rely on him or Alma or Olivia.
All I have is me.
And somehow I have to make sure that my father never gets anywhere near the coffee truck that has my mother’s legacy on it.
He destroyed one thing she built.
He cannot touch another.