5
Vivian
Office Management
Vivian shook her head and returned upstairs, trying not to feel like she’d just left the best part of her day. Courtney rushed by as Vivian exited the elevator, then pulled up and reversed course.
“Ack! You’re here. Thank God! Howard sent me to find you, and I heard Chucky Tate say you were in the parking garage flirting with some guy.” Courtney looked horrified.
“I was talking to Rowan Valkyrie about a parking issue,” said Vivian.
“Oh. How’d that go?” Courtney’s expression said that she would rather eat slugs than have that conversation.
“I... Fed him a squirrel snack out of my pocket and told him to stop being an asshole.”
Courtney let out a sharp giggle of hysterical laughter.
“No, seriously.”
“No, seriously,” said Vivian. “I think I have something wrong with me.”
“It’s probably called having a spine and no filter,” said Courtney. “Meanwhile, you’re late for the Tate meeting, and Chucky is being a douchehole.”
“Yeah, Rowan told him to get lost, and I think Chucky was pissed about it. I’ll get in there.”
“OK, but um... Maybe...” Courtney gestured to Vivian’s hair.
“Right,” said Vivian, remembering the pencil situation.
Once in the bathroom, she saw it was even worse than she’d feared.
Her charmingly messy bun had somehow transformed into something that looked like it had been styled by a tornado.
And she had talked to Rowan that way the entire time.
No wonder he’d looked at her like she was insane.
Vivian pulled out the second pencil, managed to sleek it into something less disastrous, then grabbed the Tate file off her desk and headed into Howard’s office.
“Sorry, I’m late,” she said, smiling at the group. “Mr. Valkyrie had an issue with building security.”
“Ah,” said Howard, nodding. “That makes sense. I hope you were able to resolve matters.”
“Yes, I may have to do a formal introduction between him and Barb later, but I think we’re resolved for now.”
Howard nodded again. “Good. Thank you for taking care of that. Meanwhile, Charles and I have just been discussing his will and trusts. Did you pull the paperwork?”
“I did,” said Vivian, coming forward and placing the file on his desk.
She had already told Howard about Chucky’s after-hours visit in the parking garage to finagle information out of her, but apparently, they weren’t mentioning that.
Mr. Tate Sr. had three trusts and a will.
Depending on any recent tax law developments, he liked to periodically restructure them, but any movement in his father’s accounts made Junior nervous.
“The 1997 trust could be decanted, and the will was last updated in 2013.”
“I want to update the will,” said Charles Sr., taking a piece of paper from his jacket pocket and handing it to Vivian. “And I want to restructure the trusts.”
“I don’t think we need to restructure all of them,” said Chucky, his tone colored by annoyance.
“Well, I’m getting up there,” said Charles. “And while it’s all well and good to name you as a trustee and executive while I’m fiddling around, I don’t want to die and leave matters like that.”
“What do you mean?” demanded Chucky.
“Oh, come on,” said Charles, patting his son’s shoulder. “You go through money like water. I want to ensure there’s something left in the estate for your sister and mother.”
“Stepmother and half-sister,” snapped Chucky. Charles Sr. visibly rolled his eyes.
“Anyway, I’ve put my wishes down there, and I don’t know quite how to adjust the trusts, but I thought we could at least amend the will today.”
Vivian handed the paper to Howard. Having recently reviewed Mr. Tate’s will, she could see that the changes would mean Chucky’s portion had dropped to well below half the estate.
Howard took the paper and looked over it. She and Howard had played a lot of poker over the last three years of her employment, and she recognized his game face as he read over the document.
“Not a problem,” said Howard. “We’ll draw up the paperwork and have it ready to be signed and notarized next week. And in the meantime, we’ll talk to some of the tax guys on staff about recommendations for the trusts.”
“Great,” said Charles, beaming.
“However, why don’t you do me a favor.” Howard picked up a pen and slid it and the letter across the desk. “Why don’t you just sign and date that for me so we have it on record for our files.”
“Of course,” said Mr. Tate, picking up the pen and signing with a flourish. Chucky craned his neck, reading over his father’s shoulder.
Charles signed the letter and then stood and handed it back to Howard. Behind him, Chucky turned a violent shade of furious red.
“I’ll have one of the girls call your assistant and set up an appointment for next week,” said Howard, standing to shake Mr. Tate’s hand.
“Perfect,” said Charles. “It’s so nice to be able to count on friends like you.”
The pair left the office, but Vivian heard shouting from Chucky by the time they reached the elevator.
“Should I call security?” asked Vivian, looking after them.
“No, but you should scan this letter and put the original in the vault, not the file cabinet. If Chucky isn’t back up here by tomorrow trying to get it back from us, I will eat my hat.”
“You’re not supposed to know I call him Chucky,” said Vivian.
“But it’s so very right,” he said with a grin that sent the wrinkles around his eyes into a crinkly cheerful squint. “How are things with Rowan? Did the parking thing really get smoothed over? I know Barb can be a bit of a stickler when she gets P.O.’d.”
“Oh. Hm.” Barb had never been a problem for Vivian. She wondered if other people had a different experience. “I think it did. He seemed fine when I left anyway.”
Howard scrutinized her for a moment. Awkward silences were one of his top lawyer skills. Vivian made a conscious choice to not blurt out the part about squirrel snacks or pencils in her hair.
“Great,” he said at last, smiling. “If this goes well, I’d like to channel you into more building relations duties.”
“Oh,” said Vivian. She wasn’t sure what she thought about that.
She did feel stagnated at paralegal. She didn’t have much further to advance unless she wanted to go to law school.
She kind of did, but the price tag scared her, and she wasn’t sure if she loved law or if she just didn’t like being bossed around by lawyers.
She could also stay where she was until Howard retired, but she wasn’t sure it would be fulfilling.
Who was she kidding?
It would not be. Vivian already knew that. She’d just been pretending it would be OK because she adored Howard.
“We’ll talk about it more later,” said Howard.
“It’s just that with your legal background and people skills, real estate management might be a good fit.
You’re too smart to stay a paralegal forever.
Not that I mind because you make my life easy, but still...
I’ve got to find some way to keep you from jumping ship! ”
“I’m not going to do that,” said Vivian, laughing.
“Darn tooting, you’re not,” he agreed, with a fierce expression that made Vivian laugh again.
Vivian returned to her desk, but the smile dropped off her face as she slid back into her desk.
Her inbox had magically filled itself while she was gone.
Most of it was busy work she could do with her eyes closed.
There was a fat stack of emails about the gala, and the email thread about her birthday on Saturday had resurfaced.
It seemed basic, but she had decided to make it a Triple D night—dinner, drinks, dancing.
It had been too long since she’d been out with the girls, and she wanted some actual, non-technology-assisted face time.
With a sigh, she opened the top email on the gala.
Her father’s dying request had been that she keep volunteering with the Victory Mission, the charity he’d helped found.
She didn’t mind. She believed in the mission, and as it had grown, she’d tried not to interfere with the operational stuff.
It wasn’t fair to staff to pop in and tell them, well, actually...
when they were older and had a degree in fundraising.
She just had a lifetime of reading all the research that had gone into making the organization and still got Christmas cards from most of the past board members.
But no one needed to be second-guessed, so she’d tried to keep her head on the volunteer segment.
Assisting with the annual fundraising gala had been a great place for her.
She’d pushed and shoved and used all of Howard’s connections to make the gala one of the top fundraising events in the city.
It was now big enough that they’d had to bring on event planners for the third year in a row.
That was how she’d met Ashley, who was now a firm part of her girl squad.
The gala email was someone who couldn’t remember where they’d stashed the centerpieces they’d bought on sale months earlier.
Vivian dashed off a reminder that they were in the storage unit.
The following two emails were similar in nature—asking her was easier than figuring it out for themselves.
Vivian knew she had unintentionally become their walking continuity of operations database.
Theoretically, if she were an employee, she would train others to be auxiliary databases.
But she wasn’t, so she sucked it up and she considered it part of her volunteerism.
But it also meant that the gala didn’t really need her. Howard needed her, but she spent most of her time supervising two junior paralegals and writing first drafts of his briefs. These days, every time she turned around, it felt like she’d outgrown her job.
She was supposed to have been something by now. Instead, she was a legally savvy, non-profit volunteer who knew a lot about the military without having any service experience and was good at managing people. She was a jack-of-all-trades, trained for nothing in particular.
Vivian stared angrily at her email as a wave of anger hit.
If her father had lived, she would have gone to a four-year university and found a career instead of a job.
But here she was, facing twenty-seven and not one step closer to being anything other than a glorified secretary.
She was stuck with the fact that her job was unfulfilling because she couldn’t afford the time or money it would take to discover her perfect place.
So she kept busy helping everyone else, but far too often, she felt terribly alone.
Vivian sighed and tried to let the rage go.
One of the more surprising aspects of grief was how often she got angry—something that did her no good.
She wished she had someone to talk to about it, but most of her friends wouldn’t understand, and a therapist was too expensive.
The nagging thought that a boyfriend would be nice showed up in her head like a pop-up on a website.
Of course, the pop-up was accompanied by Rowan Valkyrie’s face.
With a sigh, she hit the X to close that thought out.