Four
Two days after the Badgerton event, which had not been a celebration although it had been unbearably full of life, Valerie stood in the Ad Astra office listening to the silence.
There were no phone calls. No texts or emails.
Not even a siren passed by in the distance as the entire world cringed away from her in secondhand embarrassment.
She sipped from a cold cup of mint tea and poked at the cracker package on the desk, the only things she could handle after that germ had wrung her out like a soggy old rag.
Her sore abs felt like she’d done a thousand sit-ups.
Evidence of Ad Astra’s imminent demise lay strewn around the office like the remnants of a drug raid.
To the left were twelve of Malcolm’s forty-three treasured walking sticks, since Alexis had neglected to pick up the rest after the event.
Valerie herself had been no help, as she’d used her last ounce of energy to fall in a cab and get home.
Stale bread and tote bags littered the floor.
The portrait of Malcolm glowered from the corner, upside down and draped haphazardly in bubble wrap.
Overlooking this wreckage was the quarterly calendar on the wall in front of her desk.
Two days ago, it had been marked with a respectable number of dates circled in red, listing the last names of the departed—Roberts, Medenev, Yang.
Plucking a Sharpie from the drawer, Valerie shuffled over to scratch a heavy line back and forth through her last remaining booking, which had been canceled that morning.
Valerie leaned her forehead against the wall.
She couldn’t blame her clients for getting cold feet, thanks to a spectacularly unflattering and unfortunately accurate “Toronto Patrician Funeral Fail” video posted by a guest and picked up by a popular city blog.
The Badgertons’ wealth and status had made the story worthy of not only the local but national news and, as a bonus, select morning talk shows.
Some might kill for that kind of publicity, but not Valerie, not now, and absolutely not like that.
Pressing her head harder into the wall until tears came to her eyes, Valerie stared at the blurry line of dust that had collected on the top of the baseboard.
It was amazing how things could collapse in a second.
Not good amazing, like watching a caterpillar metamorphose into a butterfly.
Bad amazing. Horrible amazing, if there was such a thing. Horr-azing.
She peeled her face from the wall and rubbed at the tender spot on her forehead.
She couldn’t even wallow properly because she had a final obligation to take care of: Roger Badgerton wanted to speak to her in person about his father’s memorial.
Evidently it wasn’t enough for him to outline what had gone wrong via email.
Roger wanted to look into her eyes to tell her she’d blown it.
Valerie regretted not planning something fun after as a pick-me-up, like a Pap smear or root canal.
At least he’d booked the meeting early, which meant she could get it over with and continue with her plans for the rest of the day.
First, she’d torture her already weak stomach by getting blackout drunk as a poor but forgivable coping mechanism.
Then, she’d deal with the hangover. Hopefully, this would only take two or three repeats before she could shift gears from self-sabotage to action mode.
Her phone beeped and she checked it listlessly, knowing the odds were against it being good news. She was right. It was Alexis. What a mess lol! Have you recovered yet?
Had Valerie recovered? She’d spent half the morning lying on the floor, staring at the shadows from the clouds crossing the window. Roger Badgerton is coming by today, she replied.
You should tell him people get sick and there’s nothing you can do about it. That’s what I would say.
Good point.
I know!
Also, I’m so sorry about this but I think you might have to look for another job, wrote Valerie.
Normally, telling someone bad news of this caliber would require at least forty-eight hours of mental pep talks, if she managed it at all, but the silver lining of this travesty was that Valerie was too battered to care. I lost a lot of clients.
Blair said to expect this after it went viral, wrote Alexis. I was going to take August off anyway. Did you see the edit with that Don’t Fear the Reaper song?
No.
I’ll send you the link. We can make Friday my last day.
Valerie was thinking more like today, but the relief of breaking the news and not having Alexis argue made up for the extra days of pay.
That was at least one task complete, meaning she could give more attention to worrying about her future.
Her current tentative plan was to lie low for a few months, then get cosmetic surgery and a dye job before relaunching something that was unequivocally not Ad Astra.
She could run a children’s party company under a new name—say, Mary Kingston—and change her voice to prevent the Badgertons from tracking her down.
“All right,” she said in a fake British accent. “I’m Mary, wot wot. Cheers.”
That was terrible. She tried to channel her inner Eliza Doolittle. “’Allo, guv. Fancy a root?” That wasn’t right at all. How about French? She could be Marie Roiville and do wine tastings. “Ah, bonjour, mes amies. La Chardonnay est enchantee.” Nope.
A text came through from Alexis and she deleted it. She didn’t need to see more social media commentary on her failure.
She was so intent on perfecting her Spanish accent as Maria Reicuidad, potential purveyor of fine jamón, that she jumped when a voice came from outside the office door.
Roger Badgerton was here, and worse, it sounded like he’d brought someone.
Please let it not be the lawyer Penny Badgerton-Willis had threatened on the multiple voicemails she’d left.
“Then, when I honest to God thought it couldn’t get any worse, Dad’s portrait fell face-first into the roses.
” It was clear from Roger’s tone that he’d been on a roll going through all the mishaps he was planning to relive shortly with Valerie.
“Right in the middle of Georgia Patton’s speech too.
She’s eighty. I thought she was going to have a heart attack at the podium when that goofball tarot-reading son of hers started yelling about messages from the beyond. ”
So that’s what had happened. Valerie had been curious about the crash in a grimly morbid way, but not enough to ask Alexis.
Whoever was with him said something too low for Valerie to hear, but Roger’s reply was emphatic. “I don’t care. I’m going to say it to her face in ten seconds. It’s a good thing Dad’s dead because the mortification would have killed him. He’s probably turning in his coffin.”
“He was cremated.”
“Then he’s swirling in his urn.”
As the door swung open, Valerie clamped her arms to her sides to stop the sweat trickling down to soak her bra band.
Roger Badgerton stood on the threshold, the sun from the windows emphasizing the creases from his deep frown.
He was known for casual work outfits that made him stand out among the suited pigeon-gray flocks of Toronto CEOs, and today he wore yellow leather sneakers with well-cut dark jeans.
His brown hair was white at the sides and his cloudy blue eyes matched the shirt with a graphic logo of a squirrel under his rumpled olive linen blazer.
Valerie took this in with the heightened attention of a prey animal assessing a threat.
She forced herself to breathe, since passing out in front of Roger, or Nico, who appeared behind him, would hardly position her as an experienced professional who could handle difficult conversations.
She looked at Nico again. While she was grateful Roger didn’t bring a lawyer—or maybe Nico was, wouldn’t that be a treat—she wasn’t thrilled about having a witness to her shame. Let alone one she found attractive.
Valerie didn’t wait for the two men to sit down. “Mr. Badgerton, I apologize for what happened at your father’s celebration of life. I’ll naturally refund your payment.”
She stopped, expecting some yelling, or at least a louder reiteration of what she’d heard outside the door.
Roger did nothing but stare at her. Was he okay?
If he had a stroke out of fury after seeing her, that was it.
She was done. She would call an ambulance, then escape and start a new life as Maliya Wang.
Uncertain, she glanced at Nico, hoping to get a read of the situation from his gorgeous face, but his obvious concern didn’t alleviate any of her worries.
“Roger?” Nico asked.
That jolted Roger out of whatever room he’d visited in his mind palace, and almost as quickly, Valerie wished he’d return for a long-term stay, complete with pool view.
Roger, like Nico, was a tall man, and her cramped office was overflowing with a lot of feelings, none of them good.
She took a step back, uncomfortable with the way the two loomed over her.
At least Roger didn’t move forward to invade her space. “Ms. Peng, I wanted to see you in person so I could make you better understand the damage you’ve done to my father’s memory.”
Ruth had told Valerie that when—not if—she screwed up, her job was to be quiet and listen. It was codified as number three in the series of rules Ruth had instituted for her company.
“The client isn’t looking for your excuses or intentions,” Ruth had warned after a bride harangued her for fifteen minutes for not preventing the matron of honor from getting pregnant.
“They want you to feel bad because they want someone to care as much as they do. Never forget your job is one-quarter planner, one-quarter wrangler, and one hundred percent therapist. Don’t come at me about the math. Truth is more accurate than numbers.”
Valerie nodded to show Roger she was listening and kept her mouth shut. It didn’t matter that she didn’t mean to get sick. The result was what counted and her result had been unacceptable.
“I’d made it clear that my father was both conscious and careful of his standing in the community.
His reputation mattered deeply to him.” Roger pointed at the stack of Bread Company history booklets piled against the wall.
“You turned his memorial into a shambolic farce and my father into a joke. We looked disrespectful and careless not only to his friends, but to the entire country. It’s trending in Australia, for God’s sake. ”
“And New Zealand,” added Nico.
“That’s just great, Nico, thank you.” Roger sat down without being asked, while Nico remained standing.
Valerie was too ashamed to maintain eye contact. “I’m sorry.”
“I trusted you to take this seriously. ‘Sorry’ doesn’t change the fact that you ruined our final farewell to our father. More than that, you tainted the memory of it forever.”
She sank into the chair opposite him. That Roger sounded more matter-of-fact than angry made it worse to hear. She thought she had done her best but maybe she could have thought harder about what else could have gone wrong. “I understand.”
“Good.” There was another excruciating silence as Valerie waited for the next round of completely deserved commentary on how badly she’d bungled a once-in-a-lifetime experience for the Badgertons.
Yet all Roger did was stare at her in the oddest way.
She gave her chin a self-conscious swipe, wondering if she’d smeared her lipstick before recalling she hadn’t put any on.
“Please extend my apologies to Ms. Badgerton-Willis,” Valerie finally offered. “She’s called several times.” She left out the legal threats.
Roger rolled his eyes. Was he amused? Impossible, but it seemed as if he’d traveled from the straight road of anger to the thorny winding path of disappointment and had veered off to another emotion she couldn’t identify. “I bet. How old are you?”
“Almost thirty.” She answered automatically before realizing this was a strange question. No doubt he was going to tell her she was too young to run a business. She’d had to deal with men like that when looking for a bank loan to cover her start-up costs.
“What’s your mother’s name?” He looked intent.
“What?” She glanced at Nico, who had become her barometer for this conversation, to see if this was normal for Roger. His expression was the neutral mask of the perfect assistant, so she was on her own. “Why?”
Roger waved his hand impatiently. “Let’s say curiosity.”
Curiosity didn’t give him a right to pry into her private life, but after her mess-up she felt as if she owed him.
She doubted he knew her mother, a school vice principal in Mississauga.
Badgertons didn’t go to public school. They went to places that had highly waxed natural hardwood floors instead of peeling vinyl, and included the word Academy in the name. Or Hall. “Anna Peng.”
He seemed to deflate slightly, as if he’d been hoping for a different answer. “Your father?”
“Scott Innis.” The second she answered, she had a sick feeling of what was coming.
“Then you’re mixed. Part Chinese?”
If history was any indication, at this point when she said yes, Roger would tell her that he knew it and could always tell, and about how he’d been to (insert any Asian country here) and found: (a) the people friendly; (b) the food incredible; or (c) the women beautiful. And so friendly.
She felt zero need to allow the conversation to move on to any of those points.
“Okay. Thank you, Mr. Badgerton. I’m not in the strongest position here, given what happened with your father’s memorial, but I want to make it clear I owe you a heartfelt apology and a refund.
You’ve had the first. The second will be done by noon tomorrow. ”
Roger looked startled, but Nico leaned down to whisper in his ear.
She rose, then walked to the door and yanked it open.
It felt good to take control of something, although her teeth clenched from the confrontation.
At least Roger didn’t get defensive or argue, but simply stood, joints cracking, and left.
Nico followed, holding her gaze in a way she found disconcerting.
She couldn’t read anything from his expression, and although it might be unfair, he’d been made slightly less attractive by his proximity to Roger.
He and his formerly pretty eyes could follow his overstepping boss out of her life.
She shut the door, then leaned against it to catch her breath. That was done, at least.
She sank until she hit the carpeted floor, then reached up to twist the lock. The last thing she needed was a concussion if they barged in to ask more and possibly ruder questions. Rolling over to lie in the fetal position, she sighed. She was done. Goodbye, au revoir, and adios, Ad Astra.
Hello, bonjour, and hola, bankruptcy.