Chapter 17 - The Cost of Keeping It
The thirty days became ninety, but only after six exhausting weeks of negotiation.
The company gave lenders revised forecasts that included painful reductions in retail spending. A prospective partner agreed to test a smaller distribution arrangement for two locations. The staff helped design production schedules that could actually be met. Not every employee liked the proposal; some voted to leave rather than accept reduced hours during the transition.
I attended every departure meeting I was invited to. I stopped saying we'd keep the family together. A workplace wasn't a family, and asking people to sacrifice for my family name had been part of the old problem.
Nathan's administrative leave became a formal departure under a negotiated agreement, subject to ongoing questions about his disclosures and conduct. His equity stake remained disputed property in our divorce. The lawsuit challenging the proxy continued, and the document-preparation company supplied records under legal process. No single dramatic hearing solved everything.
Celeste cooperated with the independent review on advice of her attorney. An outside specialist examined the archive and concluded that her creative work deserved documented attribution and a separate negotiation over compensation, though not an automatic ownership award. She accepted neither a job nor forgiveness from me. We simply stopped pretending the truth had only one injured person.
Martin sent three letters. In the first he defended himself. In the second he blamed Mother. In the third he wrote, I should have called you when you turned eighteen. I was angry, and I let that matter more than you.
I kept the third letter. I didn't answer it.
Rosa eventually found work with another retailer. She told the investigator what she'd witnessed, and the store provided preserved footage through the proper process. When she visited me one afternoon, I apologized for expecting her courage to cost nothing.
“It's never nothing,” she said. “That's why it counts.”
One evening I returned to my museum office and found a note from my supervisor. My extended leave had ended; I needed to decide whether to return full-time. I had built a life outside the atelier. I didn't want to lose it because Nathan had made the company a battlefield.
I arranged a reduced museum schedule and joined the atelier's board without taking Nathan's executive office. We hired an experienced interim manager after a real search. The employees deserved someone who knew operations better than I did.
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The next morning, the first new apprentice arrived carrying a small canvas tool bag. She asked where she should sit.
For the first time in months, I knew the answer.
