Bad Influencer by Kenzie Reed
Chapter Four
Elliott
Apparently, I don’t have much of a sixth sense for disaster. On the morning of Thursday, May 20, I fail to wake up with any particular sense of foreboding. I don’t even sense trouble when I first walk into the living room. Everything looks relatively normal—for the Bradford family, anyway.
Our living room is furnished with a mish-mash of furniture made by my mother’s artist friends, which means nothing matches, and we’ve got a set of chairs shaped like sharks and a sofa that looks like felt-covered boulders. My mother is writhing on the living room carpet, assuming positions that no man should be forced to see his mother in. Blue-haired, tattoo-splattered, off-in-her-own-universe Wisteria, our permanent houseguest has finally found her “thing”, being a yoga teacher, and now my mother’s caught the bug. My leotard-clad mother has her ankles behind her ears.
And I should probably be in therapy.
My father is showing an orchid to Edith Oswald, our petite, silver-haired executive secretary. The orchid blossoms are all splayed pink lips with ruby red centers. And as I walk by him, he’s telling her the botanical name, which sounds very much like a female body part. It’s probably one of his Franken-orchids, as I like to call them. He’s obsessed with orchid hybridization.
He lights up when he sees me, and shoves it in my direction. “My very own creation!” he says proudly. Most orchids look vaguely obscene to me, but this one looks like it just came from getting a Brazilian wax.
I should definitely be in therapy.
I screw my face up into something approximating a smile. “Very nice, Dad. You feeling okay?”
“Never better. Everyone should get a quadruple bypass!” A grin splits his face, and his blue eyes twinkle. “It’s like a new lease on life.”
Of course it is. It means he got to retire early and do what he’s always wanted—grow and show prize-winning orchids. Oh, he was very good at being CEO—he’s naturally charming and outgoing and photogenic. He’s a big, handsome guy with a thick shock of silver hair, and he radiates joie de vivre. He hated the business side of it, though, and for as long as I can remember, he was miserable going to work every day.
My late grandfather never really appreciated the importance of people skills. He thought my father just coasted through life. I didn’t appreciate what my father did either, until I was thrust into my father’s position and had to… well, people all day long. So much peopling goes with this job. So, so very much.
“Well, good luck with that thing. And maybe put some underwear on it.” I wave at the pink obscenity he’s cradling in his arms.
“Ha, love it!” My father looks over at my mother, who’s just shifted position. “Looking good, dear!” he calls out to her. She does look great; she’s slender as a reed, with the dewy skin of a woman twenty years her junior and fascinating stripes of silver-gray in her thick brown hair.
“Feeling good, sweetie!” she sings out.
“Yes, you are.” He winks at me. “I need to send Wisteria a thank you gift. The yoga’s done wonders for our—”
Nooo!I know where he’s going with this, and I will do literally anything to stop him from finishing that sentence. “Hey, don’t you have some orchids to water?” I interrupt him hastily. “Also, should you even be… I mean, with the surgery and all…” I really don’t want to ask, but I also don’t want him to keel over while right in the middle of…
“Oh, the doctor gave me the all clear ages ago!”
“And how!” my mother calls out to me. “You should try yoga, dear!” she adds, looking at me from between her ankles. “In case you ever start dating again!”
I quickly look away.
“All right, everybody, got to run,” my dad says. “Those orchids aren’t going to propagate themselves. If you need me, I’ll be in the greenhouse, not answering my calls.” And he cheerfully potters off towards the glass double doors that lead to our back yard.
I watch him go, then return my attention to Edith. “Dear God,” I say. “That flower. Is it just me?”
“It is not just you.” She shakes her head. “That plant should come with an ‘NC 17’ rating. But on the bright side, it makes him happy.”
“And how weird is that?” I snort. I put my arm around her narrow shoulders. “It’s a terrible burden, being the only normal ones in the family.”
She smiles. “It is indeed, but we bear it nobly and hold our heads high.”
Edith isn’t actually related to me, but she’s worked for our family business since she was fourteen, so she’s like an honorary grandma. Not only that, her family has worked for us since my great-great-grandfather opened the first park, back in the 1890s. The Oswald Family is pretty much royalty among our park employees. Dozens of them work for us. Edith is in her sixties, but also ageless, and she’s the glue that holds our family business together. She worked for my grandfather, and then my father when he was CEO, and I was blessed to inherit her after he had his bypass surgery.
I drop my arm and step back. “What are you doing here, by the way? Not that I’m not delighted to see you.” Normally she’s at work every day at 8 a.m. sharp. She lives down the street from us and comes by our house sometimes to help my mother organize her schedule of gallery shows, but that’s only on weekends. You’d think she’d have enough of us during the week, but mothering the Bradfords seems to be woven into her DNA.
It’s a good thing, too. Without her, my mother would probably be lost somewhere in Siberia trying to ask directions from shepherds and wondering why her cell phone had no signal, and my dad would wander into a garden center and never re-emerge. They’d find his shriveled husk lying in the orchid section, with a smile on its face.
“Oh, I thought I’d stop by and make sure your mother’s travel plans were all squared away.” My mother has a gallery exhibit in Paris this week, which means she won’t be at our new park until opening day. “Also, I’ve got some paperwork for you to sign.” She holds out a stack of papers.
“You’re the best, Edith! And by the way, good morning, dear!” my mother calls out to me. “You haven’t said hello yet!”
“I’m not answering until you get up off the floor and start acting your age!” I make a big show of turning my back on her, but I can’t help but chuckle. Operation “Make Mom Grow Up” is a spectacular fail, but she enjoys life immensely, so there’s that.
“Then we’re doomed to a lifetime of silence!” she says cheerfully.
I glance at Edith. “You and me,” I grumble. “Alone against the lunatics.”
“Holding back the tide of crazy. Barely.” Edith slaps a stack of paperwork onto the coffee table. “Here, let’s get these signed.”
“And what exactly am I signing?”
“Oh, this and that. I figured since I was coming over, you could just get these contracts signed and have that much less to worry about before you prep for the park opening.”
This week, we’re doing our soft opening for our newest park in Colorado. We’ve invited friends, relatives, employees from our other parks and their families, and a hundred contest winners from around the country so we can do our final run-through. We’ll continue testing out rides and open up our shops and restaurants. On Friday, May 28, as spring blesses us with warmer weather and summer vacations begin, we’ll open.
I’ve been putting in sixteen-hour days, determined to show our shareholders and our board of directors that I’m up to the task of being CEO. My mother actually thinks I should take today off to rest up before the next week and a half. She’s adorable. I’ll sleep when I’m dead.
Not more than eight hours a night, though.
I lean over to look at the paperwork and take the pen she’s holding out. She’s still got the paperwork in her hand, holding it by the top. Almost like she doesn’t want me to flip through the pages. Odd.
“So what, exactly, am I signing?”
“Like I said, some contracts.” She avoids my gaze as she says it. Interesting. She has a tell when something’s wrong; her smile tightens and the lines between her penciled-on brows deepen.
Normally, I trust Edith so implicitly that I’d sign whatever she handed me without reading it, but she’s acting very suspicious right now.
“I’ll just look through these.” I pull them from her hand, and she frowns and sits down in a chair opposite me.
The first contract’s fine. It’s just an approval for a new order for novelty soft drink cups for our Seattle park. There’s no reason for her to have brought it to our house this morning. It could have waited. Our new CFO could have signed it, for that matter.
I sign it, and read and sign a couple more, all routine stuff that I could easily have signed at the office, and then I get to the last one.
As I read it, I can feel my blood pressure rising. No wonder she tried to sneak it by me.
This is a contract saying that I approve the hiring of Jillian Fletcher for a short-term contract with the goal of boosting our social media engagement. Jillian Fletcher. The girl who does strange things to my powers of concentration. The girl who always looks at me as if I not only knew about but also personally tortured every beagle at the Green Hills facility. The fun, frivolous face of animal rights and party nights.
I look up at Edith and glare. “Really, Edith? I thought we were friends.”
“Trevor suggested it,” Edith said. “Actually, he mentioned several days ago that he was going to approach her to see if she was interested.”
“Was that shortly after he had his frontal lobe surgically removed?” I grumble.
I mean, I love the guy like a brother. He’s five years younger than me, and basically, he is my brother. Like Wisteria, he was a teenage stray that my mother brought home, and we grew up together. He also lives in our neighborhood, and I think it’s because he wants to be close in case of emergency. He’s so loyal to the Bradfords that he’d take a bullet for any of us. But what the hell was he thinking with this?
“I actually thought it was a great idea. Otherwise I wouldn’t have brought you the contract.”
This doesn’t make any sense. “Since when does Trevor get involved in publicity?”
She looks me right in the eye, pinning me with her steel-gray gaze. “Since the investors are giving serious thought to selling to Park City Properties, because they don’t think you have what it takes to be the public face of our company.” I flinch. “That’s not what I think,” she adds kindly. “But it doesn’t matter what I think. I’m not the one with the majority shares in Bradford Family Resorts.”
I suck in a frustrated breath. Edith does have a habit of saying it like it is. It hurts, but it’s necessary. And I hate that we’re beholden to people outside of our company, but I have to work with what we’ve got. The economic downturn of 2008 nearly sank us, and we had to take on investors. We’re still a few years away from being able to buy them out. Until we do, they’re on the board and they hold a significant portion of the votes.
“Mother would never agree to this,” I say desperately.
“Mother has already agreed to this!” my mother sings out. I glance her way, and wish I hadn’t. Damn it, I am not having a conversation with my mother’s leotard-clad butt.
It shouldn’t surprise me that my kind-hearted mother thinks it’s a great idea to hire this beautiful, unpredictable wild child and entrust her with our company’s public image. Right when Park City Properties is trying to snatch our company and family legacy from under us. Sure. What could possibly go wrong?
The familiar irritation that I feel when I think of Park City bubbles up inside me. As if it’s not bad enough that they’re trying to steal our business right out from under us, my ex-fiancée Lauren, who used to work in our marketing department, now works for them.
“Just a minute.” I get up and walk to my home office, where I grab a shredder and bring it back to the living room. I plug it into a wall outlet and feed the contract into it. The shredder makes a satisfying whirring noise as it chews up the worst idea in the history of ideas.
“Sorry, Edith. Not going to happen.”
She doesn’t look as upset as I thought she would. That’s good news. Usually when Edith gets an idea in her head, she’s like a terrier with a bone. A tiny, adorable terrier that will cut you if you try to take that bone-idea away.
Her briefcase is resting on a driftwood coffee table that was designed by one of my mother’s artist friends. The chairs grouped around the table are shaped like mushrooms, because that makes sense—in someone’s mind, anyway. She reaches into the briefcase, pulls out another contract, and dangles it in front of me. “Want to shred this one too?”
I grab it and start to move it towards the shredder. She’s still smiling. “You’ve got another one, don’t you?” I say accusingly.
“I also have access to your mother’s printer. I can sit here and do this all day.” Her eyes twinkle with triumph. “But then you’d be late for work.”
I hate being late. She knows how much I hate being late.
“You’re pure evil,” I grumble.
“I know, I can barely live with myself.” She smiles blithely. “Go ahead and sign. You know I’m going to win this one, and it’ll save us both a lot of time.”
“It’s a terrible idea.”
“If you don’t like any of her suggestions, you can say no. At least give it a try.” She puts her small, wrinkled hand on my arm. “Do you not trust my judgement?”
“Up until this moment, I’d have said that your judgement was impeccable.”
“We’re fighting for the future of the company here.” Her smile fades and her expression turns serious.
She’s right.
Yes, if we sold the company, the family would walk away with a hefty profit. However, we’d be signing a deal with the devil. Park City is notorious for being a terrible employer. The first thing they do when they buy a new company is fire everybody and force them to re-apply for their jobs as contract workers, at much lower rates of pay and with lousy benefits. For our entire 125-year history, our company has prided itself on taking care of its own. And Park City will not be buying our company—not on my watch.
“I hope you’re right,” I say, and I sign the contract with a scowl.
Then I stalk over to my mother and Wisteria. Wisteria is folded up into a pretzel shape, and my mother has gotten up and is now sitting on the sofa, drinking tea and looking at her day planner. It’s purple with flower decals.
“You know we have an actual exercise room,” I remind Wisteria, who is twenty-nine years old and has lived with us since she was sixteen. Wisteria was homeless and secretly living at our Washington park when she was busted by security; Mother invited her to move in with us. My mother has an enormous heart, and a head that’s planted firmly in the clouds.
“The energy in here is better.”
“Weirdo.” I deliberately step over Wisteria instead of walking around her.
“No, I’m just creatively dissonant with the cosmic vibrations of the universe.”
I have no idea how to even respond to Wisteria at times. So I don’t. I avert my attention to the Judas in the room and point at her day planner. “Did you put ‘ruin my son’s life’ somewhere in there?” I grumble.
“Penciled you in for eleven.” Her eyes gleam with mischief. “Oh wait, I’m getting my roots touched up then. I’ll have to reschedule.”
Edith walks over to her and reaches down to high-five my mother. Done in by the Senior Squad.