Spring Break Secret by Holly Rayner
Louisa
Louisa slept poorly that night, not sure what to do with the sudden shock of discovering the identity of the man she had been unable to find for the past ten years.
If she was honest, however, she hadn’t been looking that hard. After she and her college roommate had determined that he was impossible to get a hold of, Louisa had committed herself to becoming a single mom, and she and Rei had become an inseparable duo.
Ellen helped out, and so did her parents, but the mother and daughter had a special bond that no one else could touch. Although Louisa remembered Tom and their spring break fling very fondly, she never really resented his absence from her and Rei’s lives. Being a single mom was hard sometimes, but she had her family and her La Vega community, and she and Rei were used to it by now.
In fact, it was the only dynamic they had ever known.
If Louisa told Tom that he was a father, all these years later, she didn’t know how he would react. He had clearly taken the path in life that his parents intended for him, becoming a successful CEO, and he might not be interested in fatherhood after all this time. Then again, he might want to connect with Rei right away. Louisa wasn’t sure which possibility worried her more.
Still, she couldn’t deny that she had to tell him. It was the right thing to do. Now that she knew who Rei’s father was, he deserved a chance to be part of her life. And Louisa’s, if that’s what he wanted.
At the same time, she had sought him out for a different reason. As the CEO of Palmco, Tom was perhaps the only person left who could stop this new development, or at the very least, prevent the company from using the dangerous new chemical that Louisa knew would irreparably damage the local ecosystem.
After dropping Rei off at the Eco Scouts, Louisa parked and went around the back of the building, letting herself in with her key and going straight to the records office. She could hear Ellen’s voice from the lobby, explaining to the kids that they would be spending the day pulling invasive grasses on the sand dunes, and handing out thick work gloves to each child.
Louisa smiled to herself, knowing that Rei had insisted on getting her very own pair of work gloves for the summer. They were her favorite color—bright purple—and fit her perfectly. She brought them with her every day to the Eco Scouts, even though they didn’t often do things that required gloves. Still, the first time Rei got to use them on a trash cleanup day, she came home beaming with pride, telling Louisa and her grandparents how awesome it was to be the only kid at Eco Scouts with her very own gloves.
The voices faded away as Ellen led the kids out to the van she used for the Eco Scouts program, and Louisa focused again on her task digging through Ellen’s messy but well-organized file folders. She knew that the Palmco Corporation would have had to file paperwork with their environmental impact report, and Ellen would have kept a copy from the public records.
“Aha!” Louisa yanked the sheet from its spot, thrilled to discover that, yes, it contained a phone number for their front office.
Louisa knew she couldn’t just call up and ask for Tom—what would she even say to the secretary? That she needed to speak with the CEO about his long-lost love child, and also to try and convince him to make a very expensive change to his current development plans?
Of course that would never work. She needed to come up with a different plan. After thinking for a few moments, wondering what Ellen would do, Louisa looked back down at the paperwork in her hands, and an idea came to her.
Louisa pulled her phone from her pocket and dialed the number. A perky secretary answered, asking how she could direct Louisa’s call.
“Hi, yes, I’m calling from the La Vega county development office. It seems there’s been an issue with your paperwork.”
“What issue, ma’am?”
“Well, it seems that when Palmco filed their environmental impact survey reports, there was, uh, an issue.”
“What kind of issue?”
Louisa squinted down at the papers in her hand. “It seems like something in box twenty-eight wasn’t properly filled out—the soil samples and the lab report. We’re missing some key information.”
“Well, I’m sure we can get that over to you soon and this can all be resolved. Is there an email or fax number you’d prefer me to send it to?”
“No, actually,” Louisa said, trying to sound confident and breezy rather than like she was scrambling to come up with something. “It’s after the deadline, so we can’t refile anything. This sort of amendment would need to be made in person.”
“This is very frustrating,” the secretary said. “We already filed the environmental impact report weeks ago, and we don’t have time to be scheduling new meetings with the county representatives.”
That would be her way in—Louisa knew that scheduling meetings with the county was incredibly difficult. It could take weeks to even pin down a date, and the county reps were notorious for canceling at the last minute, refusing to reply to emails, and otherwise making life difficult. Louisa knew the secretary would likely be willing to do just about anything to avoid the mess that was attempting to communicate with La Vega’s county board.
“How about this,” Louisa asked, putting on her sweetest voice. “It’s just a little issue, and I can probably get it cleared up for you without needing to schedule with the county. If you can just set up a quick lunch with your CEO and me, I can get his signature and we can resolve all of this real easy.”
The secretary sounded aghast. “The CEO?”
“Yes.” Louisa sighed, putting on an exasperated tone. “I know it’s super annoying, but when it comes to adjusting this paperwork after the deadline, we can only speak with the CEO. Or, I could see about the county schedule, let me just pull up our calendar system right quick—”
“No, no,” the secretary said, “no need to meet with the county people. I’ll get you and Mr. Palmer in for a thirty-minute lunch tomorrow. Give me your email address and I’ll send over the information.”
Bingo. Louisa permitted herself a silent fist pump at having successfully navigated her way into a meeting with Tom.
Soon, her phone pinged with an email from the Palmco secretary, letting her know that Tom would be meeting her at a swanky new restaurant off the pier the next day at exactly noon. Louisa tucked the environmental impact reports back into Ellen’s well-organized file cabinet, then headed to her office to prepare for the meeting.