Spring Break Secret by Holly Rayner
Tom
When Tom awoke the next morning to the sound of seagulls squawking on his balcony, the first thing he did, as he did every day, was roll over and check his phone.
He groaned, furrowing his brow in a deep frown as he saw that his secretary had added yet another meeting to his already incredibly packed schedule. Now, instead of having thirty precious minutes to himself to maybe go for a walk on the beach or scarf down a sandwich, he had some lunch meeting about the environmental impact report.
When he made it to the office that morning, a sleek construction of glass and metal where Palmco Development had set up temporary office space, he waved hello to the secretary before poking his head into Nick’s office.
“Hey, man, do you know anything about this issue with the environmental impact report?”
Nick looked up from his computer and shrugged. “We sent that all in months ago. County approved it and everything.”
“That’s what I thought, but apparently I have another meeting to deal with it. Today.”
“That sucks,” Nick said, looking confused. “And it doesn’t make much sense.”
Tom rolled his eyes. “At least it’s at a nice restaurant,” he said.
He made it through the morning with relative ease, answering emails and checking in with various employees who had been at the La Vega offices for a while already. His personal secretary was apologetic about the surprise extra meeting, but assured him that it was a better option than trying to go through the county yet again.
Tom arrived at the Sailfin, a relatively new high-end restaurant out near the marina, right on time. He took a seat facing the door, keeping an eye out for whatever bespectacled, underpaid and overworked county employee would be arriving soon with whatever nonsense they needed him to sort out personally.
He was not prepared for the flash of red hair, the creamy skin dotted with warm brown freckles, that walked in the door. She was holding a blue folder nearly busting with papers and spoke in hushed tones with the hostess at the front of the restaurant, who pointed her to Tom.
Mixed emotions, all of them strong and most of them confusing, surged through Tom. He was thrilled to see Louisa again, but frustrated and unclear about why they were meeting like this. Had she gotten a job with the county board of La Vega? What was she doing here?
Tom, for his part, did his best to hide all of the sudden emotions rushing around in his brain. He rose from his seat to shake her hand and give her a cool and professional greeting. She, also, betrayed a flicker of recognition in her green eyes but returned his coolness. They were both holding a lot back from one another, Tom could tell, but waited to see how this meeting would proceed under the relatively bizarre circumstances.
“Are you here about the environmental impact paperwork?” Tom asked as they took their seats. A waiter came by with ice water and menus, but Louisa didn’t even look at hers.
“In a way,” Louisa said, setting the blue folder on the table. “You and your company, Palmco Development, are behind the new shoreline development project set to begin construction by the end of the year, right?”
“Yes,” Tom said, getting nervous. “My secretary said this was a meeting about forms that the county requires to be filed?”
“Is it true that you plan to use a brand new and poorly understood chemical called Comentex as part of your building foundation process?”
“Yes,” Tom said, rubbing his eyes in exasperation and wondering whether the pomegranate salad with smoked halibut was any good. “We have acquired full licensing for industrial use of the product, and we filed plenty of orders with the local authorities.”
“Are you aware,” Louisa asked, flipping open the blue folder to reveal dense-looking research, complete with various charts and graphs, “that use of this chemical and other related compounds has been shown to leach into surrounding seawater?”
“What does this have to do with our environmental impact reports?” Tom asked, wishing the waiter would just come take their orders already. “We’ve already had it approved. This chemical is considered perfectly safe by industry leaders and won’t cause any harm to humans in the area.”
“Humans, maybe, but I’m talking about all the living beings—from algae to fish to turtles. Research has started to indicate that Comentex could have a seriously detrimental effect on the entire ecosystem.”
Tom was growing irritated, and suspicious. “Is this really about our county permits?”
“I’m just asking you to listen for a moment,” Louisa said, turning to another page in her folder, this one with photos of sick-looking turtles. Tom swallowed thickly, trying to keep his eyes from straying across the admittedly disturbing images. “I need your company to reconsider your use of this chemical, at least until we can better understand its effects and how to alleviate them.”
It was clear by now that Tom’s secretary, and now Tom himself, had been duped. Louisa was not here to help them smooth out a bureaucratic wrinkle with some misfiled paperwork. She had misled them into an unauthorized meeting to push her own activist agenda.
“I think the person who needs to reconsider their strategy here is you. Tricking me into a meeting just to try and change my mind about an aspect of my project that has already been approved is not an appropriate or respectful way to conduct business.”
Louisa narrowed her eyes. “Respectful? I think the one here who is truly acting disrespectfully is you and your company, who insist on forging ahead with a dangerous and harmful project despite the negative impact on everyone, and every creature, who lives here.”
“You don’t understand,” Tom said, exasperated. “There are more things I need to consider than your preferences about the most ‘eco-friendly’ way to do things. I have obligations to my stakeholders, my investors, my board of directors, to make a profit and spend Palmco’s money responsibly. Using this chemical is the most financially sound way to proceed.”
“Is money really the only thing that matters to you?” Louisa snapped. A few other diners in the restaurant glanced over, and Louisa leaned over the table, dropping her voice, but not the venom in it. “You would really harm the environment over one line item in your stupid budget?”
Tom sighed, trying not to roll his eyes. Everyone always assumed his job was incredibly easy, and that money and funding just materialized out of thin air for him to do whatever he liked with.
“That’s not how it works,” he tried to explain. “This chemical isn’t just one line item—it’s what makes the entire project feasible. We’ve done the research on our own and found that there’s no better option when it comes to cost or effectiveness. Besides, we’ve already committed to millions of dollars’ worth of construction work, and if we backed out now, we’d be breaking all sorts of contracts and losing tons of money.”
“Please,” Louisa begged, her eyes imploring. “I’m not saying you have to cancel the whole project. Of course it would be ideal if there were no more developments along the La Vega shore—but if you have to go forward with it, at least find some other way to manage this part of the construction without using Comentex.”
It was clear that whatever Louisa had ended up studying and doing out in California, it never included basic business practices. Tom, however, had actually studied this stuff, toiling away for years at business school, taking tough classes and forgoing parties with Kevin and Jason so he could study. He was sure he knew more about this than most other people, especially Louisa, who was continuing to betray her ignorance with these impossible requests.
“Even if I wanted to—even if this dishonest little play for my attention worked—that’s just not possible. It would tank the project, and possibly even the company.”
At that moment, as if to rescue him from the agitation of the conversation, their waiter appeared. Tom mumbled his way through the selection of some salad dish, suddenly unable to pay much attention to what he was ordering.