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We don’t actually know where our sister is. It’s a point of contention in our family.
Especially with me. I still require weekly updates from the federal correctional institute in Otisville just to make sure our father is doing exactly what he needs to be doing – nothing.
Which means when Liz skipped town, Chase and I wanted to hire a private detective. I’d had one fully vetted and ready to go when Mother and Bell teamed up to stop us. They think Liz needs time and space to come to terms with the fact that she isn’t the daughter of the man she’d always considered her father.
Personally, I would think knowing that I wasn’t blood related to the man arrested for embezzling her inheritance would be great news. Hell, even if it wasn’t my inheritance that was embezzled, I’d still welcome the news that Stanley Moore – an irresponsible, mentally abusive crook with poor business acumen – and I weren’t related.
But that’s just me.
Chase leans against the built-in bookshelves. ‘Trust me, I tried everyone else. George said he’d quit if I even asked him.’ Seeing as George, Chase’s, and now our, administrative assistant, runs the place, I can understand Chase’s reluctance to push the matter.
He glances over his shoulder at the door, as if worried George heard him talking. Sighing in relief when George’s perfectly quaffed and pomaded low-profile pompadour doesn’t pop into the open door frame, he turns back to pleading his case. ‘Bell even asked Alice, but her building doesn’t allow pets.’
My gaze jerks away from the car crash that is my brother’s pet. ‘Alice?’
‘Yeah, Alice. Your new marketing team’s visual merchandiser.’ He drops his head to one side, assessing me, an annoying smirk on his face. ‘You know, dark-haired, slim and shy?’
‘Yes, I’m aware of who Alice is, thank you.’ Though I wish I wasn’t. Much to my consternation, I am very much aware of Alice Truman.
‘You do, huh?’ The smirk grows.
‘Yes.’ I pick up my fountain pen from the desk and examine the personalized ‘Moore’s’ written across the cap. ‘She’s the one with the unfortunate haircut. Formerly of the shoe department. Great eye for displays.’
Chase’s smirk drops into an open-mouth gape. ‘Dude…’
I quirk a brow at my brother’s obvious reproach. Alice was hired out of the shoe department for her eye-catching and stellar floor displays a few months ago. She’s in her twenties and yet the severely cut bangs she’s currently trying to grow out make her look just out of high school.
Everything I said was true. And yet, it’s obvious from my brother’s reaction, that I was not supposed to say it.
My family likes to inform me that I’m rude. Though the words they use in place of rude are far more colorful.
I don’t mean to sound that way. I just… do. Why spend time trying to cultivate words and phrases that soothe people’s much too sensitive feelings when the unvarnished truth wastes less time with its lack of ambiguity. I have spent years honing my efficiency.
And if I’m honest with myself, which I try not to be when it comes to feelings, the way I am might also have to do with my upbringing.
Prior to my father’s arrest, if I had mentioned how impressed I was that a shoe salesperson made the leap into marketing on their own merits, or if I noted how rare it is that a person with such an unfortunate haircut could still strike such a favorable appearance, my father would use it against me. Even just acknowledging that I knew a female employee’s name would be cause for my father to feel the need to intervene. And as his intervening would be either to fire them or sleep with them – as if proving to me, his heir, that he still rules the manor – I began honing my poker face early on. Cutting away the superfluous.
Now fixed at forty years of age, my deadened demeanor elicits two outcomes: fear or anger. For my brother, before our reconciliation, it was the latter. While for most everyone else, especially employees, it’s the former.
Alice is the rare exception. For someone as tiny and beneath me in terms of business hierarchy, she does not ingratiate. And to anyone else she’s shy, polite and unfailingly kind. Just not me.
A fact that in itself isn’t particularly noteworthy as I tend to make most people, not just employees, uncomfortable. However, for some reason, I feel the bite of Alice’s cold shoulder and the sting of her sharp words whereas I remain impervious to others’. And even more disturbing than the fact that I note a difference, is how even after becoming aware of this sensitivity, I have yet to control it.
Which is probably why I’m unusually and annoyingly cognizant of her.
No other reason.
* * *
Alice
Thomas Moore – my boss and the most arrogant man in all of New York – is an asshole.
‘Good morning, Mr Moore.’ Chase jumps in surprise as I walk into the office. A glance at Thomas shows no reaction. ‘Mr Moore.’
Typical.
The stiff, rude and prideful Thomas couldn’t be more different than the charming, sweet-talking and socially astute Chase.
