I wanted to play dumb, like I didn’t know what the wordpublicmeant, but I didn’t have it in me to chirp back some silly response. Charlie had dreamed of taking our privately owned family diaper empire public for years.
Yeah, I saiddiaper empire. That wasn’t easy to live down when I was young. When you go to a school full of rich kids, the fact that you are rich matters less thanhowyou are rich. The diaper jokes practically told themselves.
It took me a moment to process what he’d said, but when I did, I tried my best to match his no-nonsense energy and said, “I don’t recall the board voting on this yet.”
“They haven’t, but they will. Besides, a board member who is up for termination is not allowed to vote.”
“If you don’t need my vote, then why are you even calling me?”
“Uh, well, I need you to step down from the board.”
That got me to sit up on the edge of my bed, and already I could feel my chest tightening. It was that same feeling I had when I was so angry I could cry. Another reason I hated conflict. I cried. And when I cried, no one took me seriously.
I’d stepped as far back from Bundles of Joy as I possibly could. Mom and Dad had left the company to us to run together, though I was sure they’d intended for that to happen much later in our lives. When they died, Charlie was nineteen and the board was impressed with how seriously he took his role. They loosened his leash little by little until he was running the place by twenty-one. When I turned eighteen, I was given a seat on the board. My dad’s grand plan was that I would shadow Charlie through college and then step up to run it alongside him.
But I didn’t want that, and if I was being honest, neither did Charlie—and God, just the idea of that responsibility, of the potential for catastrophe... of letting my parents down, even though that was impossible, because they were dead.
So obviously, since I’d been given my seat, I’d been the quietest member on the board, only weaponizing my vote against my brother in the most dire of times. But sometimes I wished...
Actually, I didn’t know what I wished. It was impossible to untangle the company from Charlie, and both things from the memory of my parents. From the memory of how much they had loved their silly diaper dream.
“You want me to step down from the one company duty I actually have?” I asked.
“We can’t go public with you on the board, Sunny. Part-time porn star doesn’t really suit the Bundles of Joy brand.”
“It’s a diaper company,” I said. “The brand is pooping your pants.”
“It’s not a good look,” he said flatly. “The underwriter says it’ll pull down the cost of the initial shares—not to mention thatonce we actually do go public, shareholders willnotbe happy about working with someone who livestreamed her nipple-piercing appointment, much less that person having any kind of power in the company. You’ll still have your share of the company... if you ever decide to take advantage of Mom and Dad’s deal.”
Mom and Dad’s deal. Work for four years for Bundles of Joy for free. After four years, I’d get my share. There was my inheritance, of course, but I couldn’t access that until I was forty.
I needed to get off the phone. I was angry. I wanted to cry. I wanted to punch one of my very fancy feather pillows. But I couldn’t let Charlie see that he’d gotten to me.
“Well, dear brother, if that’s all you have to say, I guess I’ll talk to you next year when you—”
“Jenna is pregnant,” he blurted. “It’s a boy. We’re naming him Logan. After Dad.”
For a split second, I remembered that my brother was human and we had one thing in common that I could never truly share with anyone else: the loss of our parents. “He would like that,” I said. “Mom would roll her eyes and—”
“Say that his ego didn’t need any more boosting,” he finished for me.
“Yeah,” I said, my voice drifting as I heard her voice chiming in my ears.
Charlie cleared his throat. “The board is meeting on Friday of this week. I’d like you to resign before then, so there are no surprises when the vote comes down.”
“Tell Jenna I said congratulations,” I said before hanging up without another word.
And then I cried. Like a fucking baby. About diapers. And brothers. And dead parents.
After Steph left the next morning, I went to the kitchen to make coffee and eggs. My phone buzzed just as the way-too-complicated coffee machine started whirring.
Mr.Big Important Man Charlie:I can help you write the resignation letter if you want.
I turned the phone so the screen was facing down. And then I set a carton of eggs on top of it to contain the evil.
Isaac came wandering in with a presumably overpriced leather notebook and a pencil that looked like it came from an art store. Mr. Tumnus was following him, tail swishing. My perfect son was not making eye contact with the laundry room door and thelobstahwithin in an Oscar-worthy performance of indifference.
Isaac came up to the kitchen island and set down his notebook, flipping it open. The paper was the thick, unbleached stuff that made noises as the pages were turned and gave off big sourced-from-sustainable-forests energy.
