Page 48 of The CEO’s Assistant

After two weeks of reading through the resignation letter every night, she had decided in the shower that morning that enough was enough. She would muster the courage to send it together and be done with it. Not here, though. It felt too big to do in her home, so she grabbed her bag and locked up.

Despite it being evening, the sky was still light. She went down toward the water, past the shuttered nursery and the place that sold buckets and rope, and she thought about Iris the whole way. Iris had been thirty-one, when it started. She had a job at the telephone company and no husband, which the family had interpreted as an empty life, a life with a clear space in it where a sick mother would fit. What Wren kept catching on was that Iris had seen it the same way. Wren had been making the same appraisal of herself and her life since she was twenty-three. She had just never said it to anyone.

Lavender's was almost empty at half past seven on a Monday. Wren took her usual stool, second from the end, and Lavender came down the bar and set a tulip glass filled with amber liquid in front of her. She'd been doing that since April, unasked, and Wren gave the same small nod each time.

She pulled out her phone and opened the letter:

Cordelia, please accept this as notice of my resignation, effective in two weeks. I'm grateful for the opportunity. Full transition documentation will be ready before my last day.

There were another two hundred and forty words underneath it. She had rewritten it a dozen times and it was, she thought, a very good letter. It gave Cordelia an orderly exit and asked her to feel nothing. It mentioned the sale and documentation, and it said nothing personal at all about the last three months. And halfway down, in a sentence about transition planning, it promised that Wren would spend her last two weeks making certain the woman she loved was not inconvenienced by losing her.

She read that paragraph twice. Then she understood what she had actually written.

She had written this letter to make it as painless for Cordelia when she left. She had done the same thing in Boston, four years ago, and been proud of how gracefully she'd left. Tonight, right up until a moment ago, she had believed she was finally standing up for herself. Wren backed out of the drafts and went into her messages instead, down to the Saturday before last, where the two messages were still sitting with no answer under them.

“You seemed tired this week. Are you all right?”

And, forty minutes later: “Disregard that. Enjoy your weekend.”

She read them both twice. Vivian had never asked her a single question about herself in three years. None of them had. And Cordelia had asked at the worst possible moment and in the wrong words, then un-asked it forty minutes later, embarrassed. But she had wanted to know, and she had said so, which was more than the others had ever done.

Two things were true at once: she loved Cordelia and she had spent four months making herself the one person who could keep Cordelia's day running. She had done the same with the other women before too. The pattern was real and so was the love, but neither one made the other go away. Iris had been like that too, Wren thought.

A plate came down beside the glass, full with bread, white bean dip, and three olives. She looked up at Lavender.

“I want to make sure you eat.” Lavender was already wiping the taps and not looking over, which made it easier.

Wren didn't say anything.

"I made too much of it, and I'd only throw it out." The cloth went along the rail. "So you'd be doing me a favor."

Wren laughed. It came out rough, because she hadn't in a while, and it surprised her more than it surprised Lavender.

"That's very good," she said.

"I know."

Wren put the phone face-down on the bar. The letter would still be in her drafts in the morning. She had one day left before she was back in the office. Cordelia would look up and say good morning like it was any other day. And Wren would have a couple of seconds, standing there, to decide whether she was still going to be the person who made everything easy for her.

She pulled the plate over and ate the bread, then she picked up the glass and drank.

23

Chapter 23: Cordelia

The term sheet ran eleven pages and her signature was on the ninth, under Jo Ferrante's, dated the third of October. Cordelia turned it face-down and put her hand on the back of it while the line rang.

Jo picked up on the second ring. "If this is Renwick and Sable, I've already⁠—"

"It's not. I'm not selling you the firm."

Jo didn't say anything. A door closed on her end and the noise behind her stopped.

"Okay," Jo said. "Is there a version of this where I talk you out of it?"

"No."

"Then talk to me. Tell me what’s going on."