“For Chicago. Jack and Bev are great. They like you a lot. I’ve also enjoyed getting to know Tim and Wolf. I can see why you decided to be friends with them. They’re both great guys.”
“Any problems?”
“Besides them being overprotective, no. We’ve gone exploring on the weekends. Chicago has a lot to offer. Last weekend’s excursion was to the zoo.”
“Did the moms come up for their shopping trip?” I asked.
“Yeah, that was fun. Brook, Zoe, Tracy, and Pam joined them. Jack took the dads golfing. Everyone had a great time.”
“That sounds like fun.”
“David?”
“Yeah?”
“I miss you. I love that I get to do the internship, but I miss our time together.”
No way was I getting into that conversation. I gave her a wan smile. It seemed like all my childhood best friends were gone. Alan and I essentially hadn’t spoken in nearly two months. Tami and I simply weren’t as close anymore. Maybe Coach Haskins was right: when you left high school, you left your friends behind. It made me a little sad to think that might happen.
I tried to think of whom my parents still hung out with from high school. The only person that came to mind was Mrs. A. I’d always believed that Tami and I would be forever, but lately could tell that was changing. I needed to decide if I was okay with that or not.
“Are you going out with us tonight?” Tami asked.
“Who all’s going?”
“Wolf, Sarah, Tim, and I.”
“No. I wasn’t invited,” I said, shocking her.
“Well, I’m inviting you.”
“No, you go ahead. Five people is awkward. I’ll be fine.”
“I’m sure they didn’t intend to exclude you,” Tami said with a little concern in her voice.
Wanna bet?
“No, really, I have lots I need to do,” I said.
“If you change your mind …” she left hanging.
I just smiled.
◊◊◊
Peggy and my mom were having way too much fun, so I called Pam and took her to Granny’s West for dinner.
“My dad got a job in LA. He leaves in a couple of weeks. He wants to see Coby before he goes,” Pam said.
“Have him talk to my parents. I don’t want to get in the middle of it.”
“That’s what I told him.”
“I hear you got an offer on the house.”
“Finally. Mom was starting to worry it would never sell.”
“The rumors of wild parties hurt the resale value,” I shot back. “Hey, speaking of wild, how’s your sister doing?”
“She agreed to go to counseling.”
“Holy cow, what did you just say?”
“It was either that, or Devin was sending her packing. Apparently, she finally figured out that the prenup was ironclad, and she wasn’t going to be able to break it.”
“Wait, I missed about twenty steps leading up to this. What happened?” I asked.
“You heard she got herself banned from Range Sports, right?” Pam asked, and I just blinked. “Then the ranch foreman threatened to quit. I think what finally did it was when Sandy moved out.”
I’m sure I looked stunned.
“Didn’t you know that? I was positive I’d told you all about it,” Pam said.
“Hell, no! I want details.”
“My dear sister got it in her head that since she married Devin, she was equal to him as the owner. When they got back from their honeymoon, she started to go to work with him. At first, it was no big deal. Cora would sit in on meetings, and Devin was impressed that she wanted to learn the business.
“Then she began going to meetings without Devin. Cora started making suggestions; still no big deal. You know my sister, she couldn’t stop there. She decided that she knew better than his employees. It took a while before word got back to Devin because everyone assumed he’d sent Cora to the meetings. In a way, he had, but not as the decision-maker.
“What got her caught was when she screwed up the latest catalog. The marketing people had finished it and forwarded it to Devin and the Board of Directors for their final approval. Cora went through it and made several changes, some of them pricing. She felt they were charging too much for certain items.
“When Cora sent it back to marketing, they thought it had been approved by the Board, so they didn’t look at it and forwarded it to the printers. They direct-mailed the catalogs to their existing customers and the stores. The first clue that something was wrong was when their call center was slammed with orders,” Pam shared.
“Oh, dear God! What did they do?” I asked.
“Devin held an emergency meeting with the Board. At that time, they didn’t realize it was Cora; they assumed the printer had made a mistake. They decided to honor the prices and write it off for anyone who had already ordered. Then moving forward, they would explain the error and give them a discount to keep their business.
“Then she did something similar with the fall line. Cora decided she didn’t like the colors for their most popular hunting jacket. They ran five thousand units before the mistake was caught. When that happened, Devin had the errors investigated, and Cora was found out. The Board gave him the choice of resigning or banning her from the company.”
“He couldn’t have been happy about that,” I said.
“No, he wasn’t. There for a while, we all thought he was going to divorce her.”
