Total pages in book: 66
Estimated words: 59659 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 298(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59659 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 298(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
“Well, that’s not a possibility now, Melanie,” Chuck interrupted. “The sale is final. We finished the paperwork two days ago. The new stakeholder owns fifty-one percent of the company and all its holdings and will be in town tomorrow to have a meeting with the board. At that time, the future of the board itself will be in discussion, and if you would like to bring up your opinion on that matter to the new owner, feel free to do so. Tomorrow. At the store.”
“Are you dismissing me, Chuck?” I asked, venom seeping from my voice.
“At this time, yes. There’s nothing else to be discussed,” Chuck said.
“No, you don’t dismiss me like I’m a child. I’m a grown goddamn woman whose family has owned and run that store for nearly eighty goddamn years. Mark my words you deceitful assholes, I will get it back and you’ll be sorry you ever crossed me.” I turned on my heel and slammed the door behind me as I left, earning a stern look from the librarian for the noise. I ignored her and headed back to my car, angrier than I’d ever been in my life.
3
VICTOR
Hello, Mr. McLaren, this is Chuck from the board. Could you give us a call when you can?
I read the text and saved the phone number under the name ‘Chuck-Board’ before sticking the phone on the charger in my bedroom. I would respond to that in a minute, once I was done getting ready. I had just gotten out of the shower and was still dripping wet, a towel wrapped around my waist.
All of my clothes, what little there was, were in the closet on hangers still wrapped in black plastic bags or stuffed in the duffel bag at the end of my bed. Picking up the duffel, I opened it up and went through it to find my underwear and socks and sort them out. I was going to need to wear something presentable, though, since it was going to be my first day going into the store since purchasing it. I wanted to look nice.
I had memories of the store going back to childhood and had always loved it. It wasn’t just a grocery store. It was the kind of grocery store that maintained the small-town Texas feel, perfectly divided up into aisles containing pantry staples.
There had been a video store in one corner that rented out VHS tapes and old video games along with DVDs, though I assumed that was gone by now. There was a section that sold seasonal clothes behind that, selling winter jackets and mittens and scarves in the winter and shorts and sunscreen and hats in the summer. No matter the season, one wall always sported cowboy hats and Dallas Cowboys merch for sale.
As a kid, I thought it was the greatest place in the world. We would go once a week to stock up on groceries and whatever we couldn’t get at the little five-and-dime at the end of our street. Brewer’s Grocery always had the best selection of produce as well, and Mom always wanted to go by and get fruits to make pies. She wouldn’t buy fruit from any other store, preferring either Brewer’s or the stands by the side of the road that seemed to always occupy the stretches between Murdock,Houston, or Austin.
It was popular, too, at least when I was a kid. For a long time, it kept the scepter of superstores away by being so uniquely Murdock that it engendered a sense of community and loyalty. But as the town started to struggle in the late nineties, and younger folks started to move out to make their lives elsewhere, it had apparently fallen on some hard times.
All that led to a phone call four months ago. An investor who had gone to school with me and had been in passing contact over investments in Texas before I moved to Maryland emailed me out of the blue. The board was looking for someone who was local and willing to invest. I saw a chance to make a move and started the discussions. It didn’t take much convincing.
The owners of the store had died years back, and the board was left in control of what to do with the company until such time as the owners’ only daughter was thirty and decided if she wanted to run it. From what I gathered, a combination of distrust of the daughter’s abilities to run the company as well as a bylaw that allowed the trust to sell the company in the event that she wasn’t capable of or willing to take over led them to seek outside investment.
I was more than happy to be that investment. I was suddenly flush with cash and looking for something to do. Considering that my instant thought was to move home to Murdock and get my feet under me where I was able to hang out with my best friends, owning a store in Murdock itself would be ideal. It would give me a project to focus on and tie me back to the community and who I had been before I even met Sarah. It seemed like the best possible situation.