Chapter 4 - ETHAN SAID HE WAS SAVING 146 JOBS
Ethan requested an emergency board meeting.
I almost refused to attend.
Michael told me I should.
“Not because Ethan is entitled to your attention.”
“Then why?”
“Because employees are hearing rumors.”
That worked.
Carter Restoration employed 146 people across Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island.
Project managers.
Carpenters.
Stone masons.
Architectural historians.
Estimators.
Office staff.
Real people with mortgages.
Emily cared about that number more than almost anything.
So I went.
Ethan entered the boardroom without Vanessa.
That was the first intelligent thing he had done since the funeral.
He looked exhausted.
“You all think I was waiting for Emily to die.”
Nobody answered.
He looked at me.
“I loved her.”
I believed he had.
That was what made the rest harder.
“I also believed the company was becoming financially unstable.”
Susan placed the cash forecasts on the screen.
Ethan was not entirely wrong.
Without restructuring, Carter Restoration faced a difficult twelve months.
Not collapse.
Pressure.
A line-of-credit renewal was approaching.
Two projects were delayed.
Emily’s illness had stalled several strategic decisions.
Ethan looked around the room.
“Hawthorne offered capital, systems, and national reach. We could protect 146 jobs.”
The employee-trust representative, Martin Alvarez, asked:
“How many jobs survive after consolidation?”
Ethan hesitated.
“Hawthorne never committed to layoffs.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
The room tightened.
I finally asked:
“Why did you tell Hawthorne Emily’s estate would make ownership more flexible?”
Ethan looked at me.
“Because it would.”
“She was alive.”
“She was terminal.”
The sentence came out too fast.
He heard it too.
His face changed.
I felt something inside me crack.
“You were planning around her death.”
“I was planning around reality.”
I stood.
Michael put one hand lightly near my elbow.
Not stopping me.
Reminding me I did not need to cross the room.
Ethan continued.
“Emily knew she was dying.”
“She was still president.”
“And disappearing for days at a time for treatment.”
Silence.
He regretted that too.
But there it was.
Illness had become inefficiency in his mind.
Grief and business had merged.
Then Ethan did something unexpected.
He produced his own records.
Emails from Emily.
In one, she wrote:
If I can’t return full-time by January, we need a real succession plan.
Another:
I am not willing to let the company fail because everyone is afraid to discuss my prognosis.
I read them twice.
Emily had been considering succession.
She had not been pretending everything was fine.
That mattered.
Ethan seized on it.
“She knew change was necessary.”
Susan answered quietly.
“She did not approve Hawthorne.”
Ethan’s jaw tightened.
“No. She wanted some perfect employee-friendly solution that didn’t exist.”
I looked at Martin Alvarez.
“Does one exist?”
He shrugged.
“Maybe.”
That answer scared me more than certainty.
Because if I rejected Hawthorne simply because Ethan wanted it, I could hurt the company Emily spent her adult life protecting.
That afternoon I made my first costly decision.
I voted with the employee trust to pause any sale discussions for sixty days.
Independent financial review.
Independent valuation.
No payments to Cole Design without review.
No extraordinary transaction.
Ethan called it reckless.
Maybe it was.
May you like
But if Hawthorne truly was the only path, sixty days of facts should prove it.
And if Ethan was hiding something, sixty days might be exactly what he feared.
Related Stories
