The manager who approached them was not the manager my mother would have expected.
It was Martin Hale, fifty-eight, silver-haired, immaculate in a charcoal suit, the kind of man who made even angry customers lower their voices without knowing why. Twelve years earlier, he had been the general manager who hired me when I was nineteen and desperate enough to lie about owning non-slip shoes. Two years earlier, after a partial retirement and one ugly divorce, he had come back to Alder & Reed to help restructure the business—and had invited me in as minority partner after I helped salvage the place during a brutal staffing crisis.
My mother did not know any of that.
She only saw a distinguished older man approaching with purpose and immediately assumed the universe was about to validat her.
“There must be some confusion,” she said before he even reached the host stand. “We have a reservation.”
Martis smiled politely. “You do, Mrs. Clarke. Good morning.”
Then he turned to me and said, in the clear, calm tone of a person making a point on purpose, “Olivia, would you like me to handle this personally, or would you prefer to?”
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