The days following that decision had been the roughest of my career, because I was sure I’d seen the path forward coming to a dead end. At least as long as Catherine Crawford was on the board.
“How often do positions open up?” Jay asks. “Once she’s gone …”
“Our chief curator is retiring in eighteen months. That will open another senior curator position. But the Sutton is Catherine’s passion, and she’s put a great deal of time and money into helping it thrive—and ensuring she has influence any time she wants to use it. She won’t step down, and I might not like her, but I’m not rooting for her to retire fromlife.”
I tap the new Smitten Kitten letter. “This is what I mean about a double standard existing. Because I’m a woman, I’m treated as unprofessional and too emotional when I have a justifiable reaction to discovering I’ve been used as a convenience for six months. But Hayes doesn’t suffer any consequence at all. Not for dating someone at a client institution. Not for announcing his engagement without a heads-up when he knew I was at the event.”
Jay studies me for a moment, biting the inside of his cheek like he’s having an internal debate. Finally, he says, “But what if the situation were reversed and Hayes had stuck a lobster tail in your neckline or something? Wouldn’t he be seen as unprofessional at a minimum?”
“It would never have happened because I wouldn’t have brought a date to an event at his workplace after barely dumping him.”
“But if you had, and he’d gone lobster tail on you …”
“I’m not saying that what I did was wise. Justified? Absolutely. But I’d do it differently if I had it to do over again. However, I do think if I were a man, that would have been weighed against all the work I’ve done at the Sutton, and it would have been written off, not held against me.”
“I don’t know Catherine well yet, so I can’t comment.”
“Remember, the rest of the board had no issue with promoting me. She disliked me from the start, and I’m notsure why. All I know is that literally everything I did only reinforced whatever opinion she had of me.”
“What if she changes her mind after working with you more closely on this board? You’ll get a redemption arc.”
That’s what I’m after—but an even bigger arc than he’s imagining. “I don’t know if I’ll ever change her mind. I suggested all kinds of exhibitions and educational programs that she shot down because she thought they were ‘beneath the dignity of the Sutton.’ In her mind, the gala proved I wasn’t up to scratch.”
“You didn’t know she would be on the board when you accepted the job, right? Did she know you were the director?”
“She said she agreed to do it specifically to keep an eye on me.”
“That sucks.” He tugs at his lip, thinking. “Did my grandfather know about any of this? Lobstergate or your friction with Catherine?”
I shake my head. “He knew I was dating Hayes. Foster passed away before we broke up.”
“And the friction with Catherine?”
I consider this. “He heard me get exasperated when she argued against a couple of my proposals, but Foster usually took my side and would laugh when I grumbled about her voting a proposal down. He would say my ideas were fresh, and old people like him and Catherine needed to hear them.”
He does his distant stare again, and I wait a minute, but he doesn’t come out of it. Is he wondering if Foster would still have chosen me if he’d known about the lobster? The longer Jay takes to speak, the more uncomfortable I feel.
When I can’t take it anymore, I break the silence. “I wouldn’t have taken the job if I didn’t think I could do justice to Foster’s vision. We’d talked so much about the work he was doing here to get it ready, and I read through his missionstatement and founding documents about a hundred times before I accepted the position.”
Jay focuses on me. “Grandad would still have wanted you for the job. But I’m wondering if you only took it as a stepping stone back to the Sutton.”
There it is.
The question I hoped he would never ask me.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Phoebe
I can’t giveJay an honest answer. It will make him question my commitment to Foster’s vision, and he doesn’t need to. I’m all in.
I will do this job so well that in eighteen months when the Sutton’s chief curator retires,thatboard will have no grounds to doubt that I’m qualified and capable.Thisboard will know that I am handing off the Museum of Serendipity in peak form to a candidate I will recruit myself, someone I trust to keep true to its mission. It’s a big factor in who I’m hiring over the next couple of weeks.
I answer Jay with a question. “Do you feel like I’m doing everything I can to fulfill Foster’s dream?”
“Yes.”
It makes me feel good that he doesn’t hesitate, not just because he’s a Martin, but because his opinion as a historian matters to me.
