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I supposed to approve anything?" she asked.
    "Well, you're in luck. I have your travel itinerary right here. You leave next week."
    "Next week? To where?"
    "Hmm. We'll need to work on those listening skills, won't we? I believe I just said Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York."
    "All those places?"
    "For starters," he replied.
    "But I have kids here. I can't just leave them."
    "I'm afraid that's not my department; but as president, even in your figurehead capacity, you need to be in these cities starting next week. The rest of your schedule will be couriered over to you."
    "Right, because it worked so well the first time you tried to courier something to me," she said. "I thought we were going to talk about my ideas for the store?"
    "Oh, we can talk about whatever you want in our two-hour window, but it's our corporate marketing department that will be making the final decisions about the store."
    "But what about the storefront windows at Christmas? Surely they aren't going to design that."
    "You still do that here? How quaint," he said. "The fleet of stores will maintain a uniform look for brand consistency which I imagine does not include your amateur window displays."
    "Has Walt been informed of these decisions?" Amelia was shocked.
    "I’m afraid Mr. Riddell doesn't bother with trivial matters such as these. He's very much removed from the day-to-day operations of the subsidiary corporations and even the business as a whole."
    "But I've spoken to him several times. In person and on the phone."
    "Yes, that may be, but the truth of the matter is that Mr. Riddell isn't in complete control of his faculties and no longer makes decisions for Riddell Industries."
    "But it's his company. So who's in charge, then? I want to talk to that person."
    "The Board meets quarterly. I think this year's meeting is at HQ in Dallas. There may be an opening in the Q4 agenda. I'll have to get back to you on that."
    "You do that, Nate."
    "Maybe there's been a misunderstanding," Nate said.
    "Yes, I think that's the case."
    "Your role at Mr. Z's Corp. is as a figurehead only," he said. "That's the agreement that Mr. Edwin Klein signed before his passing. You will take direction from the corporate office regarding this store, but you are allowed to have input on the other stores as we expand."
    "But no authority," she confirmed.
    "Now you're with me."
    "Why would I agree to that?"
    "You, Ms. Cook, didn't agree to that; Mr. Klein did."
    "Well, this sounds like a completely terrible set up. And what's your involvement in this whole mess?"
    "Yes, I didn’t fully explain my role, did I? I'm the Chief Acquisitions Officer and Vice President for Riddell."
    "Which means what exactly?" she asked.
    "It means you work directly for me now," he said.
    "Well, isn't that just fantastic news?" she said, tossing her sketchpad of Christmas display-window ideas into the waste bin.

Chapter 5
    Present day, back at the lake
     
     
    "Do you have any questions?" a young man asked Amelia. She was sitting behind the wheel of her rented power boat.
    The question went unanswered. She was in a bit of a daze.
    It wasn’t the fault of the instructor that Amelia didn’t listen to a word he was saying about how to operate the boat. She was reliving the past few years and the torment of Nate Rosen.
    The boat had arrived in the late afternoon, prompting Amelia to finally emerge from her bedroom where she had successfully avoided her family for several hours. She hadn't explained her behavior to anyone yet and she didn't want to.
    Amelia had been so fixated on pretending to be calm, and ignoring the news about Nate staying next door, that she blocked out what the instructor was saying. She caught words like rudder, vessel, chine and transom, but didn’t connect them to full sentences or how they could possibly fit into a lesson about a boat.
    So did she have any questions? Probably, but she hadn't taken the opportunity to get any of them answered.
    Afternoon turned to