The advertisement promised an outrageous salary to two women willing to manage male stupidity, and under normal circumstances my sister and I would have laughed ourselves sick and kept scrolling. Unfortunately, our rent was six weeks late, the children’s home that had raised us needed a new roof, and my checking account contained $11.43. Desperation has a remarkable way of making ridiculous opportunities look almost respectable.
Chapter 2
The next morning, Penelope handed us what she called “daughter-in-law survival kits.” Each contained a company credit card, emergency contact numbers, jewelry for public events, a family directory, and a binder titled THINGS MY GRANDSONS ARE NEVER TO DO AGAIN.
Page one began with: Do not bring hoofed animals into passenger elevators.
From the hallway, Michael called, “Alpacas aren’t livestock. They’re emotional support clouds.”
Andrew answered, “They bit the Chilean ambassador.”
“They misunderstood his energy.”
I closed the binder. “We should have negotiated hazard pay.”
“We did,” Claire said. “It’s called the salary.”
Our first assignment was behavioral.
Penelope challenged Claire to make Andrew attend an inspection of the company’s flagship pet spa without looking as though he was choosing a coffin. My job was to keep Michael from posting anything embarrassing online for twenty-four hours.
Michael immediately clutched his phone to his chest.
“You can’t censor an artist.”
“Yesterday you livestreamed yourself ranking cologne for bulldogs.”
“It was cultural commentary.”
“Hand me the phone.”
“No.”
“Michael.”
He raised it above his head.
I had grown up sharing one jar of peanut butter with twenty-three children and had once climbed a pantry shelf to stop an eight-year-old from hiding Pop-Tarts above the ceiling tiles. Rich men were not a new species of difficulty.
I climbed onto a chair and snatched his phone.
He stared at me. “You’re five-foot-four and morally lawless.”
“Efficient.”
I opened his account and recorded a ten-second clip.
“Good morning. Today’s lesson in rehabilitating wealthy men: remove the electronic device and wait until the whining stops.”
The comments began multiplying immediately.
Michael grabbed his chest. “They like you.”
“They like watching you suffer.”
“That’s worse.”
“That’s branding.”
Meanwhile, Claire placed a glass jar on Andrew’s desk with a handwritten label: UNNECESSARY COLDNESS — $20.
Andrew stared at it.
“What is this?”
“Corrective taxation.”
“I don’t participate in childish exercises.”
Claire held out her hand.
“For what?”
“That sentence.”
By lunchtime the jar contained $180.
At the pet spa, things improved.
For everyone except Andrew.
A six-pound Maltese named Princess Buttercup stole his tablet and bolted through the grooming wing. Andrew, chief financial officer of a multimillion-dollar corporation, chased the dog past a row of marble wash stations while three groomers tried not to laugh.
Princess Buttercup slid under a bench, emerged on the other side, and relieved herself directly on Andrew’s Italian shoe.
Claire bent over laughing.
Andrew stared down at the wet leather.
“I have been attacked.”
“You’ve been humbled.”
“This shoe cost nine hundred dollars.”
“The dog does not respect markets.”
Then something unexpected happened.
Andrew smiled.
It was small and startled, as though his own face had betrayed him.
Claire stopped laughing.
Andrew noticed her staring and immediately tried to restore his usual expression, but it was too late.
That evening, I saw him carefully place one of Claire’s sarcastic yellow sticky notes inside his leather planner.
I charged him twenty dollars for sentimental concealment.
Michael’s turning point came at a charity fashion show for rescue animals. A wardrobe mistake left him standing backstage in what appeared to be a full-body white poodle costume with a satin bow at his neck.
He looked at me with murder in his eyes.
“You are fixing this.”
I checked the donation counter. Every time somebody posted a photo of him, contributions jumped.
“No.”
“Lena.”
“Michael, I believe you’ve discovered your highest purpose.”
“I look like carpeting.”
“Charitable carpeting.”
He walked the runway beside a three-legged terrier named Scout. By the time he reached the end, the audience was cheering, Scout was wagging so hard his entire body shook, and the children’s home repair fund had crossed fifty thousand dollars.
Backstage, Michael pulled off the poodle hood.
“They were laughing at me.”
“They were laughing with you.”
“I was wearing a tail.”
“Humility sometimes comes with accessories.”
He tried not to smile.
Failed.
Then he looked at the donation total and became quiet.
“Your craziness has direction,” he said.
“So does yours. Yours just needs guardrails.”
He studied me for a moment. “Are you volunteering?”
“I’m billing hourly.”
Later that week, Michael asked to deliver supplies to the children’s home personally.
He arrived wearing jeans, no sunglasses, and shoes he didn’t mind getting dirty.
The children destroyed his dignity within five minutes.
One boy recognized him from the poodle video.
“You look like my grandma’s bathroom rug.”
Michael crouched to eye level. “Your grandmother apparently owns premium furnishings.”
By dinner, he had lost six rounds of a clapping game, worn two paper crowns, helped fix a loose cabinet door, and listened to a fourteen-year-old explain why the home needed better computers for homework.
For once, he never reached for his phone.
Mrs. Bennett stood beside me watching him.
“He’s not useless,” she said.
“No. Just expensive and improperly assembled.”
Across the room, a little girl put a third paper crown on his head.
Michael looked at me.
He didn’t pose.
He simply smiled.
Victoria tried to ruin us two days later.
At a society luncheon, she leaked the truth about our arrangement. Halfway through the meal, a woman dripping emeralds leaned across the table.
“Is it true Penelope actually pays you to pretend you’re engaged?”
Everyone went silent.
I put down my fork.
“Yes.”
The woman blinked.
I smiled. “Unlike some members of wealthy families, Claire and I believe in working for our money.”
Laughter rippled down the table.
Penelope raised her glass. “I hired professionals because amateurs have been failing my family for decades.”
Even Andrew looked away to hide a smile.
Victoria stiffened. “I think the whole arrangement is humiliating.”
“No,” Claire said calmly. “Humiliating would be expecting unpaid women to repair grown men. We brought contracts.”
Franklin, who was perched on the back of Michael’s chair, suddenly flapped his wings.
“MOVE THE MONEY!”
Victoria’s face changed.
The laughter faded.
Franklin bobbed his head.
“BEFORE GRANDMA FINDS IT!”
Victoria forced a smile. “That bird repeats nonsense constantly.”
“True,” Michael said. “Yesterday he accused the gardener of tax fraud.”
“FANCY TAX FRAUD!” Franklin shouted.
Everyone laughed again, but Michael had stopped smiling.
So had I.
That night, he showed me something on his phone.
Weeks earlier, Franklin had been in Victoria’s office while Michael livestreamed a harmless video. In the background, barely audible beneath music, Victoria had spoken to someone.
Move the foundation money before Penelope reviews the quarterly accounts.
Claire listened twice.
Andrew listened once.
His face became colder than I’d ever seen it.
“We need records,” he said.
“Quietly,” Claire warned.
“And proof,” I added. “Not bird testimony.”
Franklin puffed his feathers indignantly.
Michael scratched his head. “Sorry, counselor.”
The brothers began changing while we investigated.
Michael stopped a live broadcast when a drunken heir mocked the worn sneakers of one of the children visiting an event. Instead of laughing along, he turned the camera on himself.
“Tonight’s lesson,” he said pleasantly, “money can’t buy decency, but it can finance an apology. Brad, the children’s home needs five thousand dollars.”
Brad sputtered.
Michael kept smiling.
The donation arrived three minutes later.
I nearly kissed him.
For personal safety, I ate a shrimp canapé instead.
Andrew surprised Claire at a donor meeting when an executive referred to her as “the charming little helper.”
Andrew looked up from his papers.
“She corrected the projections you failed to understand. If you want charming help, hire a mirror. It has tolerated you longer.”
The man turned scarlet.
Later, Andrew quietly asked Claire, “Was that excessive?”
She considered him. “No. It was nearly social.”
I whispered, “That’s called defending somebody.”
Andrew frowned at me.
“Hydrate,” I told him. “You’re developing emotions.”
That night Claire and I ate french fries in my room.
“This was supposed to be a job,” she said.
“It is a job.”
“You looked at Michael today.”
“I look at many objects.”
“You looked at him differently.”
“He publicly shamed a spoiled millionaire into funding children’s shoes. That creates workplace enthusiasm.”
Claire bit into a fry.
“You like him.”
“You kept Andrew’s sticky note.”
Her hand froze.
“That is evidence.”
“Of what?”
“Emotional rehabilitation.”
We pointed fries at each other.
“Money first,” I said.
“Feelings later.”
We both knew we were lying.
Penelope knew too.
Her next scheme proved it.
She somehow “accidentally” locked Michael and me overnight inside the company’s test bakery, where gourmet dog treats were developed.
A note appeared beneath the door.
Use the time productively. Please don’t burn down my company.
“Penelope!” I shouted.
Her voice floated from the hallway. “I would never interfere in my grandsons’ personal lives!”
Franklin screamed, “GRANDMA IS WATCHING!”
Michael sat on a bag of flour. “If we die in here, delete my draft videos.”
“If you die, I’m auctioning your sunglasses for roof repairs.”
We tried baking sample treats for the gala.
Twenty minutes later, flour covered Michael’s hair, dough stuck to my elbow, and our biscuits looked like objects investigators might number at a crime scene.
Michael laughed.
Not his camera laugh.
Not the practiced, charming sound he used at parties.
A real laugh.
Then his face changed.
“I know I act like an idiot.”
“Yes.”
“I was hoping for resistance.”
“I respect honesty.”
He looked down at his flour-covered hands. “Andrew was always the responsible one. After our parents died, everybody expected him to run things. Everybody expected me to keep things fun. So I learned to be entertaining before anyone could notice I had no idea what I was doing.”
I leaned against the counter.
“If I fail,” he continued, “people shrug and say, ‘That’s Michael.’ If I try seriously and fail, then maybe there’s nothing underneath the jokes.”
I picked up a handful of flour and threw it at his chest.
He blinked.
“What was that?”
“Emotional support.”
“You’re terrible at comfort.”
“You’re not useless, Michael. You’re badly managed.”
His expression softened.
“You’re the first woman I’ve met who insults me into wanting to improve.”
“Don’t romanticize this. I have biscuit dough in my hair.”
He stepped closer and brushed flour from my cheek.
The room became very quiet.
Then Franklin screamed from outside the door.
“KISS HER, COWARD!”
I jumped backward.
“Your bird needs therapy.”
Michael sighed. “He thinks he’s my therapist.”
“He’s a malpractice lawsuit with feathers.”
Across the estate, Penelope had arranged a suspiciously similar “power failure” that trapped Claire and Andrew in the records room.
Claire later told me Andrew finally talked about the night his parents died. He had been twenty-six. Grief hadn’t been allowed to remain grief because there were employees, lawyers, estates, younger relatives, shareholders, and a grandmother who was grieving too.
“I stopped smiling because there was always something that needed handling,” he told her in the dark.
Claire didn’t pity him.
She handed him a packet from an emergency basket.
He took one bite.
“This tastes awful.”
“Those are dog biscuits.”
Andrew stared at her.
“You gave me dog food?”
“You’ve smiled twice this week. Don’t get arrogant.”
In the morning, Penelope found them asleep in separate chairs with the financial archives reorganized alphabetically.
She called it the most romantic accounting scene she’d ever witnessed.
