Trevor locked me out of Lantern Row at 4:40 on a Friday, in a glass room I'd wired myself.
He didn't call it that.
He called it a transition.
"The team's taking full control, Jo."
He said it to the table, not to me.
Two printed pages sat squared in front of him.
TRANSITION PLAN — LANTERN ROW LLC
Item 1 was a single line.
All accounts → T. Kessling
I read it twice.
The arrow was a nice touch.
"Full control of what?" I asked.
"Everything."
"Ops, the store, the vendors."
"You've been stretched thin."
"I've been running it."
"You handled the back-end plumbing."
He gave me the smile he uses on investors.
"We'll hire a plumber."
The glass room sits in the middle of our warehouse on East 12th Street.
I ran the ethernet through its ceiling in 2021.
Trevor held the ladder for maybe four minutes.
Through the glass, Tasha was taping boxes at the packing line.
She wasn't watching us.
She was working very hard at not watching us.
"Is this a vote?" I said.
"It's a decision."
"Whose?"
He tapped the second page.
"Royce wants a clean cap table by Black Friday."
"Royce holds a note, Trevor."
"Royce holds our runway."
He leaned back.
He's 46 and leans back like he's 25.
"Don't make it a fight."
"You're still a member."
"Just let me drive."
I'm 44.
I've been called a lot of things at work.
Plumbing was new.
At 4:46 I was still in my chair, doing the math he hadn't.
I wrote the checkout.
I wrote the inventory sync that stops us from selling candles we don't have.
I wrote the script that keeps the label printer from eating labels.
Trevor wrote captions.
They were good captions.
People bought candles off them.
"Who's running payouts Monday?" I asked.
He laughed, like I'd asked who waters the moon.
"The company runs itself, Jo."
"Okay."
"Okay?"
"Okay."
He didn't like okay.
He'd brought a speech for crying and one for yelling.
He hadn't brought one for okay.
"Your Slack's getting moved," he said.
"Email too."
"Over the weekend."
"Moved where?"
"Away from you."
At least that part was honest.
I stood up.
He stood up faster, which told me he'd rehearsed it.
At 4:52 I was at my desk.
It's the one by the dock door, with the space heater and the fir sample jars.
My ThinkPad sat open on it.
It's a 2018 T480, black, worn white at the corners.
There's a wax scar on the lid from the first pour, when I set the pot down in the wrong place.
Under the scar is a label-maker strip.
JO — DO NOT UNPLUG
I closed the lid and unplugged it.
"Leave the laptop," Trevor said.
He'd followed me out of the glass room.
"Company property."
"Best Buy in Hixson," I said.
"March 2018."
"Receipt's in my email."
He held out his hand anyway.
"Jo."
"My email," I said.
"Not yours."
At the packing line, the tape gun stopped.
Tasha stood holding it in the air, a strip of tape curling off the end.
Trevor's hand was still out.
I wrapped the charger cord around my fist.
I unclipped my badge from its lanyard and set it on the desk.
The key fob went down next to it.
Plastic on laminate, two small clicks.
"That's it?" Trevor said.
"That's what's yours."
I left the heater.
I left the fir jars.
I left the mug Tasha had given me as a joke, a joke I'd liked.
I took the laptop.
"You'll want to sign some things," Trevor said to my back.
"Next week."
"Send them," I said.
The dock door was up.
November came through it, wet and cold.
Behind me the tape gun started again, slower.
At 5:05 I was in my Subaru in the lot with the engine off.
I opened the scarred lid against the steering wheel.
The registrar first.
My personal account, my personal Gmail, the code sent to my phone.
Registrant: Joanna C. Varga
Registered: March 9, 2018
Then the store.
Settings, then Users.
Store owner: Joanna Varga
Trevor was listed under that, on a staff account.
So was everyone else.
Then payments.
Sole proprietorship · Joanna C. Varga · Payouts to ••4417
I'd set up all three at my kitchen table in 2018, before there was a Trevor.
Before there was an LLC.
Nobody had ever moved them.
Nobody had ever asked.
Across the lot, the glass room glowed like an aquarium.
Trevor was inside it, pacing, phone to his ear.
He'd drawn a plan with an arrow on it.
He never checked where the arrow started.
The domain, the store, and the payouts were mine.
I could go dark.