“This isn’t going to work unless you change something, Spencer,” Bart warned her. “And your father is going to run the place into the ground before you can get your hands on the controls. You might as well sell it now, while you can still get top dollar for it.”
It broke her heart to hear him say that. She didn’t want a war with him, or an ultimatum, telling her to quit her job and sell the store, and she could see that he was working up to it. In a way, Bart was jealous of the store, and always had been, because it meant so much to her, and she didn’t try to hide it. She had explained it to him as soon as they started dating, and he had claimed he didn’t mind. But now that they were married and had two babies, he had changed his tune and wanted her to get rid of the store and was trying to convince her father too. It was a choice she didn’t want to have to make, for him or anyone else. She was convinced she could do it all. It became his battle cry every time they had a fight, which was an increasingly frequent occurrence. Then the bottom dropped out of her world again.
When the twins were four months old, her father was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He died in three months. It was a rapid descent into hell, and a merciful end when it came quickly. She barely had time to adjust and take over. But once she did, she was surprised how comfortable she was running the store. She loved it and remembered everything her grandfather had taught her. It was as though she could hear his voice in her head every day, telling her what to do in each situation. With Marcy Parker’s help, she reinstated most of the lines her father had eliminated, and the increase in sales was almost immediate. By the time her father died, she was in full control of the store.
Her mother, Eileen, blamed the store for Tucker’s death at only seventy, so much younger than his own parents. He had run it for only four years, as a duty he hated every single day. Eileen had always wished she had married a banker, or a man involved in finance like her own father. Spencer had begun to realize that she herself had married one of “them,” someone like her parents, not someone like her grandfather, or like her. It was a thrill for her every time the store did well, or some marketing plan or special merchandising had borne fruit. She loved seeing the people shopping in the store, excited by what they’d found, and leaving the store with smiles on their faces. Thornton had taken pleasure in that too. He genuinely loved what he did. It wasn’t just a moneymaking machine to him, it was a way of helping people find real pleasure in what they bought, whether it was a woman with a new bracelet from the jewelry department, or a new hat, or a man with a cashmere or alpaca topcoat from the best tailor in London, or a pair of exquisitely made riding boots.
Spencer had initiated a new department with Marcy Parker, consisting of some lovely items at more affordable prices, and it had done extremely well, attracting a slightly broader range of customer, many of them young and on smaller budgets than their parents. Spencer and Marcy took real pleasure in offering them quality goods too, at lower prices. The department was a huge success. Marcy was a smart, lively, energetic, chic woman, long divorced with no children, who was a hundred percent dedicated to the store, and a good friend to Spencer.
Brooke’s still had the millinery department Hannabel had inspired in the beginning, and a counter where customers could order custom-made gloves from France. The store was a treasure trove of beautiful items which gave people a thrill to own. There was no way Spencer could give that up. It was a labor of love, not just a job.
At the same time, she wanted to be a good wife to Bart, and a good mother to Ben and Axel. She knew she had much to learn about motherhood and it was all new to her, but when she held the twins in her arms, she felt a surge of something she had never felt before, a bond like no other. She wanted to protect them with every ounce of her being.
She knew that other women worked and managed to combine it successfully with motherhood. Women who were doctors, lawyers, nurses, artists, people with jobs and careers they cared about, and they loved their children. What was so wrong about her nurturing the family business that her grandfather had put so much love into, and being a mother too? Why did it have to be a choice between one path or the other? It seemed so unfair to her for Bart to force the issue. She knew she couldn’t sell the business just to please him. She would have resented him forever if she did. She wanted a chance to learn to do both things well, mothering, and running the store now that it was hers at last.
No matter how hard she tried to explain it to him, Bart refused to understand how she felt. Her father’s death caused increased tension between them, as she spent longer and longer hours at the store, with the changes she made after Tucker’s death. Their nanny, Francine, tried to keep the babies up until she came home, which wasn’t always possible, but she juggled their feeding schedule so that on most nights it was. And Spencer didn’t mind keeping them up later so she could see them. It was pure joy for her when she came home and held them in her arms.
Bart spent no more time with them than Spencer did, in fact, considerably less, which he felt was fine for him. He said that it was more her job than his, to be a constant presence with their babies as infants, and throughout their childhood. They were seven months old when their grandfather died, but he had taken little interest in them, and their grandmother Eileen was a rare visitor too, even after she was widowed. She played more bridge with her friends and was too depressed for several months to make time to see the twins. In fact, despite how hard she worked, Spencer was the only family member who engaged with the twins. Bart’s parents weren’t attentive either.
Spencer tried to be available to her mother, and felt sorry for her, but they were no more compatible after her father’s death than they had been before. Her parents had always been closer to each other than they had been to her. She had always felt like an intruder. Their uncertainty about wanting children had persisted even after she was born, and Spencer had always felt how tentative her parents were about her, unlike her grandparents, who welcomed her into their lives, even after her grandfather’s initial disappointment that she wasn’t a boy. Thornton had set a standard of excellence for her that she had never failed to meet. She had never disappointed him, and he recognized early on, and had been willing to admit, that she was as smart as any man. Tucker had been far less willing to acknowledge his daughter’s accomplishments and was far more old-fashioned and chauvinistic than his father, who recognized the competence of the women who worked for him, and rewarded them accordingly, as he had Marcy Parker, who had one of the highest-paying jobs in the store.