Chapter 1: Clara Chapter 1 CLARA I CAN'T DENY THAT TECHNOLOGY has done miraculous things for human beings in every aspect of our lives. Living in the twenty-first century has given me an unimaginable advantage over my ancestors (with the small exception of getting on the property ladder without the assistance of my parents) and I accept that I live a life that my relatives, with their humble beginnings, would hardly believe. But even as I start my day in my beautiful West Village apartment, I can't escape the bone-deep jealousy of those family members who never had to wake up to twelve different people texting them "Have you seen this?!" and four missed calls from their father. It's a shock to the system that not even a cold plunge could achieve, and the twisted sense of terror that coiled in my gut when I saw three different social media platform links in my inbox lingers as I head into the boardroom at Davenport Innovation Creative headquarters. Monday is my least favorite day for a work crisis, but a Monday crisis on only my second week back in my role? The stuff of nightmares. I drop myself into a chair in the back corner of the room facing the window and place one of two coffee cups on the table in front of me and the second to my left. The overhead lights glare off the glass stretching from one side of the room to the other. My reflection sits to the right of the Empire State Building, the rest of the city lit up around it beneath the gloomy November sky. At 7:58, all my colleagues who undoubtedly also had their morning schedule ruined by this impromptu meeting pile into the room, taking their seats and muttering among themselves. The floor shakes as an overstuffed Birkin lands in the empty space beside my pumps. I smile at Sahara as she sits in the chair next to me and practically lunges at the coffee I bought her on my way into the office. She takes a sip and sighs contently. "I love you, Clara Davenport." "You love coffee," I respond, dodging her hand as she tries to playfully ruffle my hair. My dad finally enters with Roger, the VP of publicity, and takes his usual spot at the head of the table, which, thankfully, keeps me out of his eyeline. After the world's fastest debrief, Roger clears his throat and draws attention to the buffering screen behind him. "Good morning, everyone," he says, his deep voice bellowing around the room with ease. The face of an older woman appears behind him with a large play button covering her nose and lips, a face I've seen a dozen times this morning. Her blond hair is so icy it's practically silver; a wide, voluminous lock frames her face and sits behind her ear, the rest looks like it's tied up in a French twist. I can't assign an age to her, not accurately, at least. Sixties, maybe? Her skin is white but lightly tanned, with a glow that speaks to a foreign vacation somewhere a hell of a lot hotter than here. Her eyes are bright behind thick brown cat-eye glasses; the telltale lines of time gather at the edges, in contrast to her suspiciously smooth and wrinkle-free forehead. The play button hides the rest of her beauty, but I know from the amount of times I've seen her this morning that she is both radiant and mildly intimidating. She's a total natural in front of the camera. Ultimately, I want to be her when I'm older. "Most of you are already aware of this video that went viral over the weekend, but for the sake of everyone being on the same page, I'm going to play it now. We know that this has impacted the social teams already, and we anticipate that will continue." Sahara's borderline-screaming voice note this morning said where they'd usually expect to see a problem hit its peak and then start to calm down, this was still climbing. She's the director of social media, and her department has just survived an outpour of anger after an AI-generated video of a Davenport toy exploding went viral. Everyone is still recovering from the extra work and really doesn't need this, hence the borderline screaming. The boardroom lights are turned off and the video begins to play. Hello. My name is Florence Girard, and I'm asking you to support my small town this holiday season after Davenport Innovation Creative stole from us. It's an incredible hook, I have to give her that. Her American accent is diluted with something European better suited to an Old Hollywood movie than my For You page. Three weeks ago, Davenport announced they were releasing the Evie doll in time for the holidays. Their doll is a direct copy of a product made here in Fraser Falls, the Holly doll. Last year, our doll gained popularity after a famous visitor to our prestigious Small Business Saturday event posted about her, and we were inundated with orders and visitors. Including Davenport themselves. Holly is a community project and supports multiple independent businesses in our town. Every part of her is made right here in the United States from recyclable, nontoxic materials. Everyone involved is paid a living wage and every doll comes with her own unique certificate of authenticity. I love Holly and everything she's done for our town. I love our community that comes together to make her a possibility. Most important, I love our customers, who choose us over the dozens of other options on the market. The softness of her expression morphs into something harder. More jaded and tired. The smile lines at the corners of her mouth disappear as her lips straighten. Davenport doesn't love you. Several people in the room wince at the harshness of her tone. And they don't love Holly, like they claimed to when they showed up here in January trying to get us to sign up for a predatory scheme purporting to help small businesses expand. They told us that they'd help us protect our design, and when we didn't sign up, they copied us. Their copy, the Evie doll, is the antithesis of everything we're trying to achieve here in Fraser Falls. Holly comes with six adventure stories, brought to life by the Green Light bookstore and the Fraser Falls Art School. Evie's stories are credited to AI. Holly has wooden toys, each one made by hand at the longstanding town staple Harry's. The amount of work meant that during the summer apprentices could be employed, with money going into the pockets of the young people in our community. Evie's toys are plastic, made by a machine. Florence Girard continues listing all the ways in which the Holly doll is far superior to Davenport's Evie doll. I listen, quietly seething that this is happening at all. She's reaching the end of her dragging, and the worst part of the whole video. Since Davenport's announcement, including their doll being half the price of ours, half our orders have been canceled, and we have seen a significant reduction in new orders over the past three weeks. Companies like Davenport think they can do anything. Think they can get away with everything. I'm asking you to help me show them that they can't. Fraser Falls has so much to give, and we would love to welcome you this holiday season, whether you buy a Holly doll or not. This time of year is when our community is at its absolute best and we'd really love to show you. We have a number of holiday events planned, which will be listed at the end of the video. So support local, hardworking businesses this year. Even if it isn't our town, there's a town near you being bullied by a large corporation, too, and they need your support. The word bullied hangs in the air like an unwelcome smell. It's still heavy in the room when the lights come back on. "?'Cancel Davenport' is trending on every platform," Roger announces. "While Ms. Girard didn't call for a boycott in so many words, online... activists, we'll call them, are running with it, trying to generate engagement where they can. They're unfortunately doing a great job. Sahara, can you expand?" Sahara nods and puts her coffee cup back on the table. "It's generally the same handles we see over and over. Internally, we call them the drama vultures. They'll feast on anything so long as it's negative. "They're offended by everything, which is amplified by bot activity. But they do move on as soon as complaints lose momentum, which allows incidents to peak and decline quickly. Unfortunately, this has spread outside of the normal online echo chamber and is reaching consumers who typically wouldn't engage with this type of content." "Why do you think that is?" Dad asks, leaning forward to look down the table toward us. "If we compare the situation to our last major social incident, which was the AI video, a large number of viewers were able to quickly identify that the video wasn't real without us saying anything," Sahara explains calmly. "We mobilized online messaging rapidly, which not only highlighted that the video wasn't real but gave advice on how to fact-check in the future. Our customers engaged with shares to point out it was fake, which reduced our workload and helped the message spread quicker." "So why can't we do that here?" Dad asks. Sahara doesn't answer immediately, most likely doing mental gymnastics trying to work out how to say the truth. I lean forward so he can see me. "Because we can deny a video is real when it's AI generated. We can't say we didn't copy their design or impact their town when we did." There's surprisingly little benefit to being the boss's daughter, but it does make it a little easier to say what needs to be said in these kinds of situations. "The small business program is your initiative, Clara. How do you propose we resolve this?" Dad asks. I'm waiting for someone to point out that I've been covering a long-term sick leave in an entirely different division of the company for the past year, and this mess has nothing to do with me, but it doesn't come. I didn't try to onboard Fraser Falls. I didn't even know about it until my six accounts were handed back to me two weeks ago when I returned to my job in PR. Someone mentioned it when I talked about how hideous the Evie doll is, and that's the extent of my knowledge on the situation. The small business program was born in a corporate social responsibility working group. I was told in my annual review that if I wanted to climb the ladder, I needed to implement something with a positive impact on the business. My intention was to make our image as a monopoly more palatable by helping select independent companies that have a lot of potential to upscale. Creating a more competitive market and improving our reputation were the obvious wins, but given Davenport started as a small independent business fifty years ago, I pitched that it spoke to our core values and history. It was signed off on immediately and I helped onboard six different businesses across the US--who have been thriving , might I add--before I unexpectedly moved to cover a more senior position in Distribution, another choice designed to give me the experience to get a promotion. I don't know how they messed up with Fraser Falls so badly. My dad is still staring at me like I'm somehow going to magic up the perfect answer. How about go back in time and don't rip off a small town relying on the income from their star product ? I drag a hand through my hair; auburn waves tangle around my fingers. "We need to make a meaningful apology to the town. Through investment or publicity, or both. We need to take the image of us robbing someone's grandma and replace it with something easier to swallow. A sorry company looks better than one that steals money from the pockets of hardworking Americans." "Apologizing makes it look like we did something wrong." The voice is like nails on a chalkboard. It takes everything in me not to flinch. Mindful of the room full of people, I do my best not to scowl at Daryl Littler. He looks every inch the smug asshole he was twelve months ago when I last had the displeasure of seeing him. "I disagree that it's the right call." Being on a different floor works miracles when it comes to avoiding people you hate. I remind myself that in eight short weeks, Daryl will be retiring, and center myself. At first I don't know why he's in here in a marketing and publicity crisis meeting, but I quickly realize that his team worked on the Evie doll. Daryl is the director of innovation and his department is supposed to focus on introducing innovative technologies to our brand. When your core audience moves on quickly and generally has a short attention span, it's vital to always be one step ahead. So far, all he's done is replace real human creativity with artificial intelligence and cut corners. My dad thinks he's brilliant because he runs the most cost-effective department, but in reality, he's the opposite of everything the company is supposed to be about. Aside from the fact that he's morally bankrupt in every way a person can be, I've never heard him give his team credit for anything. The ideas that he doesn't steal from small towns are taken from his own staff, and I think it'd be impossible for me to hate him more than I do. Knowing he was going to be retiring in the near future, I've focused all my effort on doing enough to take over when he's gone. Everyone knows I'm gunning for his job and my passion is in the creative side of the business, not bouncing from problem to problem like I do now, but I still haven't managed to convince my dad to let me replace Daryl. I'm kind of certain he's going to give it to my brother, but that feels like a worry for another day. I shoot Daryl a tight smile. "I appreciate your input but pretending we've done nothing wrong isn't an effective recovery strategy. Someone needs to reach out to Ms. Girard to talk to her about her grievance directly and what we can do to make it disappear. In the meantime, we need to provide the brick-and-mortar teams an approved statement in case they're confronted in stores." Roger is nodding as I talk, which gives me a tiny amount of relief. He's my boss's boss, and she's currently on vacation in Cancún, making me the most senior member of my team until she's back Friday. "I agree," Roger says. "Clara, you reach out to Ms. Girard to establish her mindset now that she's getting the attention she wanted. There will be something we can give her or do for her that fixes this problem. Sahara, you..." I zone out while Roger dishes out tasks to people in the room. Potential press release options, social media responses, in-store answers. A whole day's work for a room full of people because Daryl was too lazy to green-light an original idea. I really cannot wait for him to go. Excerpted from Holiday Ever After: A Novel by Hannah Grace All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
