been comfortable enough for the reception desk. Lily had insisted on drawing a small red truck on the first page of the notebook, explaining that a manager ought to remember the vehicle that helped her get the job. Kayla had told her that the truck was only part of the story, but she left the drawing where it was.
The showroom looked familiar and unfamiliar at once. She knew the receptionist's desk, the coffee machine that needed a firm tap to stop dripping, and the spot where customers often waited too long for someone to notice them. She had spent years watching how the floor worked from the edge of it. Now the same employees who had barely glanced at her were turning their heads as she walked toward the small glass office assigned to the acting sales manager.
A nameplate sat on the desk: KAYLA BENNETT, ACTING SALES MANAGER. Kayla touched it briefly, then placed it in a drawer. She did not want her first day to become a parade of people looking at a title. She wanted to understand what was waiting underneath it, and the first stack of reports on the desk looked daunting enough to keep her humble.
Arthur Pruitt had arranged for a senior sales trainer named Maribel Foster to spend the next eight weeks at the location. Maribel was fifty-four, with short gray curls and the calm expression of a woman who had taught a great many people to do difficult jobs without pretending the work was simple. She had joined the dealership group years earlier as a parts clerk and eventually helped run its most stable service-and-sales operation. Unlike Chad, she was not famous for making the largest deal in the shortest time; her specialty was getting customers to return.
"I read your list of questions," Maribel said when they met. "Good questions. You worried about the same things I would be worried about."
"I'm worried about a few more things I didn't write down," Kayla admitted.
"Of course you are. That's one of the reasons we'll work well together. The dangerous manager isn't the one who knows she needs help. It's the one who thinks needing help makes her weak."
Maribel began with the daily inventory report. She showed Kayla how vehicles moved through the system, which transactions required approval, how financing terms were disclosed, and why a salesperson should never promise a delivery date without checking service readiness. Kayla took notes until her hand ached and stopped several times to ask what seemed like embarrassingly basic questions. Maribel answered each without impatience.
"You don't need to know every answer today," Maribel said. "You need to know what questions you must never skip."