Brett Bohlinger–Catherine Humphries-Bohlinger

Brett Bohlinger and Catherine Humphries-Bohlinger are sisters-in-law bound together by family and by Bohlinger Cosmetics, where their roles change abruptly after Elizabeth Bohlinger’s death. Catherine is the experienced executive who helps make the company prosperous and the mentor who prepares Brett for leadership. But the will places Catherine, not Brett, at the head of the business. Their relationship must then absorb a reversal that is both intimate and institutional: Brett’s sister-in-law becomes her boss, while Brett loses the future she thought they had been preparing together.

Family and Professional Identities

Catherine Humphries-Bohlinger is Brett’s sister-in-law and, before the inheritance is settled, her superior at Bohlinger Cosmetics. Brett has worked as the company’s marketing director, while Catherine has spent twelve years as vice president and Elizabeth Bohlinger’s right hand. The difference in experience and authority is substantial. Catherine graduated from the Wharton School of Business and competed on the United States synchronized swimming team at the 1992 Olympic Games; Brett recognizes in her a combination of intelligence, persistence, and competitiveness that has equipped her to run several companies at once.

Catherine’s success is not merely a matter of title. She persuades Elizabeth to expand the company’s product line, then pursues an opportunity at Harpo Studios with carefully packaged samples and publicity about Bohlinger Cosmetics’ natural, environmentally friendly products. After Oprah Winfrey features the company’s Organic Black Tea and Grape Seed Facial Mask, demand surges: manufacturing quadruples during the first six months, major companies offer to buy the business, and Catherine persuades Elizabeth not to sell. She instead helps expand the company into new stores and overseas markets. Brett can acknowledge Catherine’s central role even while fearing what that achievement means for her own place in the family firm.

Mentorship and Expected Succession

Catherine’s authority over Brett initially carries an element of preparation rather than simple supervision. During Elizabeth’s cancer treatment, when her presence at work becomes rare, Catherine calls Brett into her office and tells her to learn the company’s “nuts and bolts.” She says their lives are going to change and Brett must be ready for her role. In the moment, this instruction makes succession seem like a shared understanding: Catherine is the veteran executive teaching a younger family member how to take over.

That expectation shapes how Brett understands their working relationship. She sees Catherine as the company’s “queen bee” and herself as one of her loyal “worker bees,” but expects that arrangement to be temporary. Brett anticipates becoming Catherine’s boss and is frightened by the prospect, an anxiety that also reflects her awareness of how much she depends on Catherine’s expertise. The planned reversal seems to require Catherine’s cooperation and Brett’s ability to grow into leadership; neither woman appears to be preparing Brett for the possibility that the will will place Catherine permanently above her.

The Inheritance Reversal

At the will reading, Brett hears that Elizabeth’s shares and the title of chief executive officer will go to her daughter-in-law, Catherine Humphries-Bohlinger. The announcement overturns Brett’s anticipated future in a public and unmistakable way. Her immediate anger is intensified by the fact that Catherine has already been coaching her for a role she will not receive. For Brett, the loss is not only professional: she has just lost her mother and now feels she has lost the family business as well.

When Brett later visits Catherine’s office at Bohlinger Cosmetics’ headquarters in the Chase Tower, the altered room gives the change a physical form. Elizabeth’s beloved paintings and sculptures are gone; Catherine’s bookcase and framed awards occupy the space. The city view and marble nameplate remain, but the name on the plate is Catherine’s, with the title president. Brett reads the office as evidence of how completely the old arrangement has been replaced. She asks how Catherine could have had a nameplate made so quickly and suspects that Catherine had known she was Elizabeth’s heir all along.

Catherine tells Brett that she, too, was shocked by the will. She explains that she assumed Brett would receive Elizabeth’s shares and took it upon herself to prepare her, without first asking Elizabeth. Catherine admits that this was a serious mistake, but says she did not want Elizabeth to feel that they had given up on her. She also says she had expected to work for Brett for the rest of her career and would have been proud to do so. The nameplate, Catherine explains, had been ordered by Elizabeth before her death and delivered to Catherine’s desk the previous day. That detail changes the meaning of the apparent evidence: what Brett had taken as proof of Catherine’s prior knowledge was Elizabeth’s own deliberate preparation.

Anger, Apology, and a New Hierarchy

Catherine’s explanation does not erase the damage. Brett tells her that she has lost both a mother and a business, while Catherine has inherited a fortune and the family company. She accuses Catherine of setting her up, because she worked hard to learn the business believing she would become CEO. Catherine remains composed and apologizes, saying she respected Brett and genuinely believed she could have succeeded as chief executive. Her praise is complicated by its tense: Brett hears the acknowledgment as a judgment on a future that has already been taken away.

The family tie makes the confrontation harder to resolve than an ordinary workplace dispute. Brett does not dare say everything she wants to say because Catherine is both her sister-in-law and her boss. Their shared grief cannot make the professional imbalance disappear, and Catherine’s apology cannot return Brett to the succession she expected. The office scene therefore holds two different kinds of loss together: Brett’s private bereavement and the public reordering of authority inside her family’s company.

Catherine’s authority eventually carries a direct consequence for Brett’s employment. When Catherine tells her, “You’re fired, Brett,” the relationship reaches its sharpest workplace rupture. The dismissal follows their transition from anticipated partnership to an employer–employee arrangement in which Catherine has the power to end Brett’s job. The family connection remains, but it cannot shield Brett from that decision or make their former expectation of working together come true.

Significance of the Relationship

The relationship dramatizes how kinship and professional authority can reinforce one another and then pull in opposite directions. Catherine’s long service, business judgment, and mentorship make her a credible successor; those same qualities sharpen Brett’s sense of exclusion when the will grants Catherine the role Brett believed she was being trained to assume. Their conflict is not simply a contest between a capable executive and an unprepared heir. It grows from an expectation Catherine helped create, an assumption she later owns as a mistake, and a succession decision Elizabeth made without Brett’s knowledge.

The reversal also changes the meaning of Catherine’s earlier guidance. Her instruction to learn the company’s operations was sincere, but Brett had understood it as preparation for becoming Catherine’s superior. After the will, the same history can feel like evidence of a promise broken, even though Catherine says she expected to serve under Brett. Their relationship consequently carries both genuine respect and justified resentment: Catherine values Brett’s potential, while Brett must confront the gap between being told she could lead and actually being given authority. Their family bond survives inside that unresolved asymmetry, now complicated by the fact that Catherine controls Brett’s professional standing.