Catherine fires Brett in a tense meeting at Bohlinger Cosmetics, where Brett discovers that Catherine has succeeded Elizabeth as president and then learns that Elizabeth specifically instructed Catherine to dismiss her. The event joins a transfer of corporate power to a painful rejection by Brett’s mother: the office still bears traces of Elizabeth’s presence, but its nameplate and final order establish that Brett has been excluded from both the company’s leadership and the future Elizabeth arranged for her.

The office and the new president

Brett enters Bohlinger Cosmetics’ headquarters at Chase Tower and goes directly to the corner office that once belonged to Elizabeth. Catherine, already at the desk, is finishing a call. While she waits, Brett looks for the paintings and sculptures Elizabeth had loved. The office has been rearranged: Catherine’s bookcase and framed awards have taken their place, while the cityscape remains. So does a brass-and-marble nameplate in the familiar style, but its inscription is no longer Elizabeth’s. It reads “CATHERINE HUMPHRIES-BOHLINGER, PRESIDENT.”

That discovery gives the meeting its first turn. Brett had entered a room associated with her mother, only to find evidence that Catherine now occupies the position Elizabeth once held. The nameplate makes the succession material and unmistakable. Brett reacts with anger, wondering how long Catherine had known she was to become Elizabeth’s successor. Yet the room also complicates that anger: Brett recognizes that Elizabeth and Catherine had formed an effective partnership, with Elizabeth as the elegant public face of the business and Catherine as its tireless assistant behind the scenes. Catherine appears to Brett to be a natural chief executive, a judgment that does not erase the hurt of being passed over.

Elizabeth’s instruction

Brett apologizes to Catherine and tells her she will be a great success. Catherine quietly thanks her, rises, squeezes Brett’s shoulder, and closes the office door. The gesture precedes a marked change in the meeting’s tone. Catherine fixes her gaze on Brett, bites her lip, flushes, and warns that what she is about to say will be shocking. Brett notices that Catherine’s hands are shaking and asks what is happening. The signs of anxiety establish that the dismissal is difficult for Catherine to deliver, but they do not change the substance of the order.

Catherine explains that Elizabeth left a pink envelope in her desk drawer, with a note inside. She offers to retrieve it so Brett can read it. Brett refuses, saying that another note from her mother is the last thing she needs, and asks Catherine to tell her instead. Catherine struggles to finish the explanation: Elizabeth had instructed her to dismiss Brett. She then states the decision directly: “You’re fired, Brett.” The order is not presented as Catherine’s independent assessment of Brett’s work; Catherine identifies it as an instruction from Elizabeth. The private note remains unseen, so the encounter reveals the instruction but not its wording or Elizabeth’s reasoning.

Immediate aftermath

The firing leaves Brett unable to recall the drive home. She remembers only staggering into the loft, climbing the stairs, and falling into bed. For the next two days she cycles through sleeping, waking, and crying. By Friday morning, Andrew’s compassion is waning; he sits on the edge of their bed and smooths her snarled hair. The scene makes the dismissal consequential beyond the office: its abruptness and its connection to Elizabeth’s instruction follow Brett into her home and unsettle her relationship with Andrew.

Brett’s subsequent encounter with substitute teaching shows one way she responds to the loss of her corporate job. When asked whether she is available for a long-term assignment, she considers the six weeks involved and sees the red EXIT sign at the end of the hall as an escape. She stays because the assignment could fulfill goal number twenty on her life list. Recalling the maxim “Do something every day that scares you,” she turns away from the exit and accepts. The later choice does not undo the firing; it redirects Brett toward work she had reason to fear and toward a goal she had committed herself to completing.

Employment and inheritance

The event sits within a broader set of changes to women’s working lives in Brett’s family, though the evidence does not make those changes consequences of her dismissal. Shelley, Brett’s former college roommate and sister-in-law, tells Brett that she has quit her job as a speech pathologist at Saint Francis Hospital. In the rehabilitation unit, Shelley had helped adults with traumatic brain injuries relearn not only speech but reasoning, negotiation, and social interaction; she had described the work as her calling. She says she and Jay decided that one parent should stay home with the children, and that Elizabeth’s inheritance meant they did not need the additional income. Shelley presents the arrangement as having worked out, but Brett hears a catch in her voice, and Shelley’s account of leaving a vocation contrasts with Brett’s involuntary removal from her own workplace.

Shelley later tells Brett she plans to return to work in May. A weekend in New Orleans with Jay had briefly restored their sense of being a couple, and Shelley’s tears as they prepared to leave helped her admit that she was unhappy in her new role. Jay responds without judgment and arranges a year’s leave of absence from his university position so Shelley can go back to work. Against that later reversal, Brett’s firing remains a distinct kind of employment change: not a decision she makes for family life, but a decision Elizabeth has arranged and Catherine must carry out. The office nameplate and the pink envelope frame that distinction—the visible transfer of authority and the private instruction that determines Brett’s place outside the company.