Chapter Text
Some people loved handbags, some people loved sports cars, or maybe even luxurious perfumes but Gerri Kellman had always, always loved jewelry. She had seen her mother and grandmother with simple gold chains and plain wedding bands and had coveted the way the light would glint off of the diamonds of the wealthier women in church. She would try and picture how the weight would feel around her neck when she saw pictures of kings and queens wearing their finery. Maybe it wasn't right to dream of material things but Gerri couldn't help but hope to fill her empty jewelry box someday.
Even in her wildest daydreams Gerri wasn't sure she could have predicted the future that she was headed toward. Being named CEO of one of the largest media conglomerates to ever torment the news cycle had afforded her the luxury to expand her collections beyond measure. She had cases of rings, drawers of bracelets and necklaces, and frankly more brooches than she even cared to think about.
It was early on a Sunday morning and Gerri was feeling oddly sentimental. After another grueling and unrelenting week at work her phone was blissfully silent for the moment as she sat at her vanity. She pulled a plain wooden box out from one of the drawers and opened the lid. The Tiffany, Chopard, and Cartier were all locked away but this box housed the things that held some meaning or another. Her hands ghosted over the pieces as she thought back on the years that had passed and the moments that changed her.
When Gerri turned 15 her mother died. Cancer had set in quickly and her staunch southern family hadn't allowed her to go to the hospital once she started to decline. Her father had always been a stoic man who had struggled to relate to his sharp and challenging daughter. The rift between them only seemed to grow in the wake of her mother's death.
While her father made final arrangements at the hospital Gerri fielded calls from friends and relatives trying to relay the bad news without breaking down, as the dutiful daughter should.
She dozed in a slump on the couch as the headlights of her father's car filtered through the front window. Gerri woke groggily as she heard her father enter the house and settle in the kitchen.
"Dad? Are you ok?" Gerri peered into the room and waited as her eyes adjusted to the dim light.
She found her father seated at the kitchen table with only the small light above the stovetop illuminating the dark space.
"Come here for a second, Gerri" her father called and gestured toward the empty seat next to him.
The silence between them hung heavy in the humid air as the wall clock ticked and Gerri tried not to cry.
"For you" The whisper hung in the air as he proffered an outstretched palm.
In her father's hand lay her mother's favorite necklace. A simple gold herringbone chain that Gerri had never seen her without. It fell effortlessly into her hand and though it was feather-light she could feel the weight of her mother's life within it.
The necklace was cold in her hands as she turned it over and over, letting it slip through her fingers.
"Are you sure?"
Her father gently took the chain back, unclasped it, and laid it around her neck in response. She immediately felt comfort, something solid resting above her heart.
"Your mama wanted to be buried with it but then we'd never see it again. Don't think she's fixin' to worry about it too much now."
"Thanks Daddy" A slight sniffle on the words was all that Gerri allowed to come through to show how much like a child she felt in that moment.
With that he rapped his knuckles on the chipped formica table and stood to leave the room. Just before he moved away from the his seat her father placed his hand gingerly on her head for the briefest of seconds. Looking back, Gerri was sure this was the last tender moment the pair would ever have.
"Gold looks good on you, girl"
Nearly 10 years later Gerri sat in her tiny one bedroom apartment packing the last of her boxes to move to New York. Resting on the top of one of the piles was her freshly received law school diploma, the words "Juris Doctor" burning a hole through the paper.
Next to the framed diploma was a slim jewelry box that she had picked up the night before. Gerri clicked open the box and let her gaze fall on the diamond tennis bracelet inside.
It had been expensive, so much so that she almost hadn't gone through with buying it. But she had signed the check and taken it home before she could change her mind.
The 7 years she had spent putting herself through undergrad and law school had left her feeling worn out and old beyond her years. Now she had managed to snag her dream job as a corporate lawyer that would drag her out of the South once and for all.
She had only been to New York once, to interview for the position she had ultimately gotten at Waystar Royco. As she had walked past the other women in the office she had felt so plain and forgettable next to their designer suits and flashy jewelry.
When she had gotten the phone call from her new boss telling her she had gotten the job he had told her to "celebrate with something nice" and Gerri could only picture one reward.
The bracelet had caught her eye when she had stopped into the jewelry store to get the clasp on her mother's necklace fixed. A string of glimmering diamonds just long enough to wrap around her wrist. The fact that it was in the case of items without their prices prominently displayed told her all she needed to know and hadn't asked anymore about it.
However, once she got the offer of her new salary and the reality of leaving North Carolina once and for all started to settle in Gerri could finally allow herself to dream- just a little bit.
It had felt like a movie to march into the store and walk out with the bracelet. She hadn't even put it on after they had packaged it so nicely.
Gerri slipped out of the dusty work clothes she had been wearing and into the heather grey suit she had chosen for her first day on the job. She swept her hair, curly and frizzy from the early spring humidity, up into a quick bun as she reached for the jewelry box.
With the bracelet tightly clasped around her right wrist she took a moment to turn her hand back and forth watching as the diamonds caught the late afternoon light.
She faced the empty room and stuck out her hand as she imagined meeting her new boss "Mr. Kellman, it's so nice to meet you."
She might have lived a rhinestone life as a girl, but Gerri would be a diamond woman from now on.
Motherhood had never been high on Gerri's list of priorities. She had never experienced that maternal pull when she held a friend's baby or saw a young family playing happily in the park.
So when she found herself pregnant a year into her marriage her emotions ran the gamut from anxiety, nauseating worry, to a surprising sort of joy.
Gerri agonized over telling Baird, worried that he would be disappointed but was instead met with a cautious optimism that she knew meant he was secretly thrilled.
That night, in the quiet dark of their bedroom Baird whispered into Gerri's hair, "I'm going to be a father."
The following months passed in a blur of nonstop changes. They moved into a bigger apartment, leaving Baird's bachelor pad that Gerri had slipped into for a large apartment that could house a family.
There was a fair bit of gossip around the office when Gerri had become the wife of her boss that was almost a decade older but it hadn't bothered her then. It had only continued when she had kept her job and worked through her pregnancy.
"I'm just so fucking sick of hearing those women talk, Baird" Gerri had leaned back on the couch with her swollen ankles in the air. She was due any day and she couldn't wait to no longer be pregnant.
"I hope you don't teach our daughter to swear like that"
"Our son, you mean" Gerri riposted with a smile. From day one Baird had been sure they were having a daughter while she had been convinced it would be a boy.
"Come help the mother of your son up off the couch, old man" Gerri reached out her arms in a mock dramatic gesture.
"What are you going to do when I'm right and we have a little girl?" Baird asked as he pulled his wife to her feet.
A strange look crossed Gerri's face as she reached down to clutch her belly. "Well I think we're about to find out."
Two days later the family of three returned home, newly minted Mom and Dad along with baby girl, Margot. They settled into a routine, with a nanny added in soon after so Gerri could return to work.
Gerri loved her daughter and she grew to love the experiences that came with being a mother. Her long work days bled into even longer nights trying to raise a child but to her surprise it was Baird that rose to the occasion. Before having Margot the two had only talked hypothetically about becoming parents but it was clear that the man was meant to be a father.
He begged and begged for the chance to have another child but Gerri was sure that one was enough. She had started to rise in the ranks at work and was becoming known as a cutthroat attorney and a confidant of Logan Roy. She couldn't imagine how having another child would fit in.
"You could finally have your son" he implored as he kissed her softly and led her to their bed.
She had been so busy it had taken her much too long to realize she had missed her period. She tried to think back to when she had it last but deep down she knew. A test later that day confirmed her worst fear, in the midst of the commotion surrounding her daughter's 5th birthday she found herself pregnant once again.
If her first pregnancy had passed in a dream then this one was a nightmare. It had been months of nothing but sickness and exhaustion as she tried to balance her ever more demanding job, being a mother, and her physical condition.
One night, toward the end of her pregnancy it all became too much. She had a series of disastrous meetings with Logan during the day in which he had fired and rehired her twice, claiming he only brought her back because the optics of firing a pregnant woman were too bad. Then, she returned home to discover that Margot had gotten the stomach flu while at school and had been getting sick every 15 minutes.
Of course, Baird was still at the office so she was stuck fending for herself. She paged him but wasn't overly optimistic that he would actually return home. Hours later she was jolted awake to a hand on her shoulder.
"Gerri, come to bed."
Baird had come home sometime after midnight to find his very pregnant wife laying with their daughter in her tiny bed surrounded by stuffed animals and blankets. The girl had finally managed to fall asleep and Gerri hadn't had the energy to get up.
As Gerri wandered sleepily into their bedroom she saw an unfamiliar box sitting on her vanity. She raised an eyebrow and looked back at her husband.
"Go ahead and open it," he said motioning toward it, "I was going to give it to you once the baby was born but I think you deserve it now."
Inside the box was a gold pendent in the shape of a heart with two stones set into it. One was a deep red garnet, Margot's birthstone. The other was an iridescent opal, the birthstone for their second child.
"It's beautiful, but you better hope your son comes on time or you'll have to get me a whole new one" Gerri joked as she slipped her arms around her husband.
October came quickly and so did their baby. The fluorescent light of the hospital room reflected off the heart shaped pendent resting next to her mother's chain as Gerri held her second child.
"Welcome home, little girl."