He started to turn and stopped, staring at his feet, and I knew he was debating whether to look at me before he walked away forever. I was silent. If he needed to leave my parents’ house without ever laying eyes on me again, I wanted him to turn and go.
He raised his eyes, and the soft light of the porch lamps reflected in their depths. “Remember what I told you this morning, Ms. McIntyre. You were meant to do it.” He turned, resolute. The sidewalk was lit like a runway that would take him away from me forever.
He’d rounded his car and opened the door before I lurched from my stupor as though I’d been picked up and shaken. “Isaac!” Heedless of the wet pavement, the cold, my mother’s voice calling me back, I ran.
He stood and waited, the faint crease of his brow disclosing his bewilderment.
I stopped a foot in front of him, hugging my arms around myself to keep from grabbing hold of him, and stared up into his eyes, close range. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry my family did this to you.” As if a switch was thrown, I felt the cold, rain-soaked asphalt beneath my feet and the drizzle of light rain on my face. I felt the reality of never seeing him again. A concentrated shudder began in my chest. I locked my teeth together and fought tears.
“I don’t hold you responsible, Ms. McIntyre.” Drops beaded in his hair like tiny crystals.
What’s in a name? Sometimes everything. “Please don’t call me that.”
He took pity on me. “Erin. I don’t hold you responsible.” He stepped closer, mindful of my feet, and took my face in his warm hands. One thumb moved over my quivering lips, the other wiped wetness from my face, and I wasn’t sure if I was crying or it was just rain. “You’re freezing,” he said. “Go back inside.”
I untwisted my arms and burrowed into his chest, sure he would push me away. His heart beat just beneath my ear, strong and steady. His arms slid around me, more to warm than to embrace, I thought. His spicy aftershave, barely detectable this late in the day, blended with the smell of the rain and the subtle musky scent I recognized from the one night we had been this close.
“Will you kiss me?” I mumbled the request into his chest.
I knew he heard me, because his chest flexed beneath my cheek. He loosened his hold, and I braced for the refusal he had every right to make. His body twisted, repositioning, and his hand slipped beneath my chin to tip my face up. His back to his car—and my house—he pulled me in and leaned his face to mine. I stretched on my toes to meet him, my body arcing into his.
Our first and only kiss had been a trial run—cautious, hesitant. An exploratory assessment. This was none of those things. Our lips met, and his eyes closed as if in inescapable surrender; mine fell shut as his mouth claimed mine. Spark. Ignition. Detonation. Fireworks. The hand at my jaw skimmed behind my neck, forked into my hair, and cradled my head. Prying my mouth open, he swept his tongue across mine. My feet were no longer planted on the ground. I was no longer a singular entity. I was a million bits of chemical flame, illuminating the sky for one dazzling moment before vanishing.
The sweet friction of his lips sliding against mine, pressing forward, pulling back, a fraction harder and deeper with each advance, made me breathless. He led without controlling, setting the pace as I dragged him closer. Nothing mattered but the small portion of the universe we inhabited. An insignificant bubble of time and space that belonged to us. As angled as my body was, there was no danger of toppling backward. His arms were firm, one at the small of my back and the other inclining my head just so. He held me securely, but I was falling all the same.
The rain had grown heavier. No thunderstorm, but drops had begun to form. I felt them on my lashes and the strands of wet hair affixed to my face. I heard them pattering against the roof of his car. When he withdrew his mouth from mine, I felt the drops on my lips. I opened my eyes to his. They were as dark and mysterious as they’d ever been.
“Go back inside now. It’s cold, and you’re getting soaked.”
Lower lip between my teeth, I took in every detail of his face, committing it to memory. “I want to come live in the city you plan someday. Will you let me know when you’ve done it? I want a little cottage like Tuli’s. And a dog like Pete.” And a man like you. Strong. Kind. Honest.
“I’ll hit you up. Save you the best tiny old house I can find. Build you one and make it look old, if that’s what you want. Please go inside, Erin.”
I nodded, thankful for rain that hopefully blended my tears away.
He leaned his forehead to mine and sighed. “You’re gonna be okay. I believe that. I want you to believe it too.”
My throat constricted. It hurt to swallow. “Will you be okay? You didn’t get what you wanted.” My father would likely sustain both his reputation and fortune, though perhaps Isaac was right in his prediction of what the joint treacheries of his eldest son and one of his oldest friends would do to him. That cost was immeasurable.
“I’m good. And I didn’t really know what I wanted until now.”
I leaned up, palms holding his face, and kissed him once more—a chaste graze of our lips, nothing more. “Go get it, Isaac.”
His hands at my waist squeezed and let me go. I ran back to the house. The front door was closed, and I heard nothing when I opened it. No yelling, no conversation, no barking—nothing. When I turned back to shut the door, Isaac’s car was pulling away.
chapter
Twenty-six
My parents were so silent, I almost passed them without knowing they were in the great room. I heard Jack’s whine and turned my head. The only light in the room came from the lightly flocked, angel-laden tree, strung with hundreds of white lights and reflective silver ornaments. Mom perched on an ornate chair near the fireplace, posture straight as a queen, Jack at her feet. My father, feet away, sat with his head in both hands, elbows on his knees.
I switched on a lamp and they all started, Mom squinting in annoyance and Jack stuffing his face between her leg and the chair.
Before I could speak, she asked, “What’s going on between you and that boy? Is that the cause of what happened at your grandparents’ home a week ago?”
“Isaac is a man, not a boy—”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I kinda don’t care what you mean right now, Mom. And Grandpa was the cause of what happened last week.” My father hadn’t moved beyond his flinch when the lamp came on. “Daddy, call Rhett. Ask him to meet us at the office. Tell him it’s an emergency, but make sure he understands not to contact anyone else about it. I’m going to get dressed.”
His face, full of grief, emerged from his hands, years older than it had looked an hour ago. “You’re going with me?” He deserved everything happening to him, but I didn’t intend to let my brother and Hank Greene get away with what they’d done, and there were dozens of people dependent on JMCH for their livelihoods.
“Yes,” I answered. “I’ll be back down in five minutes.” I called Foster while I changed into jeans and pulled my boots from the back of my closet.
He went from stunned to livid in five seconds flat and agreed to look into the legal implications and liabilities immediately since the attorney Daddy kept on retainer might not be reachable until Monday. Then he said, “Fuck—Spellman may have been referred or hired by Hank when prior legal counsel retired. Tell Dad to hold off calling him until I do some digging.”
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, overwhelmed. “Jesus.”
“This isn’t your responsibility, Erin. The guy that brought this to Dad’s attention – Isaac? He’s in finance, right? He can help with this.”
“I appreciate what you’re trying to say, but please don’t patronize me. I can help with this. And Isaac has resigned, so you and I are it.”
“I didn’t mean to— Wait, he resigned? Why? How do you know he isn’t involve—”
“He isn’t.”
He sighed. “Okay. Talk soon.”
Our in-house IT guy, Rhett, had seen too many white-collar-crime movies. Whe
n he realized his part in helping secure JMCH from further financial loss, his eyes bugged like Jack’s did when someone said, “Turkey jerky.” He wondered aloud whether Hank might show up, mobster style, to destroy the evidence and gun down the witnesses, or if he was more likely to flee to the Caribbean on one of multiple passports.
“Just copy the damned hard drive. This isn’t Law and Order, for chrissake.” My father stormed out of Hank’s office and went next door to his.
“This is pretty painful for him,” I said. “It’s not meant to be directed at you.”
“Sure felt like it was at me,” Rhett mumbled.
“Have you had dinner? I missed mine, and I’m going to order a pizza.”
He perked up and gave me his order, and I walked around the corner to Daddy’s office. My father was opening the little cabinet above his credenza that served as a liquor cabinet. He grabbed a decanter of something amber-colored and splashed a liberal amount into two short glasses. He handed one to me. I wasn’t generally a straight-up whiskey sort of girl, but knowing Daddy, it was high-end stuff and it had been one hell of a day.
I took the glass and sipped. My stomach burbled like it had been rudely awoken. I was about to ask my father what he wanted on his pizza when he said, “What the hell am I going to do about your brother? I’ve got to tell Rhett who to lock out as soon as he finishes what he’s doing. Leo should be on that list. Jesus Christ. I’ve done everything for that boy.”
“That boy is a thirty-two-year-old man who stole from his father. And maybe doing everything for him was the problem.”
He was silent several minutes and then said, “Damn inconvenient time for Isaac to resign. I need someone who knows finance to keep everything working until we can get someone new in here as CFO.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
He flinched and scowled at me, like I’d just spoken out of my forehead.
“He owes you nothing.”
“But his coworkers—”
“Are your employees and your concern.” I slapped the glass down on his desk, splashing ten or twenty dollars’ worth of liquor onto it. “Your friend—Zeke?—he had two kids, Isaac’s cousins. His father lived with them too. And when Isaac’s parents died in a car accident, making him a ten-year-old orphan, his Uncle Zeke and Aunt Selma took him in. That’s who you stole from.”
“Jesus Christ.” He slumped into his desk chair in his ridiculous sweater and stared into his glass. “I didn’t want to cut him out. I fought it, but they weren’t going to agree to fund it with… There wouldn’t have been a company at all.”
Clarity. Blinding clarity. “Grandpa Welch wanted him out because he was black. And you agreed?”
“If I’d said no, there wouldn’t have been a company at all.”
I sat in one of the chairs in front of his desk. “You don’t know that. Some other funding opportunity might have come up. All that can be proved now is that you caved and betrayed a friend for money.”
“I’m not like your Grandpa Welch—”
“Which part of him? The racist part? Or the part suffering from insatiable greed? What you are in deed, you are.” I shook my head. “Funny, isn’t it, that Nana is where I got that?” I picked up my glass and took a bigger swig. It went down my throat like molten lava, and my eyes watered. “Goddamn, this family is fucked. Up.”
“But we’re your family.”
I couldn’t reply to that. “I’ll help you till the end of the month. And then I’m done here.”
“Princess—”
“No, Daddy, I’m not your princess. I’m not that girl anymore. I don’t know where I’m going yet, but it’s a big wide world, and I’m too young to give up and throw in the towel on my life.”
“Is that what you’ve been doing here?”
“My ex-boyfriend, Chaz, proposed to me junior year, right before spring break. In front of all our friends. I cared about him, but I wasn’t in love with him. And I think, even if I had been, I wouldn’t have wanted to be twenty-one and engaged. So I said no, and we broke up.
“A few months later, he had a wreck a few blocks from school. He didn’t survive. And ever since then, I’ve had recurrent nightmares about that night. I drove my roommate batshit those last few months, waking her up crying or yelling out. That’s why I barely graduated. You and Mom thought I was partying or maybe that I’m just dumb, but I was in so much pain.”
“We never thought you were dumb—”
“Well, you sure as hell didn’t think I was smart.” My head swam, whether from anger or alcohol on an empty stomach, I didn’t know. I put the glass down.
“Why didn’t you tell us this before?”
“We’re not that kind of family, are we? I learned really early that I was there to be Mommy’s little dress-up doll. Daddy’s little princess. If I didn’t like something, I was supposed to smile through it and pretend. Mom groomed me to be just like her, and neither of you thought I was capable of following my dreams. I wasn’t going to let you make that decision for me. I was going to take care of everything, go to grad school, get a fellowship to pay for it, show both of you how capable I was. And then everything went off the rails.”
I heard Isaac’s voice from this morning, or a hundred years ago. The hardest thing to do when you realize you’re off course is make the decision to get back on.
“Your mother and I just wanted to protect you—all of you—”
“Let me give you a little free amateur therapy. Leo stole from you. He’s compromised the quality and maybe the safety of the houses he’s built, hiring drinking bros who may not be qualified to tackle a DIY project, let alone professional construction. You’re humiliated and hurt. But if you don’t give him serious consequences, he’ll just keep doing this shit the rest of his life. What he did is small potatoes next to Uncle Hank, and I know Leo’s your kid. But what would you do if he wasn’t?”
His eyes fell to his glass again and I hoped he would listen but knew he might not.
“I’m going down to my office for a few minutes and ordering some pizza because I’m starving. You and I are having pepperoni—unless you want to share Rhett’s hamburger, anchovies, and pineapple.”
• • • • • • • • • •
I walked down one flight of stairs and passed Isaac’s office. The door was open. His diplomas were both gone from the wall; his bookcase was empty of finance books. The room was dark but for the hallway light spilling in from the doorway. Without switching on a light, I sat down in his desk chair and imagined myself standing in that doorway, wide-eyed and smiling and holding a stack of file folders. Excuse me, Mr. Maat?
I’d been so hacked off at his groundless animosity. His inexplicable exasperation. His conceited prejudgment. My first impression had been so inaccurate. He had so many reasons for not welcoming another McIntyre into his life, and yet he was one of the most patient, compassionate men I’d ever known.
My phone pocket buzzed. Foster was heading over. He felt almost certain that Russell Spellman was on the level, but after tonight, none of us trusted our instincts. He wanted to be here when we called him. He also wanted to confer with Daddy about our elder brother.
Foster: Dad could be liable if one of Leo’s dickwad friends did substandard work, especially if they were unlicensed. JMCH may need to provide free inspections and repairs.
Me: JFC. Thank you for helping out.
Foster: Of course. We’re family.
Foster: Also, I’m ready to give Leo the beatdown he’s been asking for since he urinated on my signed copy of The Giving Tree.
Me: I forgot about that.
Foster: I have not.
Hank called Daddy on Saturday, panicked when he couldn’t get into the system, but Foster had predicted that likelihood and fabricated a plausible explanation. I heard my father delivering it when I came downstairs for a coffee refill.
“Yeah, the whole network crashed Friday night. Rhett’s working to get it back up and running by Monday or Tue
sday,” Daddy said. He was standing in the kitchen, staring into the backyard, phone to his ear. “The Christmas party? Weekend after next, I think. Yep. See you Monday.” He put his phone on the counter, unaware of my presence. “Goddamn it, Hank,” he said under his breath. “Goddamn it.”
Monday came. Daddy met Hank at the door and led him into one of the conference rooms, where Russell Spellman and a security guard waited. He was required to turn in his keys and fobs and given two boxes of his personal belongings. He was not allowed to go up to his office, and was informed that he was no longer allowed on the premises from that moment on. Finally, he was advised to retain his own legal counsel.
When he walked robotically across the atrium, white as a sheet, I watched him from the second floor, where Isaac had stood to watch me arrive on my first day.
Cynthia, almost as appalled as we were for the failure to have detected Hank’s deceit, was gracious when I turned down her invitation to join Sales. She relinquished Ashley to be trained for the client liaison position I would be vacating after Christmas. Ashley, as expected, was delighted to escape her inconsistent paychecks. She was also happy to escape Joshua, whom she couldn’t stand.
The DA sent a certified fraud investigator to find out how much money had been siphoned and where it had gone. We were told that it could be months before there was an arrest made. Between the shock of Hank’s duplicity, the upcoming holidays, and the need to replace the CFO and financial analyst immediately and the client liaison by the end of the month, my parents couldn’t cope with the idea of prosecuting their son.
They did, however, wring enough confessions out of him to fire Phil and every other contractor who’d abetted his skimming operation. Daddy wanted to fire Leo, too, but they compromised by demoting him back to construction with zero management or fiduciary power. Leo being Leo, he was an ungrateful jerk about the demotion, cursing and threatening to go work for a competitor.
Daddy’s face went red. “Good—it’ll give me even more of a competitive edge if they hire your incompetent ass!”