I turn to face him.
Did I hear that correctly?
“They still have to wait and see and she has to go in for lots of tests every few months to make sure that it doesn’t come back but it’s gone.” There’s a tear in the corner of his eye. I bring my finger to it and wipe it.
“I’m so happy,” I say, kissing him softly on the lips. “I’m so… she’s going to be okay.”
I let out a deep sigh of relief. I had only met her a few times but she’s a kindred soul, the kind that is rare in this world.
I didn’t want Henry to lose her. I didn’t want to lose her.
24
Aurora
Franklin gets home later that evening and I have a martini waiting for him, like a good 1950s housewife. He takes it, gives me a small peck on the cheek, and downs it.
“Hard day?” I ask.
He goes straight to his closet and changes out of his clothes. When he emerges, he is dressed in sweats and has a defeated look on his face.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“Your father… He is just so difficult.”
He wrestles with his thoughts before saying the word and I know that he had considered a few alternatives.
“You mean, he’s an asshole?” I ask, taking a sip of my own martini.
“Well, I wasn’t going to say that but there you go.”
“I could’ve told you that. What happened?”
“There’s just all this shit with the buyout. He has all these demands. He wants to hold onto a big portion of it, and a bunch of others. It wouldn’t interest you.”
I move my jaw slightly from one side to another and ball up my fists. I’m sitting next to him but my hands are buried behind me in the couch, out of sight.
“What would make you think that it wouldn’t interest me?” I ask. “I’m interested in Tate Media. It is my parents’ company.”
“Well, not anymore.”
“Did my father sign all the paperwork?”
He doesn’t answer. He knows what I’m getting at so I don’t push.
“So, what does he want?” I ask. “Now, you have piqued my interest.”
“More ownership of the shares. More control, what does anyone want?”
I’m about to question him some more when he changes the subject.
“So, what’s going on with you? Any plans for the future?”
I shrug and lean back into the sofa. It wraps around me like a thick warm shawl but the comfort that I feel is only an illusion.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say.
“We haven’t talked for a while, so I was just wondering what you wanna do with your life. You got your PhD. What are your plans now?”
The lines of concern between his two eyebrows relaxes and he looks at me with the face of someone who is genuinely interested.
“To tell you the truth, I have no idea. It’s hard to explain but I don’t really know what’s going on. Maybe I’m feeling a little bored. Maybe depressed but I don’t have another project lined up. I don’t have another class to take and so, I’m sort of…listless?”
“That’s a standardized test word,” he says with a smile.
I nod.
“Yeah, I may know one or two big words but what does that matter? What does that get me?”
“Listen, you are the daughter of parents who have built one of the biggest media empires in the world who is now married to a man who has acquired it and you can’t find a job? Well, then we have a real problem on our hands as a society.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. I don’t want to but the giggles just come out. You can say a lot of things about Franklin but you cannot say that he’s not charming.
“Seriously, though, do you want a job?” he asks.
“Is this what this is about?” I ask. “I mean, is this why you think I’m feeling a little depressed?”
“Well,” he says, spreading his arms around the back of the sofa and lifting his ankle onto one knee. “I have to tell you, not having something to do during the day is one of the major causes of depression. Everyone’s going to work. Everyone’s trying to achieve something and you’re just hanging around.”
“Are you saying that I’m being lazy?” I ask.
“No, I really don’t want to imply that,” he says quickly. “If you don’t wanna have a job and you want to be a stay-at-home wife, you want to pursue a hobby, or just hang out with friends, that’s perfectly fine with me. God knows we have the money but the thing that I was getting at is that you just don’t seem to be the type. You don’t know what to do with yourself. You like to work hard, otherwise you wouldn’t have gotten your PhD without anyone’s support. You like to pursue meaningful work and you shouldn’t apologize for that.”
“Would that be okay with you?” I ask.
He looks me up and down and nods his head.
“Of course. It would be more than okay. I would love it. That place is a shark tank and I need people on my side. Besides, I think the employees of Tate Media would appreciate having one of their own on board.”
I give him a slight nod.
“I really appreciate this,” I say, looking at him and taking his hand in mine. He glances down and waits for me to squeeze it.
This is probably the most genuine connection I’ve ever experienced with my husband up until this point.
He’s right, of course. I should have done this long ago. I’m not the type to do nothing and I don’t have many hobbies or interests outside of work.
“I’ve never felt welcome at that company with my parents being in charge,” I say after a long pause. “They were very controlling and everything had to be just so. Other people could make mistakes but I couldn’t. I was their daughter and I guess if I made mistakes it meant that they were making mistakes.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way.”
“I hope not. I only worked there as an intern one summer and I couldn’t handle it, not because of the work or the people but because of their micromanaging and second-guessing. I didn’t just report to my immediate superior, I had to also report up to them and… it just made everything unsuitable.”
“That’s not what I want this relationship to be,” Franklin says. “I don’t want to control you. I definitely don’t want that in the workplace.”
“So, you’re not going to watch my every move?” I ask.
He shakes his head no and says, “I trust you. Also, I know that you only have Tate Media‘s best interests at heart. I will not get involved with anything unless there’s a real dispute that I have to get to the bottom of.”
I think about the proposition and I like it. I love writing, I love words, and I love telling stories.
“So, what would I do there?” I ask.
“What do you want to do?” he asks. “Do you want to work in corporate? Oversee personnel, manage the kind of stories that we tell? Do you want to be the one who’s actually telling the stories? The crime division is doing well but that’s probably the one place you can’t get a position.”