I glanced over my shoulder and made sure Katherine was gone before speaking.
“I came to give you this.” From the back pocket of my jeans, I extracted a white envelope and approached. I’d almost lost my nerve when I found her sitting in my chair, the one I’d sat in for years across from Frank. For all his faults, his meddlesome ways, I missed him desperately.
By the time I reached the desk, Scott had already risen from the chair and was half sitting on the corner of the desk as casual as anything. His demeanor said he wasn’t breaking a sweat. Not like I was. This was it. Probably the last time I’d see him other than on a television screen. I held out the fat white envelope for him and waited. He stared at it for a while. Then, taking it from me, he dropped it on the desk like I’d doused it in a contagious disease.
“What is it?” he said, resentment filling his eyes. For a second, I thought I saw fear, but that had to have been a figment of my imagination coupled with lack of sleep.
Reaching in the tight front pocket of my jeans, I pulled out the diamond Tiffany wedding band and placed it on top of the envelope. Deep breath.
“Divorce papers. Don’t worry, they’re clean. I don’t want anything.” Once again, I waited for him to say something, do something, but his face remained completely inscrutable. “You can send those back to my lawyer…I’m…I’ll be out of town for a while.”
“What do you mean?” He looked genuinely perplexed. His brows drew together and stayed there.
I wasn’t going to explain it to him. Nor did I have any energy for an argument. I had no fight left in me. Maybe that’s what it took, for all hope to be lost before I could finally see beyond the fog of pain and grief, to come to the conclusion that we were essentially as wrong for each other now as we’d been over a decade ago.
“I mean, I’m done…this is my last day.”
“You gave two weeks’ notice––or have you forgotten? That’s two more days.”
“I’m done, Scott. I was here till midnight last night tagging each property with any pertinent information Katherine will need. You heard her, she’s got it all under control.”
Disbelief popped up on his face, then it changed to panic. “I may need you to answer questions when I go over them.” He gave me his best glare, which didn’t work. “You owe it to this company. At the very least to Frank.”
Shoving my hands into the back pockets on my jeans, I began to slowly back away. “Good luck with everything…I…I wish…”
“Where are you going?”
“I don’t know yet…” Fighting tears, I forced my lips to curl into a semblance of a smile. I shrugged. “You can have Manhattan.”
“Sydney…”
“I wish things could’ve been different…and…” My chin trembled. “And I’m sorry,” I forced out, my voice on the verge of cracking. As soon as I stepped out of the open doorway, the tears broke free and slid down my cheeks. I did what I’d come to do. I’d said goodbye.
Scott
Clutching a wine glass filled to the top, Devyn walked into the family room and fell into the oversized armchair next to mine. My parent’s townhouse was comfortable. Not my taste; my mother was partial to prints. But it was a home meant to be lived in. All the furniture custom made to accommodate my father’s size. Nothing the kids couldn’t play on. Besides the collection of surrealist art my mother had been accumulating for decades, nothing that couldn’t easily be replaced.
Dev stretched out her long legs and crossed her ankles. We’d both gotten our height and dark hair from Dad, but Devyn had my mother’s bright green eyes and sharp feline features. Smirking, she gulped her red wine.
“Mom said you won’t sign the divorce papers.”
Across the room, seated at a small table, my mother stared at her hand of cards with a mischievous smile. She was playing with Fallon, my oldest niece, while Carly, Jessie, and Lola watched TV. As if she’d heard us, her head moved to the left, her chin lowered, and her bright green eyes examined me from over the rim of her chunky red eyeglasses. I’d seen that look before. That was pity in her eyes.
We hadn’t said much since the funeral. That was two months ago, and we still hadn’t spoken about Dad being sick, hadn’t discussed my impending divorce, hadn’t fought over the fact that she’d known. I was still fucking bitter about it, but I wasn’t going to take it out on a seventy-year-old grieving widow. Even if she was a battle ax.
Still, I felt cheated. Out of time. Out of closure. Out of saying good bye to my father. Had I known, I would’ve been here. Had my wife told me, I wouldn’t be carrying around this guilt with me now. It was like Charlie all over again. I’d done right by the old man, though. He wanted me to run Blackstone and here I was, running Blackstone. The Lazy S was under Ryan’s care now and seemed to be doing fine without me.
Problem was, I wasn’t doing so hot without it.
I tore my eyes away to get a good look at my sister. She’d flown in with the kids for the weekend. Both of us had stayed close to home since my father had passed, both worried about Mom adjusting to life on her own. On that front, we needn’t have. Midge was handling it better than I was.
“When’s John flying in?”
When she didn’t answer right away, I threw Dev a sideways glance. A few rogue gray hairs along her hairline were the only hint she was older by five years. And the responsible one now. That hadn’t always been the case. Not so long ago she was the wild one, going from one boyfriend to another––something that used to drive Franklin batshit crazy––until she met John. Until she ran him over with her bicycle on her way to class and broke his arm. It so happened he was the TA of that class.
“Late tonight. They’re going public in a few days and he’s working out the kinks on the latest update.”
John had engineered his first app and sold it when he was still in grad school at Stanford. By the time he hit twenty-five, he’d made a fortune and was on his way to making more. My father had always been disparaging of John’s success because, according to Mr. Subtlety, most Silicon Valley success stories were “total bullshit” and would eventually be revealed as such. I’d liked John from the get-go. He was a decent guy who loved my sister and put up with her family. Mostly, I liked him because he didn’t give a precious fuck about earning my father’s approval.
“How does Mom know?”
Devyn hooked a lock of chin-length hair behind her ear and sipped her wine. “She spoke to Sydney.”
Not the answer I wanted, but the one I was anticipating. I returned to gazing at the bottom of my tumbler of Macallan.
“I didn’t know they were close.”
“You didn’t? How surprising.” Her delivery was so dry it forced me to take another drink. “Remember when Mom found the breast lump four years ago?”
I vaguely recalled it, but nodded nonetheless.
“I can see by the blank stare you don’t. Anyway––” my sister chided. “Carly had the chicken pox. It was bad, too. So nasty. Much worse than when Fallon had it, so I couldn’t leave her with John. He’s hopeless when it comes to illness. And Dad is…was––” she corrected, catching her mistake. She made a face, like remembering Dad hurt. “Dad was worse. He couldn’t stand to see Mom look vulnerable. So it was Sydney who went with her to get the biopsy. She took her to all her doctor’s visits.”