by B. E. Baker
“I know you're leaving soon, but I've got another question for you,” I say, my pulse pounding in my ears. “Have you talked to James Fullton much since graduation?”
“First off, he's your age, so you saw him a lot more than I did, but second, graduation?” Trig snorts. “He didn't graduate, remember?”
Of course I do. Of all people, I’m not likely to forget. “What I mean is, since he left Harvard, do you ever talk?”
“James and I never really saw eye to eye.”
I find that very hard to believe. “You're two peas in a pod.”
Trig makes a choking sound. “I'm going to pretend you didn't just compare me to that spoiled, entitled, playboy wannabe.”
“That might be a little harsh.” But his critical words somehow cheer me up.
“Why bring him up?” Trig asks. “He missed the bachelor party, but according to Geo, he's coming to the wedding. Are you worried he's going to punch you or something?”
I hadn't even thought about that. “You think he's still that mad at me?” Which of course, he must be. Why else would he hire someone to pretend to be my girlfriend to spy on me and sell my work secrets? For that matter, how did he even know about SITB? No one in my life knows about it, and I never even told Cynthia my real name. I guess that's why Gerty saying James Fullton's name sort of blindsided me. I expected it to be corporate espionage fueled by a competitor of LitUp, but not something linked to my old college days.
“James Fulton the Fourth should have majored in grudges at Harvard,” Trig says. “He could have taught the upper level classes. In fact, he might have been able to teach a thing or two to the infamous Count of Monte Cristo.”
Trig sure has some strong feelings about this. “You said you never even talked to him. Why do you think he’s so great with grudges?”
“You and James were a year older than me so we didn't have many classes together, but he left his laptop open that one time. When he fell asleep in the library.”
I remember. Trig sent out an email from his account. It was obviously a joke, but it was a little outrageous. A love letter to a particularly awful professor who happened to be male. People weren't so accepting of homosexuality at the time, either. James and the Latin professor both took a lot of heat for it, especially when Professor Snider turned out to actually be gay.
“Is he still mad about that? It was a joke.”
“He was irate at the time,” Trig says. “But I figured he got over it quickly. I didn’t realize he hadn’t until he tanked one of my deals three years back, for a product called Hyped. It was an appetite suppressant that made Fen Fen look like Chiclets. We had FDA approval, and everything was in place. Then our funding fell through, and our suppliers backed out, and a million other little things happened all at once. Brekka and I about went crazy trying to stick our fingers into every leak that popped up. I've never had a deal completely fall apart like that. The more we dug into the oddities, like the bank yanking funding at the last minute per some buried clause, the less we could figure out the cause.”
“That sucks,” I say.
“It was worse than I’m making it sound. It was like death by a thousand cuts. Each individual thing seemed solvable, but then something else, and something else. We didn’t sleep for a week, trying to fix the house of cards as it collapsed one level at a time.”
“How do you know it was James?”
“I had no idea what was going on at the time, but I got an email a week later,” Trig says. “It read, 'Hyped for Snider. We're finally even. JF'.”
“He waited more than ten years,” I say. “That's messed up.”
“And in his mind, it was completely even that he tanked a fifty million dollar deal because I wrote an email that was obviously a joke ten years ago.”
I swear under my breath.
“He was a lot madder at you,” Trig says.
And I still haven't gotten an email. Which probably means that according to James' ledger, we aren't square yet.
“What's going on?” Trig asks. “You worried about your launch?”
“Now I am,” I lie.
“Want me to dig into what he's been up to lately?” Trig asks. “I don't have the reach I used to have, but I employ some pretty hard hitting investigators.”
“Nah,” I say. “I appreciate it, but I'll handle this myself.”
“You got him kicked out of Harvard,” Trig says.
“He did that to himself. He shouldn't have been cheating.”
“He swore he wasn't. He said he only had the answers in case he got nervous.”
“Do you believe that?” I ask.
Trig sighs. “I think you were pissed about that stupid girl you thought he stole from you, and you didn't care whether he was cheating or not. You only knew he had it because he offered you a copy of the same cheat sheet. He thought you were friends, whether you did or not, and you threw him to the dogs.”
A pang of the old guilt eats at me. “So he cheats his way through school, and I'm the bad guy.”
“I didn't say that. In fact, I never understood how you and Luke could stand him.”
I never liked James. I hated all the legacies at Harvard, including Trig. When Luke started a year after me, he thought I was close minded. He liked everyone back then, just like he does today. Luke always gives people the benefit of the doubt, and for the most part, people don't let Luke down.
“Has James done something?” Trig asks.
“No.” I don’t want to get into any details of my first epic failure.
“So why are you asking me about this?” Trig asks.
I sigh. “He might have tried to steal my tech on this startup. Only one really resourceful employee kept that from happening.”
Trig's quiet for a moment. “I think your older brother may be James’ only real friend in the world. He cheated back in school because he was lazy and he didn’t think there would ever be consequences for someone like him. He's a smart SOB, and he doesn't like anyone. Except he liked Luke a lot.”
I think Trig may be right. “Which means he never did anything to me before. . . because I was in business with Luke.”
“You're lucky you’ve been working with your brother,” Trig says. “Because hurting you hurts Luke, and I can't see James doing that. But watch your back out on your own. In his mind, you’re fair game now.”
“Alright, well thanks for the advice.”
I lean back in my chair and think about what Trig said. I'd met James' attack and defended against it this time, but he tanked my first venture. Why didn't I get an email after that one? Is he going to plague me forever unless I’m hiding behind Luke?
I check my email like an idiot, even rummaging around in the spam, hoping stupidly for something from James that I missed. No luck.
I send the numbers to Trig and head out to grab Winnie for our picnic. He's bouncing up and down like Tigger when I reach home, but he hasn't destroyed any of the piles of wedding junk. He didn’t knock over any of the chairs set up in the backyard either. I squat down to eye level and rub him all over. “Good boy, Sir Winston. You’re a good boy.”
His mouth always pulls back into a big smile and his entire body shakes with his tail when I come home. James may hate me forever, but at least this guy loves me.
When I stand up, Winnie bounds over and grabs the running leash between his teeth. “Not a jog today, boy. We're going to play, though.” I snag the bag with his tennis balls and he leaps even higher, incorporating a few spinning circles into his jumps.
I throw a picnic blanket into the back of my car, along with Winnie's ball bag, and he leaps into the passenger side, slobbering on my leather seats. I usually drive my Range Rover when I take Winnie with me, but Gerty's already seen my Tesla, and I don't want her thinking I've got two cars. Not until it's the right time to explain why I have four.
I meet the driver from Dave Poe's BBQ at the edge of my driveway. He's holding the bag for me when I open the gate. “Thanks Steve.”
“You're welcome Mr. Manning.”
It pays to always use the same people if you tip well, which I always do.
Gerty pulls up in front of the park at the same time I do. She unbuckles Troy, and I clip Winnie into his retractable leash. Winnie bolts toward Troy and I lock the leash before he can bowl him over.
“That's a cool leash,” she says.
“It's almost thirty feet long when I want it to be. It lets him run around me fifteen times before going another direction and knocking me over like a bowling pin. I'm guessing Troy will enjoy watching it.”
I pulled Winnie up short, but Troy closed the gap between boy and dog immediately. He’s currently in danger of having his face licked off. He doesn't seem to mind, but Gerty's expression is priceless.
“I give him heartworm pills every month,” I say. “If that helps.”
“Boys and dogs. They're a match made in heaven, but also kind of gross.” I hand the leash to Troy and let him run around with Winnie for a bit. Even though it's a gorgeous day, there aren't many people in the park. Plus, as much as he whines and whimpers, Winnie always listens to me. The leash is more of a reminder to Winnie, than a safety protocol. Besides, it provides peace of mind for the other people around.
When Troy poops out, Gerty spreads the blanket so he has a place to collapse. I unclip Winnie's leash and throw the ball a few dozen times. Eventually, Winnie settles down on the blanket next to us.
“Troy loves dogs,” Gerty says. “But the one he sees the most won't fetch. Like, not at all.”
“I'm pretty sure Winnie would rather play fetch than eat filet mignon.”
“He's kind of dumb,” she says. “I'd always pick the filet.”
“Which is why we're the masters, and they're the pets.”
Gerty helps me take containers of meat and sides out of the bag, and then she starts pulling measuring cups out of her diaper bag.
“What are those for?” I ask.
Troy's gotten a second wind I suppose, because now he's throwing the ball for Winnie. It only goes five or ten feet, but Winnie doesn't care.
Gerty doesn't whisper, but she definitely speaks quietly. “Troy has type one diabetes. I need to measure his food and make sure he's eating the right amount, or I'll give him too much insulin.”
I heard of someone else whose little kid was diabetic, but I can't think who. Someone's friend or something? I wish I'd paid more attention so I would have something intelligent to say. “That must be really hard.”
She shrugs. “We're figuring it out. When I left early on my second day—” She chokes up and shakes her head.
“Is everything okay?”
She nods. “It's hard to leave him to go to work, that's all. Not everyone does such a good job monitoring his intake. If you're off by even a little bit.”
“That's a little scary. Gosh, are kids diagnosed this young very often?”
“No. It's very rare, thankfully.”
“Can his dad handle it?”
“He didn't even know for the first month after Troy was diagnosed, because he couldn't be bothered to check on us. The good news is that he doesn't ever try to take Troy. He can't see him unless he's supervised anyway, but I'd prefer he just stay away, honestly. I know that sounds terrible.”
“You just want what's best for your son. It sounds like what's best is not having much to do with his father.”
“Yep.”
“Do you miss his dad?”
She meets my eyes. “Not even a little bit. I miss having someone else to rely on, a partner, but if I'm being honest, Chris wasn't ever much in the reliability department.”
That sucks, but it lines up with what I saw when he came by to scream at her for taking state mandated levels of child support. What a loser.
I watch the gorgeous woman in front of me, her delicate hand measuring her son's food into cups carefully on a picnic. She's been there for me every time I needed it in the last two weeks, and it's been more often than I'd like to admit. She's wearing jeans and a t-shirt and her hair's pulled back into a ponytail. No high heels and impractical sheath dresses, no pretentious airs or complicated makeup. No expensive highlights, and her sunglasses look like they came from a convenience store.
I love all of it.
It's like coming home for the first time. I've been wishing I could find what Luke has, and what Trig has, but maybe I've been looking in all the wrong places. I open my mouth to ask her to come with me to my brother's wedding this weekend, but then I remember she had plans already. Besides, to take her with me, I'd need to tell her about SITB and that my real name is Paul Manning, not Jack Campbell. I'd have to explain that everything she knows about me is pretty much a lie, and that would destroy the entire evening.
An overwhelming desire to tell her grips me. I want someone other than Trig to know, to understand why I’m doing it. My reasons feel stupid and small all of a sudden, but I want her to tell me she gets it, that she understands.
But I have no idea whether she will. Doing something on your own is a preposterous idea. No one does something entirely on his or her own. Even at SITB, I developed the product I did because of my team. This woman takes care of her son, but to put food on the table, she has to rely on someone else to watch him. She didn't tell me about Troy or her ex at first. Maybe she'll understand why I’ve been lying. I hope she understands.
“Hey, so there's something I was going to talk to you about.”
“Yeah?” she asks. “Work something? Or personal?”
“Personal,” I say.
“Is this about how you know the James guy?”
“I—” I stop. “Uh, well. No, that's not what I was going to say, but I could tell you that if you want.”
“No, I'm sorry,” she says. “I was just thinking what a terrible person he'd have to be to do something like that, to lie to everyone about who he was and hide away and steal someone’s ideas like that. I've never understood shell companies and fake names. I mean, my ex tried stuff like that. He had this company, but when it didn't do well, he walked away from it and left the creditors holding the bag. He said that's why people have companies, to limit their liability. It just felt like another way to let other people deal with your mistakes instead of cleaning them up yourself. Family is the most important thing to me, and real family requires honesty.”
Her big eyes look up at me and I gulp. “Sometimes people set up companies so that they can do something without every single person around them watching them like fish in a bowl.”
“You think that's why this guy used a bunch of companies with other names?” She frowns.
“No, not James.”
She exhales. “Phew, because all I'm saying is that I support you, no matter what his reasoning was. That guy seems super shady.”
Maybe I shouldn't tell her about my fake name and company yet. She may need to get to know me a little better, or she might assume I'm just like her ex.
“I'm sorry I interrupted. What did you want to tell me?”
“Nothing big. I guess it is sort of business related,” I say. “I thought you should know that I told all my core employees when I hired them that I'd give them a one-eighth percent share in the company if they were dedicated and worked hard during the start-up phase. I gave Nancy a quarter percent share. After what you did to save us with your quick thinking and observant nature, I cut you in for a quarter percent too.”
Her mouth drops open. “I don't know what that means precisely, but I assure you I was just doing my job. Accounting already notified me that I'm being paid for two jobs this quarter. That's more than generous. You don't need to cut me into anything.”
It's already done, but I drop it for the time being. Tonight is not going like I expected. “Uh, right. Well, we can talk about the details on that later I suppose.”
Troy bumps into me then, and Winnie comes flying over next, upending the container of pulled pork.
“Winnie, no. Sit.” He hops over and sit
s where I point, his head pointing down shamefully.
Gerty helps me clean up the mess.
“Can I get a photo with your dog?” Troy asks, just as we finish.
I snap a few shots of Troy and Winnie, and text them to Gerty.
“I can take one if you want.” Troy holds out his tiny hand. I meet Gerty's eyes and she shrugs.
“Uh, sure.” I hand Troy my phone.
“Mom, you be in it too, like Winnie's getting a hug.”
We squeeze together and Troy pokes on my phone several times before he's finally satisfied enough to hand it back to me. I scroll through a bunch of awful photos, but I find one decent one. I favorite it and text it to Gerty, too.
The rest of the night goes well, but I don't bring up James, my real name, or her partial share in SITB again. I certainly don't invite her to Luke’s wedding.
But for the first time in my life, I have someone I wish I could take. For now, I guess that's enough.
14
Trudy
After working all day on Friday, my energy is zapped. I know that I’ve got to somehow make myself look fresh and ethereal so I can spend the evening being polite and friendly at Mary's rehearsal dinner. It doesn’t help that we have essentially no family, so most of the guests will be people I don’t know. I want to make a good impression for Mary’s sake, but I’d rather pretend I’m sick and stay home to watch Gilmore Girls.
I love my son every second of every day, but I’m a little too cranky with Troy’s buzzing exuberance tonight. I answer question after question with as much patience as I can muster, but the second his grandparents pick him up, I breathe a sigh of relief.
And then I feel guilty about it.
Which doesn’t stop me from collapsing on my bed and closing my eyes for one second to recover. I almost pass out and sleep through the entire rehearsal dinner, but my phone buzzes before I can drift off completely.
The corners of my mouth turn up. Jack. MISS YOU.
I don't waste any time replying. MISS YOU MORE.
MISS YOU THE MOST.
I'm beaming as I curl my hair and touch up my make-up. Then I put on the green dress I picked. It's so high waisted that it bells out right under my chest. Since I have a generous chest, it makes me look fat.
