by Melody Clark
Edward shook his head, sipping from his drink. “As they say, be careful what you wish for.”
“Well, at least he might be able to standup to Granddad. The old fellow is a stern piece of work, but I gather you’ve heard about him.”
“A little. John, right?”
“Yes, John Croftdon, on Father’s side. Our mother’s father passed a number of years ago. Very nice man. Very kind. Stephen. He was a Stuart, if you know about that sort of thing.”
Edward nodded. “Vaguely.”
“Well, we’ll have to make up for that.”
“Perhaps. If there’s time once we’ve launched the project.” Edward placed his menu down. “I suppose I should ask how Tad, James and Wilse feel about my presence on the joint project. I intuited there was a bit of resentment.”
“Not toward you personally. Toward Bakunin Corp somewhat, yes.”
“I am Bakunin,” Edward said.
Andrew shrugged a little. “Let’s just say, everyone is happy that you’ll be on board. In fact, they’re jealous that I’ve had more of a chance to work with you and get to know you. I’m afraid you’re going to be subject to a certain degree of fraternal initiation.”
“Everyone is glad,” Edward said, smiling in earnest. “Even Tad?”
“Tad is a good man. He’s a doctor, so he’s particular. And, well, he’s a force of nature. You’ll get to know him better in time.”
“Which is why I think it best we keep this on a business level,” Edward said. “A professional one. You and I have always been friendly. I’d rather not have too negative an experience while I’m over there. I think an amicable course is the best one.”
“I promise you I will see to it that it is. I’m just stunned Wendell agreed to this joint project after so many years of resisting the very idea.”
Edward leaned forward slowly, considering, all the way to the table’s edge, the gravity of the information he was about to impart. “I think it’s only fair that I tell you something my father would rather I not. A large portion of his wealth has been, well, swindled from him. He’s still very, very wealthy, but he’s not the impermeable force he once was.”
“Yes, I’m sorry. We’d heard something of that.”
“To be honest, I think that’s the actual reason for this project.” Edward leaned forward again, looking around them. He lowered his voice a notch. “I also have been asked to do something I’m not going to do. I hope the very fact I’m informing you of the request that was made to me will assure you of my good intent. The last thing I want is to harm your family in any way. But I was asked to survey and report back on any additional changes that have been made to the code you have on hand. I’ve refused, but I wanted you to know that the overture was made to me.”
Andrew’s eyes shone back at him. “Thank you, Eddie. Yes, we had been told that by our people. I somehow knew you would be forthcoming about it, though. Thank you.”
“Understand, I love my father, but he does verge on outright megalomania at times. I’m not going to be a tool for either side. I’m going to work with you to create the very best SAGE interface to Brice that we can, for the greater good of what we’re trying to accomplish, as saccharine as that sounds.”
“I couldn’t agree more. I might have used those very words.” Andrew extended his hand. “Equal partners.”
Edward nodded and shook the hand he was offered. “Equal partners.”
The flight had been the usual boring grind, which he had frittered away by playing chess on his handheld. He tried some music, watched bits of the movie, and tried to ignore the growing feeling of dread inside him. It almost felt like pressure building up. For how many years had he longed to come here? And how much was he dreading his arrival? Both measurements approached infinity.
“How you holding up?” Kentucky Sharpe asked, leaning near him.
“I am,” Edward replied. “Thanks for asking. Where is Arvo?”
“Back in the men’s room. Probably primping. Or planning his global takeover. One of the two.”
Edward laughed and stared toward the distant clouds beyond the plane. “I know it’s awful to say, but I cannot tolerate him. I wish Dad hadn’t forced him on me this trip.”
“Well, Wendell’s trying to protect you from Croftdon. That’s the way he sees it anyway.”
“He should be protecting me first from Arvo,” Edward said.
“Why do you think I’m here?” Ken asked with a chuckle. He again trained his eyes toward the window. “Look down there. Here it comes. That’s Ireland.”
Edward looked. It indeed was green. Very green. “That’s about how I thought it would look, having never flown over it before. Well, not since I was three months old and flying the other direction.”
Ken shrugged. “Their loss.”
“More like their conscious forfeiture,” Edward said.
“I’m sure it was a lot more complicated than that.”
“Maybe.”
The light streamed past him through the hired car windows as he stared dully out at all the directions. He was almost glad for the long drive from Heathrow to their hotel, despite the day cut in half and the hours dwindling. It still felt like late at night to early morning in his mind and yet here it was, 8 PM on another day. The end result would have him at the hotel, though, with sleep an easy transition, except for one detour on the way.
Arvo had already started his spiel. “They will try to undermine your association with Bakunin. They will attempt to sway you to their side, their sympathies, you have to remember who these people are –”
Edward surfaced roughly from his reverie, turning around with a sharp look in that man’s direction. “Do you really think you need to explain that to me, Arvo?”
“I know you know it intellectually, but emotionally is another matter. They are the competition now.”
“Can you imagine how many times I’ve heard that story from my father? How many times I have had it drilled into me? This is already going to be an incredibly difficult, awkward experience for me. I do not need you to reinforce that with me.”
“I’m sorry, Edward, but I’ve been given strict orders –”
“You do not need to rebuild the firewall, Arvo. It’s never going down.” Edward motioned toward the motorway. “Where are we going? Croftdon House is in another direction, according to my GPS.”
“We’ll be stopping at the executive hotel suite first and then go to Croftdon house come the morning,” Arvo said.
“No, I’m going there now. Tonight.”
“You haven’t taken your allergy medications yet,” Arvo said. “You know what the allergist cautioned you about regarding your meds.”
“I’m a grown man, Arvo. I’ve been managing those things for myself a while now. I want to go to the Croftdon house and see it. For my own reasons. If you want to stay behind, that’s fine. I can drive myself.”
“I’ll go with you,” Ken said.
“Thanks,” Eddie replied with a smile.
“I’m going, too, believe me,” Arvo said. “I’m not letting you near those people without a buffer.”
Edward shook his head. “I’ll be the arbiter of that, Arvo, not you.”
Arvo shot a hard glare at his superior. “Then you’ll answer to your father.”
“No problem. I’ve been doing that for a long time, too.”
The mansion itself, he already knew, had been built in the 18th century on top of the grounds of the old estate. In that area had once stood outbuildings of the older estate, the whole house ruins of which still existed and dated well into the 14th century. Croftdon House, how it was generally known, was a warm gold brownstone with a very old brick fence mounted with a more modern mild steel gate. The gate bore the original wrought iron image of a swan.
Edward inhaled deeply and opened the car with a sharp jerk of the handle. Even his first step out onto the propert
y he experienced in slow motion. He had been here. He had been here as an infant. He tried to imagine himself in the arms of total strangers. Tried to imagine himself with familiars who were entirely unfamiliar.
He felt something. Something. He couldn’t say what. He reached up to touch the swan emblem and then laid a hand on the brickwork beyond it.
“My ancestors lived on this land for centuries,” Edward said aloud, to Ken who was at his side.
“Shouldn’t I be able to feel something?”
“Maybe you are, but you’re not letting it in,” Ken said.
“Maybe.”
“Or maybe you can’t feel anything because you’re Wendell Bakunin’s son now,” Arvo replied.
“I am, but must one eradicate the other?” Edward asked.
Edward held onto the brick for a moment, considering the dust that had collected on his fingers. He turned one way and then the other, surveying the full sweep of his ancestral land. Beyond the gate, he could see evidence for the gardens he knew filled much of the property. The ivy embraced one side of the house. He knew there to be a small family graveyard, just beyond the wing. The last person buried there had been his biological mother.
Some pressure welling up inside of him made it hard and harder to breathe. He turned his face away from the past and toward the newer gate, only to see the distant detail of the old mansion. Somewhere, a rustling presaged the breeze that blew through him and played faintly in his hair.
“I want to go now,” Edward said shortly, turning back toward the car.
“Excellent idea,” Arvo said.
The crisp sound of the mansion’s front door opening broke through Eddie’s train of thought as he reached for the car. He abandoned the effort and looked around toward the sound.
Out stepped Andrew and a slightly older man whom Edward recognized as Thaddeus. Tad, as he was called, had his arms folded. He sported his usual expression of skeptical if somewhat fond suspicion.
“Eddie!” Andrew called out to them as he walked down the steps to the pathway out to the gate. “We weren’t expecting you until the morning!”
“Good going, Eddie, we’re stuck now,” Arvo muttered, where only Eddie and Ken could hear.
“I’m sorry,” Edward called back toward the house, “I had just intended to take a quick look. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
“You’re not disturbing us, don’t be ridiculous,” Andrew called out, laughing. “Come in, see the house, see everyone, meet James and Wilse. I insist.”
“Well, we’re really stuck now,” Arvo whispered.
Edward swung a glare at him. “You can wait in the car.”
“Your father would kill me–”
“I take full responsibility,” Edward replied, in a low voice to his two companions. “We won’t be long. I am about to enter the family estate of the family that rejected me and confront them. This event is going to be awkward and painful enough without you glowering at me the whole time I’m in there. Now wait in the damned car.”
“Fine by me,” Arvo said, climbing back into the rear seat and slamming the door behind him.
Ken came up around to stand between the car and Edward. “You all right?”
“No,” Edward whispered, “but I know how to fake it well. I’ve been doing it for ages.”
Edward walked forward until he stood within reach of the two men he knew to be his full biological brothers – Andrew, whom he knew well, and Tad, who he knew less well, while thinking Tad probably preferred it remain that way.
Edward extended his hand. “Hello, Tad. Good to see you again.”
Tad smirked but gave the other man’s hand a perfunctory shake. “You almost sounded like you meant that.”
“Funny, I almost did.”
Tad shook his head. “I see you haven’t lost your saturnine sense of humor.”
“Nor you your natural charm.”
“Will you two please stop,” Andrew said, stepping out of the way for Edward to pass. “We need to welcome Eddie home. It’s been too long already. Let’s not delay matters.”
Edward turned away quickly to a familiar figure beside him. “First, I should introduce my personal assistant, Kentucky Sharpe. We call him Ken. Despite his name, he’s a Native Canadian, but he seems to endure the ways of the anglo Yankee fairly well. Ken, these are Thomas Croftdon’s sons, Andrew and Thaddeus.”
Ken nodded to them. “I’ve been anxious to meet you. Eddie has told me a lot about you.”
“He has?” Tad asked, looking at Edward in surprise. “I would have thought we were a shoddy secret that overshadowed his now legendary greatness once he sprung fully formed from the golden sweat off Wendell Bakunin’s immortal brow.”
“You’re the only one who thinks I’m great, Tad,” Edward said, “or you must because you keep pointing it out when no one else does.”
Andrew snorted out a laugh at Edward’s comments before he opened the entry door. “Eddie, welcome home.”
If touching the brick wall outside had netted nothing, his primary reaction to walking into his ancestral home was an all-encompassing dividend of self-doubt. It made him feel even smaller and less significant than usual. He wondered if that was some primal reaction to his memory of the last time he had been here, when he was an infant who had apparently not passed muster.
It looked more modern than he had expected. It had clearly been extensively renovated. The great room was still big and open, now occupied by well-appointed aggregates of expensive tasteful furniture. Between them and the great room stood two younger men. One was perhaps in his early 20s, the other looked to be in his mid-20s. The older one was notably darker-haired than Eddie and the others. He determined that might be Wilse, Thomas’ nephew whom he had raised.
“Eddie,” Andrew said, as if he had been waiting to say this for a long time, “this is James and Wilse. Wilse is the son of our uncle George, who passed away. His mother moved back to her native Germany, but Wilse wanted to stay here and so he has lived with us ever since.”
“Very nice to meet you both,” Edward said against a rising dryness taking over his mouth.
The two younger men seemed to face him with honest smiles. He shook Wilse’s hand and then turned toward James to do the same. But the younger man threw his arms around him. He hugged him so tightly Eddie doubted he could breathe.
He waited awkwardly for the contact to end.
“I’m sorry,” the young man said, his voice tight and his gaze unwavering. “I’ve waited a good while to meet you, yes?”
“Thank you,” Eddie said, more comfortable to be able to step away. “As I have you. All of you. You have a lovely home and grounds. It’s very impressive.”
Eddie felt his presence immediately, even though he didn’t know he was there yet. That presence impacted him like the sizzle on his skin from an approaching electrical storm. It seemed an intense, immediate energy that everything in Edward instantly recognized, as if deeply linked via unseen connections to his inner core.
That presence spoke forcefully with an older and deeper voice. It might have been the voice of god for the chill that ran through Edward when he heard it. It made him feel like a shadow had just walked across his grave.
That voice said, “Did you really think you would be able to come in here and meet us like you were just a new employee?”
Edward turned slowly in the shadow’s direction. He had met the man just briefly, years and years before, but he knew the man was Thomas Croftdon. His biological father. He knew it. Knew it. In his bones, he knew it.
“Mr. Croftdon,” he said, trying to sound confident while offering his hand. “I’m very happy to formally meet you, I’m Edward – ”
Thomas replied like a first burst of thunder, cutting cleanly through Eddie’s introduction while ignoring his outstretched hand, “I gave you that name. Did you really think you needed to introduce yourself? I know who y
ou are. Very well. Trust me.”
Edward, struck silent, stood there in the margin, with nothing in him to say. He withdrew his hand and tried to scrape up a suitable reply.
“I’m sorry, sir, I’m afraid I don’t understand your anger –”
“It isn’t anger, damn it!” Thomas snapped. “It’s thirty years of frustration. I’ve rarely been able to communicate with you, at Wendell’s insistence. This visit almost seems like a miracle to me. I have been extremely worried about you for a long time –”
“Not for very long, given the circumstances,” Edward replied, the impetus for his own anger having come out of nowhere.
Thomas smiled a soft understanding. “Good, now your anger comforts me. It shows me we still mean something to you. You’ve not left us entirely.”
