“The problem is,” Richard said, “that it might end up this guy’s word against Will’s. He’s a great actor, and Will . . .”
“And I’m not,” Will said flatly. It was true, he’d always wavered between showing too much emotion or getting it under control and showing too little.
“You definitely didn’t inherit his charm,” Charlie admitted.
They all stared at Charlie.
“What? Look, it is possible that this guy is your biological father. It wouldn’t mean much, because you’ve never met him. But it’s possible. And that would make the rest tricky to disprove. Do you know anybody who was around then, who could swear that your mother raised you alone?”
“Along with her succession of boyfriends?” Will said. “I don’t know. No, I don’t think there’s anyone.” Lizzy popped briefly to mind, but she hadn’t known anything about his family life. Not that he’d want to drag her into it anyway. Who would have known his attempts as a child to keep his situation private would lead to such a mess. “I mean . . . CPS was involved for a while, back when my mother went to jail for six months. But that was when I was nine. He could probably make some excuse for why he wasn’t in their records at that time, maybe that she claimed to be a single mother.”
Dad sighed. “Well, I think the best we can do is to issue a statement saying that you’ve never met this man and there’s no father on your birth certificate.”
“Will that be enough?” Charlie asked.
Dad used his cane to help him shift his position in his chair. He looked uncomfortable, and Will wasn’t sure if it was the chair or the situation. “I really don’t know. I mean, we could request a paternity test, but . . .”
“But that doesn’t prove anything,” Richard finished. “Whether he is Will’s bio dad doesn’t mean Will knew it or that this guy was ever around.”
Dad nodded. “I don’t know that we can risk it. If the paternity test shows that he’s the father, then all the rest will seem probable, and Will doesn’t have anybody to disprove it. Handing him money won’t solve anything; it will just make Will look guilty of ignoring his dear old dad until forced to do otherwise by the publicity. We could hope for a negative on the test . . . but I’m hesitant to risk a positive.”
“You do have to wonder...” Charlie looked thoughtful. “I mean, does this guy even know? If Will’s bio mom slept around―sorry, Will―then this guy might think he’s Will’s dad, but couldn’t possibly know for sure. He might not even know how unlikely it is. Wait . . . Will, are you sure she didn’t have any longer relationships? Is there any possibility that this guy’s story has some truth, that maybe he was around when you were really little and you don’t remember?”
Will shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, if I was a toddler or something, I might not remember. I thought we lived with Grandma off and on when I was a baby. But she’s gone, and Mom’s gone, and I don’t know anybody else I could ask.”
“But surely any intelligent person would realize that a toddler wouldn’t remember anything from those years.” Richard was pacing now, fists clenched. “And this all started when you were announced as your dad’s successor. So either this guy knew for some time and wasn’t interested in doing anything about it until you became well known, or somebody’s paying him to say this. Or he’s just making it up.”
“Well,” Dad said, slowly and painfully using his cane to help himself to his feet―Will would offer to help, but he knew from experience that it was important to Dad to do it himself. “I think the next step is to issue the press release. I’ll go ahead and do that in both of our names if you don’t mind, Will. I think it would be good for people to know that I’m with you on this, so they don’t think it’s a surprise to me.”
Will nodded. He waited until everybody else had left the conference room, then sat back down and put his head in his hands.
He had been struggling for almost a year now to handle stepping into his father’s shoes. And in the past month or so, he’d started to feel comfortable in it. He was becoming more confident and efficient, he was getting home at a reasonable hour, his hours per week had dropped from eighty to sixty.
Just when things were getting easier. How had it come to this? And what in the world was Lizzy thinking right now?
September 2016
When Will woke the next morning, it was to find his world in utter chaos.
Sure, the world as a whole probably didn’t care all that much. The CEO of some ventilation company in Virginia was not on their radar, not when there were Hollywood stars creating scandals left and right, and probably a politician accepting bribes or saying something that offended somebody.
But unfortunately for Will, there were plenty of people in his world who cared.
His phone started to ring at 6 a.m., and it only stopped when he unplugged his landline and put his cell phone on silent mode so that he could get dressed and eat breakfast.
By 7 a.m., he was at his office wondering how in the world he was going to be productive today.
“Well, that was quite the kerfuffle yesterday!” Susan exclaimed when she saw him. “Between your lovers’ spat and that other craziness. My, the trouble you get yourself into! Do you want me to hold all calls?”
“No shit, Sherlock,” Will spat out, having no patience for Susan today.
She looked taken aback. “All right then, Mr. Darcy.”
“And don’t bother me unless it’s an emergency!” He slammed his office door for good measure, then immediately felt like a moody teenager again. Susan could get on his last nerve, but she was a good secretary. And now he had another person to apologize to. This day was just going from bad to worse.
Unsurprisingly, he heard from Megan Adewumi on the board of advisors, stating that they wanted to meet with Will and his father in the afternoon. He spent all morning dreading that meeting.
“What’s all this?” Leonard Bailey barked the moment he walked into the conference room, his father following slowly.
“Good afternoon,” Will said, trying to sound calm and controlled. He could feel himself shaking but was desperately trying to hide it. Fortunately, Leonard took the hint and waited until everybody had taken seats before repeating his question, which gave him time to get a bit of control. His hands were still clammy as he tried to explain.
“I don’t really know,” Will admitted. He clenched his hands under the table.
“Are you saying that it’s not true?” Megan asked.
He nodded. “I’ve never, to the best of my knowledge, met that man. I certainly did not have a father in my life until I met George Darcy.” He swallowed. “There’s no father on my birth certificate, and as far as I remember, it was just my mom and me, sometimes with various boyfriends.”
“But he wasn’t one?” Marcus Crowley asked.
Will shook his head. “As I said, not in my memory.”
“But it’s possible?” Arun Pancholi raised his eyebrows.
“It’s possible that he was her boyfriend when I was a toddler, as my memories don’t go back that far. But I don’t have any way of knowing for sure.”
“What about neighbors? Friends?” Borami Park looked puzzled.
“We moved around a lot as my mom went from boyfriend to boyfriend. Sometimes she’d have an apartment of her own for a while, then get evicted. We went back to my grandmother’s a few times. I knew some kids at school and other places, but nobody knew my family situation.” Will jiggled his legs under the table and tried to resist the urge to leap to his feet and pace. It wouldn’t look professional.
“The obvious solution seems to be a paternity test,” Arun said. “In fact, I don’t know why you haven’t demanded one yet.”
“Our concern,” Will’s dad broke in at last, “is that the paternity test might well show that this Chris Younge is Will’s father. He’s thought of it, I’m sure. If he didn’t have reasonably certainty, why would he risk it? Are we willing to risk a positive test?”
“Surely th
e boy knows someone who knew he didn’t have a father around.” Leonard pinched the bridge of his nose. “This is a nightmare.”
Daniel Raider shook his head. “It’ll all blow over. Who cares all that much about Will? I mean,” he said, shrugging at Will, “no offense, but you’re not some huge celebrity.”
“But he is the public face of AirVA.” Leonard looked displeased. Of course, in Will’s experience, Leonard usually looked displeased. “Maybe we should get George back on board for a while until this gets settled one way or another.”
“Absolutely not,” Dad said. “I’m retired. For better or worse,” he said, giving Will an apologetic glance, “Will is the CEO. He did nothing to create this scandal. AirVA will weather it, as we’ve weathered worse.” It sounded good, but Will couldn’t imagine anything worse than this. His dad had always been so careful with his reputation, and he was the founder, after all.
The members of the board eyed him cautiously as the debate continued. The pit in Will’s stomach grew. He had done nothing, and yet everybody was convinced that this liar was his father. What if Dad started to believe it? After all, what did Mom and Dad know for sure about his life before the shelter?
“This shelter thing,” Emily started. “He says you’re moving it because of the gentrification of the surrounding area.”
“I’ll take that one,” Dad said, “as Will isn’t really involved. Younge is correct, and yet not, about the reason for moving it. We are moving it because of the gentrification of the local area. However, we’re not moving it away from the area because we don’t want a homeless shelter in an upper-middle-class area. It’s because it’s just not local anymore to the people who need it.”
Megan frowned. “Meaning what, exactly? That people in that area don’t need it?”
“More that the people who do need it can’t get to it easily. It’s too far away to walk, or at least in a reasonable amount of time. We hand out bus tokens, which means we spend a good bit of our budget on bus services. But a lot of people just don’t want to take the bus that far, or they feel uncomfortable in that neighborhood, or they feel like they’ll be trapped if they don’t like it.”
“Trapped? Surely you don’t lock them in at night?” Daniel asked.
Dad gave a curt laugh. “No, not at all. We do lock it to outside entry unless you push a call-through button, but we have the desk staffed to receive people all night long. But some people who are homeless have mental problems and are concerned that people are watching them, that sort of thing. If they feel uncomfortable suddenly, they want to feel like they can get back quickly to where they feel safe.
“Furthermore,” he continued, “we used to have lots of people who would come in for dinner when things got tight. They’re often employed and have homes, but maybe they need a little help between paychecks, especially right around the time rent is due. But getting back from working all day and then taking a bus across town for dinner is impractical, so we’ve lost a lot of the walk-in traffic for dinner.”
“So you’re saying that moving the shelter is so that you can better serve the community?” Leonard said. He didn’t say it sarcastically, and yet there was something in his tone that made him sound cynical about it.
Dad nodded. “The numbers of people using the shelter have gone way down over the years as the local neighborhood has changed. We want to be in the middle of the action, local to the people who need help.”
“Do you have documentation to back that up?” Leonard asked.
“That might not help.” Emily leaned forward on the table. “He might just argue that he wanted to move the place, so he came up with practical reasons for it.”
“How can anyone defend against accusations of their intentions?” Dad asked, looking thunderous. “Practical reasons can be documented. Arguments against my emotional intentions can’t be proved or disproved.”
“I think that’s the whole point,” Will said. “He just wants to smear our names and doesn’t care whether it can be proved or whether it hurts funding for the shelter.”
“I think he does very much care about whether it can be proved. Or rather, he cares that it can’t be,” Arun said. “The thing I can’t figure out is if he wants Will to demand a paternity test . . . or if he wants to scare him away from doing so.” Arun, it seemed, believed him. For whatever good that would do.
Everybody left the meeting dissatisfied, Will most of all. As he drove home, he kept mulling things over and over in his head.
Would it be better to ask the man to take a paternity test? Would he even submit to such a thing, or would he somehow twist the mere request around to make Will look bad? Will had learned to anticipate people’s moves in the business world, but the world of scandals and talk shows and paternity tests was one he’d never considered.
And then, of course . . . what would the paternity test show? Will knew so little about his mother’s life, especially in those early years he could barely remember. Had this man ever lived with them? Could he have had a long enough relationship with Will’s mom to be reasonably certain that he was the father?
He tried to picture the man he’d seen on the Andy Roan show. Did he look anything like him? The man’s face had been thin and worn, likely from his medical treatments. And he’d had terrible skin. His hair was balding . . . did that mean Will was likely to lose his hair by that age, too? What he could remember of the hair had been rather colorless, not as dark as Will’s. But did Will have his eyes? He thought they might have been blue or something light in color, not Will’s brown. That could indicate that it wasn’t true. But then, Will’s mother had had brown eyes and dark hair, so it might just be that he’d inherited her coloring.
If the paternity test showed that this was his father, everyone would believe everything else, too. What proof did he have of his life before the Darcys? It was his word against Younge’s. His parents wouldn’t believe Younge, he was almost certain. Maybe not quite certain. After all, a kid in such circumstances might lie out of desperation, mightn’t he? And even if his parents believed him unreservedly, would Richard? Charles? What about his other relatives, like Uncle Henry and Aunt Temi, or Aunt Catherine? Could he be certain about all of them?
Will breathed a sigh of relief when he pulled into his apartment complex’s parking lot and didn’t see any reporters. Maybe that boded well for tomorrow. He parked his car, then almost hit his head on the roof when somebody banged on his window. Fortunately, he recognized Charlie before he spent too much time trying to figure out what to do if it was another reporter.
“Charlie!” he said with relief as he opened the door. Then he blanched and quickly looked around for Caroline.
Charlie gave a humorless chuckle. “She’s not here. It’s just me. I didn’t even bring you dinner.”
“That’s okay,” Will assured him. “I have boxed macaroni upstairs.” He’d take boxed macaroni over Caroline and Carrabba’s any day.
“Living like kings, we are,” Charlie said as he followed him up. Normally such a statement from Charlie would have been accompanied by a grin. Not today.
Will kept sneaking glances at Charlie as he prepared their dinner. Charlie looked morose. He asked Will about the board meeting, but Will could tell his heart wasn’t in it. Not like he wanted to rehash it anyway.
“Have you talked to Jane?” Will asked softly. He wished he could talk to Elizabeth. He needed to apologize, to explain, but . . . was it fair to pull her into the middle of this?
Charlie let out a small moan and dropped his head to the counter.
“I’ll take that as a no?”
Charlie shook his head without lifting it.
“Charlie, come on, man. What is this?” If he had a straightforward situation like this with Elizabeth, he’d be at her house right now, making it right. Somehow. Would he trust her enough to dispense with a pre-nup? Yes, if it came down to it, he thought he would.
Charlie finally looked up. “Will, I don’t know what to do. Caroline is trium
phant. She says she knew all along that Jane was just in it for my money.”
“Charlie, Caroline is just in it for the money. You know that, right?”
“Wouldn’t that make her all the more likely to recognize it in Jane?”
Would knocking Charlie upside the head be that bad, really, in the scheme of things? “No, it means that she’ll do anything she can to keep you unmarried, or at least from marrying anybody who isn’t independently rich, for fear of losing her gravy train.”
Charlie swept his hair back from his face and breathed deeply. “Do you think . . . I mean, you were the one who said I should get a pre-nup to begin with.”
“I did.” Will put a bowl of mac and cheese in front of Charlie and sat down on the other side of the island with his own bowl. “Guess what? I don’t know everything.”
Charlie gave a mirthless laugh. “Just most things?”
“Maybe not even most things. Look, Charlie, Jane made some good arguments for why not to do a pre-nup. Did you listen to what she said? Think about it?” Will had.
Charlie took a spoonful of macaroni and nodded.
“And?”
“And . . . I think she makes a good point? I even agree with her. But I can’t seem to get Caroline out of my head. I guess . . . I guess I wish there was a way to know for sure that she loved me and wasn’t in this for the money. I love her so, so very much, and if she . . . I mean, it would just crush me to find out it’s all a dream. It’s hard to believe a woman as beautiful and kind and perfect could really love me like that, you know?”
Caroline sure had done a number on Charlie. If only his parents had reined her in when she was young. How different would things be for Charlie, and even for Caroline, now?
Will clapped a hand on Charlie’s back. “I don’t find that so hard to believe at all. You may not see it, but the rest of us all think you’re the male version of Jane. You’re an all-around great guy, and she’s lucky to have you.”
Charlie nodded, but he didn’t look convinced.
A Good Name: A Modern Pride and Prejudice Variation Page 20
