The Light of Hidden Flowers

by Jennifer Handford

  Roger was only two streets over, so it didn’t take him long before he was sitting across from me in the conference room. “How are you doing, Missy?” he asked again.

  I crossed my arms. “With all due respect, Roger, can you please let me know what’s going on?”

  “Missy, calm down.”

  “No, Roger. You tell me what’s going on.” I pushed back from the table, began to pace.

  Roger lifted his reading glasses onto his forehead and looked at me squarely. “As you know, your father set up the business so that he and you were sole owners, with him owning a 70 percent share and you owning a 30 percent share. At his death, his 70 percent share would transfer to you, making you full owner of Fletcher Financial.”

  “I’m aware of that structure.”

  “What you don’t know is that your dad changed the language, just a bit. He has now left you 21 percent of his shares, thus giving you 51 percent. The remaining shares are now an ‘option,’ meaning you have the option to keep them or sell them to Paul Sullivan. Your dad was hoping you would choose to sell to Paul. That’s what the buy/sell agreement and the John Hancock life insurance policy is for. For Paul to buy you out.”

  “Why would he do that? Did he think I needed Paul to co-own the firm with me?” I sifted through this new information, finding nothing but senseless clumps.

  “Your father wanted you to have options.”

  The vein in my neck throbbed. “Dad led me to believe that the business would be mine, should anything happen to him.”

  “It still is, Missy. If that’s what you want. And if it’s not, you can let Paul buy out some of your shares.”

  “But I could have sold shares to Paul anyway. I didn’t need him to spell that out to me.”

  “Missy, your father left you a letter. Read it. Think about it. Then call me.”

  With that, Roger pushed back from his chair. He held out the letter for me; I didn’t take it.

  “How did I not know about any of this?”

  “Just read the letter, Missy. Call me later . . . or tomorrow . . . or the next day. There is no rush.” He placed his hand on my shoulder, but I felt nothing but revulsion. I twisted from him.

  Roger dropped the letter on the table, a crisp white envelope with Dad’s all-caps handwriting: MISSY.

  Once Roger left, I brought the letter into my office and locked the door. I pulled it from the envelope. I unfolded my father’s words.

  Dear Missy,

  Watching you grow has been the biggest thrill of my life. If only your mother could have seen you. What can I say, Missy? You’ve never let me down. You’ve been a good girl. You never got into trouble. You earned the best grades. You’ve been obedient and kind and good-natured. I couldn’t have asked for a better daughter.

  What I do want, is for you to ask more of yourself. I want you to be brave, Missy. I want you to get out of town. Explore. At the time of this writing, you’re thirty years old and you’ve turned into the best financial planner and investment manager out there. I hope you’re happy that you’ve chosen this career. I’m thrilled to have you by my side. But Missy, if you want to do something else, I want you to know, you can.

  As for Fletcher Financial, you call the shots. Missy, I want you to be happy. But I also want you to be scared, and nervous, and unsure. Get out of this life you’re in, Miss. Get out of your comfort zone. Let Paul run the business. You—take your heaps of money and do something amazing. Help people. See things. I want you to be thrown off course. It’s exhilarating, Missy. To “not know.” You were never meant to live in my shadow, my dear. Be brave!

  You cannot discover new oceans unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  How dare he? How dare my father make changes to our firm’s structure without consulting with me? How dare he scheme with Paul and Roger behind my back, like I was a little girl who needed protecting? How dare he claim to know more about me than I knew about myself?

  And how dare he sucker punch me when I was down.

  And how dare he say that I wasn’t brave.

  And how dare he use one of his tired old clichés on me!

  How dare he!

  I reached for a throw pillow on my sofa and screamed into it. My blood was so hot the outside of my skin was warm to the touch.

  Leave, some rogue rebel in my mind blared. Leave! But it was ten o’clock in the morning, and Jenny and I had a day’s worth of work to tackle, and a client was coming in at one o’clock, and I was Missy Fletcher, who had never once played hooky in her life, who had shown up at school and work every day, whether I had cramps or a fever or a migraine. I was Missy Fletcher, who wasn’t wired to just leave work because she was so furious she could hurl her three computer monitors out the window.

  I gulped for air, exhaled like I was stoking a fire, and considered that Jenny and Paul and Roger were all waiting for me to address the situation. Paul—my dear, sweet big-brother-like Paul—was nothing more than a little sneak. In the five years since Dad concocted this scheme, Paul and I had worked hundreds of hours together, joked, shared, and never once did he say a word about their nefarious little agreement.

  How dare Dad say I wasn’t brave?

  How dare he think I would give up my entire life’s work, just because he gave me permission to leave?

  How dare he insinuate that I was leading a false life?

  Stay, my mind now said. Stay in this office until everyone else went home. Stay until midnight and then return at five in the morning. Glare at Jenny and Paul and Roger, and spread your arms wide to protect your territory. Mine. This is my office and don’t you dare encroach on my territory. Stay, my ears echoed. Draft a letter to the clients telling them that I was now in charge. That they needn’t worry about Dad’s absence because Melissa Fletcher was on board and, while I might not be able to spin the yarn like Dad did, I had a genius IQ and portfolio returns that outperformed my peers’. You may be my employee, I would say to Paul, but I’m in charge. You run everything by me, I’d say, and don’t even think of swiping so much as a Post-it note from your desk, because everything here belongs to Fletcher Financial.

  Leave, my watery eyes begged. Go home and cry properly, and mourn the loss of your father, and grieve over the fact that your deepest fears have been confirmed, that he didn’t really believe in you. Leave, go home and start a notebook for your wedding. Do what you do best: comparison shop, chart, and analyze. Go home and Excel spreadsheet your way through your marriage. And hook your claws into Lucas, because who are you kidding—he is quite attractive compared to what is out there, considering the pool of still-single guys who would be interested in a thirty-six-year-old rather than a fun twenty-one-year-old. You ain’t gonna do better than him, Missy. You two go off with your jointly filed tax return and pocket protectors filled with mechanical pencils and Lucas’s white bread and ham sandwiches and you with your stupid pistachio gelato routine. Live your boring, predictable, perfectly sanitary and safe life. It’s who you are, Missy.

  For the next hour, I tapped the tips of my fingers on the wood of my desktop and stared out the window, considering how the hell I was going to get out of my airless office while saving face. I was Missy Fletcher, the safety girl prepared for every contingency, so of course I had a fire escape rope ladder in my closet. I could always use that.

  In a thousand ways, this was worse than I’d first imagined. When Roger told me the terms, I thought it was lame of Dad to think I needed a partner to run the firm. Merely needing a partner now seemed like an innocuous little stipulation compared to the real reason for Dad’s plan: his belief that I needed a shove, that without his suggestion I would stay until I was ninety years old. Maybe I would have. Who cared!

  Another hour later, I emerged from my office with a stack of files.

  “Here,” I said, slapping them onto Jenny’s desk. Wh
en she ducked as though I might hit her, I said, “Sorry.”

  “Oh, honey,” she said.

  I shook my head. “Not now.” I rambled off ten minutes of instructions, and asked her if she had completed certain other tasks.

  At one o’clock, two of our clients came in, and today, rather than sitting in meekly on the appointment, letting Dad or Paul take the lead, I led the meeting myself. I projected the clients’ statement from my laptop onto the screen. I used my red laser pointer to explain the allocations, the changes made, the percentages held, the pie chart that showed the breakdown. It was fine until I found myself rambling endlessly about a certain municipal bond’s yield and tax-free status, and I could see the clients’ eyes glassing over. It was obvious I’d gone too far, told them too much, and it was boring and confusing to them. They looked at me as if to say, We hire you to do this stuff for us.

  I shook off their glazed-over stares, closed my eyes for a split second and pretended that I was Frank Fletcher. “How does Camilla like UVA?” I asked of their oldest daughter. Just that easily, the clients perked up—the mother beamed, and the father pulled out his phone to show me a photo he snapped of his gorgeous daughter in her dorm room.

  God gave us two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we talk, I heard my father say.

  So even though I had planned to review their portfolio’s dividend scale and projected income, I stayed quiet and just assured them that they were still on track, that there was plenty of money for Camilla’s college, for their retirement.

  Later, when I saw Paul in the break room, he put his hand on my shoulder and said that we should talk.

  “Don’t touch me,” I said, yanking away my shoulder. “Ever.”

  Paul’s face crumbled and his caterpillar eyebrows joined together into one long awning. “Missy, it’s not what you seem to think. I’m happy to do whatever you want to do. It was your father’s plan.”

  I laughed mockingly at the baldness of his lie. “Yeah, right.”

  “It’s true,” he interjected. “Your father—”

  “Don’t talk about my father like you knew him.” I had never been the impertinent kid who talked back to anyone. I should have tried it sooner. Being a cheeky, know-it-all brat felt just right.

  Io vorrei del succo di frutta. Io vorrei un caffè. Io vorrei del pesce. I tried, but that night I had no patience for my Rosetta Stone CD. I hit “Eject” on my car deck, and when the disc slid out, I grabbed it and snapped it in half, cutting my finger in the process. I threw the two broken half-moons onto the floor. I held my cut finger to my mouth.

  At home, even though I had a piece of salmon defrosted in the fridge, I went straight for the pistachio gelato. When Lucas called at seven o’clock on the dot, I told him what I had uncovered today: Dad’s nefarious plan, Paul’s conniving conspiracy, Roger’s culpability to the crime.

  “This is a no-brainer,” Lucas said. “You simply maintain your controlling shares. Everything will stay exactly as it is.”

  Everything will stay exactly as it is.

  “He should have talked to me about this,” I rebutted.

  “Why, Melissa?” Lucas said. “Your father set this up perfectly. He gave you the option to stay put, something you would have claimed you wanted if he’d ever asked you, or scale back, something you might not have said in front of him.”

  I swallowed a colossal spoonful of gelato. “But how did he know that I would consider ‘scaling back’? What made him think that? Wasn’t I committed enough?” My eyes filled without permission and then spilled over. I had never cried with Lucas, and didn’t want to do it now.

  Lucas said, “He was just being nice—”

  “Yes,” I interrupted. “But he could have just given me the shares. If I wanted to sell to Paul, I would have. He didn’t need to write the pathetic-Missy missive.”

  “The point is,” Lucas said, “you’re choosing the business, so why does it matter? He was wrong in thinking that you might choose otherwise. You are the business, Melissa. It’s who you are. What would you be without the business?” Lucas made this argument as if it were all so obvious. Melissa Fletcher had no identity other than as a financial genius.

  “You’re right.” I nodded. “It’s who I am. Why would he think differently?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Do you want to come over?” I asked.

  Lucas was at my door within half an hour. I let him stay the night because he was the guy who asked me to be no one other than myself. He liked who I was and didn’t need to give me a menu of options: (1) stay who you are: boring, predictable, safe; (2) turn into someone else: better, interesting, traveled; (3) become someone even more superior than the improved version of you: bold, gregarious, social—in other words, Frank Fletcher.

  When Lucas fell asleep, I turned from him and curled into a ball. I closed my eyes and imagined what it would be like to travel to Italy, to walk into a café, to order a cappuccino or a glass of wine. I envisioned the Tuscan countryside, groves of olives, stucco walls obscured by ivy. I squeezed my eyes shut and imagined the oil-drenched olives, the crusty loaves of bread, the pasta, and the seafood. And then I remembered the flight attendant escorting me off the last airplane I’d attempted to board.

  At two in the morning, I slipped out of bed and went to the bathroom. I stared into the mirror, gawking at my reflection as if I had never seen myself before. Who the hell are you, Melissa Fletcher? I pulled my hair back into a ponytail, studied my makeup-less face, my plain-Jane features and childish peaches-and-cream complexion. I opened the drawer of the vanity and fluttered on three coats of black mascara. I lined my lips red and filled them in with a scarlet matte lipstick. I pulled black eyeliner across the rim of my lashes. Who the hell are you, Melissa Fletcher? Was it even possible to be someone different? I lifted my chin, puckered my lips, raised a flirty eyebrow. Maybe I could fool a few. Yet through the cake of heavy makeup, I could still see little me.

  I crept into the kitchen for a sip of juice, then sat down at my computer and logged on to Facebook. I pulled up Joe’s profile. His younger daughter, Olivia, was hamming it up for the camera. In the background, I could see the older daughter cozy in a recliner, reading The Hobbit. She looked like me, back in the day, spending my time with characters in books instead of friends at sleepovers.

  I started a pretend message to Joe, one written by the girl with red lipstick and heavy eyeliner. A message written by a girl who had another man in her bedroom. “I’ve loved you for as long as I can remember. I loved everything about you. I still love you.” One character at a time, I backspaced until my message was deleted. Then I washed my face and curled up on the sofa.

  I stayed awake until dawn. At five in the morning, I called the office and waited for the message machine. When Jenny’s sweet voice asked that I leave a message, I told her I would be out this week. I told her I needed some time to think things over. As an afterthought, I told her I was fine, no need to worry, and that I was sorry if I was harsh with her. When I hung up the receiver, I felt as light as a meringue. Then I returned to my bedroom.

  At six o’clock, the alarm on Lucas’s phone trilled. He rolled over and kissed me. “Time to wake up,” he said. “Early bird gets the worm.”

  “I’m not going in today,” I announced. “I’m staying home. I’m going to cook all day. Maybe take a nap. I might watch an Italian film later.”

  Lucas looked at me as though I’d just announced my enlistment in the circus. “Why?”

  I buried my face in the pillow. “I need some time to think things through.”

  “Get up, Melissa!” he said with mock cheer. “Grab a shower, put on your power suit, pour a cup of coffee, and get to work. Nothing will make you feel better than adhering to your routine. Trust me.”

  I pulled my face out of the pillow and looked at him. “I know you’re right,” I said. �
��But really, I’m not going in today.”

  Lucas buttoned his shirt. “You need to defend what’s yours, Melissa. Trust me, don’t spend too much time wallowing.”

  Just leave, I wanted to say. Please, just leave, and stop talking. “It’s not that simple,” I said, growing irritated. “Everything is different.”

  Lucas reached under the bed for his loafer. “What’s different?”

  I just shook my head, because what was different wasn’t the obvious—that Dad was dead, that he had left me a crappy You could do better! letter, that I had a choice in my future. What was different was the cauldron inside of me, brewing a potion of anger for my father that I had never once felt before, a fury that could singe metal. I had never rebelled as a teenager; I had never screamed the iconic, adolescent I hate you, Dad! I had never felt a teardrop of ill will toward the man who loved me so well. Until now. Now, at this moment, only weeks after his death, I was ready to scream horrible epithets at him. The I Hate Frank Fletcher Club was holding its inaugural meeting.

  I slept until noon, and when I woke, my head was cloudy and uncertain; for a moment I felt like a child waking from a nap, and for an even briefer moment I remembered my mother lifting me from my bed and holding me against her chest. “There’s my girl, there’s my girl,” she sang.

  With the nostalgia still clinging to me like shrink-wrap, I went into the shower and let the hot water and soap pull me into consciousness. With a towel wrapped around my body and another one around my head, I returned to my bedroom and slipped back into my bed. I pulled the towels from me and tossed them onto the floor, then covered myself with the down comforter, and shut my eyes. I padlocked my heart and tried to figure out if what I was doing today was merely a charade or if I was for real. Who the hell are you, Melissa Fletcher? I asked, and this time I needed an answer, because what I was thinking about doing required me to be bona fide, not just a pretender.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN