by Kilby Blades
Biff scoffed. Marsh shifted his gaze. “You got something to say to me?”
“Like you’re one to talk,” Biff spat with venom.
“Excuse me?”
“Playing the part of the California liberal…looking down your nose like you’re so different than us.”
“I am different from you.”
“Oh, yeah? How?”
Marsh shook his head and raised his hands in frustration.
But Biff didn’t stop there. He kept provoking Marsh, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Do we get to hear again about all the important work you do? Since you’re a human rights attorney?”
Marsh stared at Biff darkly.
“I’m different from you because my life is about people. Not about money and power,” he growled.
Biff swirled scotch in his glass. He was the only one to have made the long journey to the dining room without leaving his drink from the big room behind.
“I don’t remember you saying no to your trust fund, or to the money you got when Paw Paw died,” Biff challenged.
Marsh’s teeth were clenched now. “At least I didn’t piss it away on stupid shit. I took it because I knew I’d put it to a good cause.”
“What cause would that be? Last I checked, it wasn’t so easy to give away $250 Million.”
Marsh’s eye twitched at the same moment that Jada dropped her glass. She’d only had it lifted a few inches off of the table and it was made of such heavy crystal that the glass was no worse for wear. It rocked a bit on its base before settling to a stop. Jada, on the other hand, was worse for wear. Because trumping the litany of things it was now clear her boyfriend had never told her was the fact that he was heir to an unfathomable fortune.
“Jada…” Marsh stood, every muscle in his face etched in regret, every fathom of his eyes washed in guilt. The warning he had to have seen in her eyes must have given him pause.
“Mrs. Brewster,” Jada eked out in a controlled voice and tried her best at a gracious smile. “Thank you for a lovely dinner. I’m sorry to excuse myself so early, but I think I’d like some air.”
Jada barely waited for a response before pushing herself back from the table. Her composure had its limits and, the way things were going, it might not matter after all what Maw Maw thought. Marsh made it halfway to following her—to where, she still didn’t know. One sharp look as he approached to fall into step with her, and he stopped in his tracks.
Many things crossed Jada’s mind in that moment:
Do I have cell phone reception all the way out here?
Do they even have Uber in Connecticut?
Then, Screw Uber, I’ll take the car and let him fend for himself.
By the time she remembered she didn’t know how to drive in winter weather and thought about their ruined weekend in the snow, Jada’s tears had begun to fall. She didn’t know where her coat had been taken, but she did remember how to get back to the den next to the kitchens. She also remembered that a very warm-looking blanket had been folded across the back of one of the chairs.
10 The Reckoning
Marsh
“You are an arse-hole,” Kate informed Biff with so much ice in her voice even Marsh got a chill.
Marsh wasn’t a violent man. Yet, as he turned slowly, fists clenched, to face the room, he honestly wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t obey his every reptilian inclination to punch Biff. God, he had it coming. Biff had taken pleasure in provoking Marsh since they were kids. He’d always bet—and bet correctly—that Marsh had too much respect for Maw Maw to ever give Biff his comeuppance.
“The first thing you’re going to do is apologize to Maw Maw.” Marsh felt out of breath as he spoke. He walked slowly toward Biff, his temper barely contained. “After that…” Marsh’s lips trembled and he could feel subtle vibrations in his chest. “You’d better go apologize to Jada.”
Biff snorted a bit drunkenly. “Apologize? For what? Telling her the truth about St. Marsh? You’re the one who should apologize.” When Biff lifted his glass and waved his hand dismissively, Marsh felt something pull back on his arm.
His father’s eyes, when he met them then, didn’t hold an ounce of “It’s not worth it”. It was more like, “I’ve got your back, son.” Or, even, “Let me know when it’s my turn.” Marsh took a look around the room. This was Thanksgiving dinner. And all of them were Maw Maw’s guests. He would kick Biff’s ass one day, but not today.
“You’re right.” Marsh turned back to Biff, then extended his glare to Minnie, to Mark and to Jason, too. “I do owe her an apology. For going against my better judgment of the past four years and exposing her to you.”
Marsh turned to his aunt Minnie. “All your name-dropping socialite bullshit? Seriously, who are you trying to impress? She’s got a lot more going for her than day-drinking at the yacht club. Believe me—she’s not interested in joining your clique.”
Minnie’s face reddened. “I didn’t…I wasn’t…”
“You did. And you definitely were. And do me a favor: don’t try to cause drama between my mother and my girlfriend just because you don’t get along with your mother-in-law.”
Next was what Marsh had to say to Biff. “And you..debating investment strategy with one of the most successful VCs in Silicon Valley? Jada doesn’t need you, or anyone, mansplaining how to do her job.”
Not waiting for a response, Marsh shifted his gaze to Jason.
“What’d I do?” Jason wanted to know.
“That comment about her going to a state school. What cave do you live in? Berkeley is nationally ranked. And even if it wasn’t, there’s no shame in getting a good price on a world-class education.”
Marsh let his glare linger a moment before moving on.
“And Krista…” Marsh had to soften his voice, because his cousin-in-law really was sweet. “Do you comment on how well your white friends speak?”
Seeing where he was going with this, she sighed sheepishly. “No.”
“Next time, could you try not to sound quite so surprised?”
Krista nodded in vigorous solidarity. “Yes.”
Marsh sighed. He was angry with his family, to be sure. But he was also angry with himself. He should have told Jada the truth about the money long before.
“I’m sorry, Maw Maw,” he said, turning to his grandmother and taking steps toward her. “I’m trying. I really am. But there’s a reason why I’ve never brought Jada here. And the last thing I want to do is upset you, especially if—” Marsh choked on the words and looked at his father.
“If what?” Maw Maw looked between her firstborn and her grandson.
“If you’re sick.” The lump stayed firmly in Marsh’s throat.
“Do I look sick to you?” Maw Maw extended her hand and smiled at Marsh in a way that made him feel like a little boy. Some part of him wished he was still small enough to crawl in her lap.
“You never look sick, ma,” Marshall Senior chimed in as Marsh took his grandmother’s hand. She squeezed it for a minute, gave him a sweet look that thanked him for his concern and pushed him toward the now-empty seat to her right, silently telling Marsh to sit.
“I’m retiring,” Maw Maw said after Marsh did just that, tenting her fingers and looking around the table. Her words sliced a shock through the room.
“Well, don’t act so surprised,” she said. “I’m not getting any younger. I brought all of you here to talk about my succession plan.”
Many eyes shifted to Biff, and he straightened a little in his seat. Marsh got the sense that he’d been waiting for this moment all his life.
“That’s why I called you here this weekend,” Maw Maw continued. “I wanted you to hear it directly from me. No rumors. No triangulation. I wanted to face you, and for all of you to face each other. Just like I’ve had to take a hard look and face what the company is up against.” Maw Maw looked around the room. “Rising workforce costs. Offshore competition. Differentiated demand in consumer markets. And do you know what Brewster
Textiles’ biggest risk is?”
No one answered. She looked at Biff.
“You.”
Every pair of eyes at the table watched the color drain from his face. By then, Biff looked as if he had been gearing up to rise from his seat. He had buttoned his jacket, and his chair was pushed halfway back.
Now, Maw Maw was speaking directly to Biff—this was the part about it being public—the part about everyone knowing the same truth and hearing it from the source.
“You know all the technicalities, Biff. You know how to run the numbers. You know how to get things done. What you don’t know—what you’ve never known—is how to do it with heart.”
“Maw Maw—” he began, but she raised her hand, in a gesture for him to stop.
“And that’s just the good parts,” she continued. “I may be old, but I’m not stupid. No more law suits. No more creative accounting. No more telling me what Paw Paw would’ve done. I can guarantee that if he were here, he wouldn’t have exposed us to all of this.
“All of what?” Krista asked, still innocent of the worst.
“Are you gonna tell her? Or should I?” Maw Maw asked Biff, before answering her own question. “On second thought, I’ll leave it to you. These past two years have been a disaster. And I’ve given you more than a fair chance. But me—and the company—we’re done.”
The room was deadly silent. Biff’s face changed yet again. Its red that had faded to white now rose to green.
“So, Biff, you’re fired. I’ve already put Miguel in place as the acting COO. You’re no longer welcome on company property. And I’d get a lawyer if I were you—your own. You’re about to be sued.”
“By who?” Biff slurred. “You can’t sue me.”
“By the company, of course. Your stock transaction with Lizzie was an illegal sale.” For just a minute, her voice and her eyes turned as arctic as his. “And you ought to be ashamed of yourself for luring your own sister into selling away her inheritance.”
Maw Maw stopped looking at Biff and surveyed the scene around the table.
“As for the rest of you, I’m not stupid enough to wait until I die to give away my possessions. Why? So everyone can contest the will? I’ll die a poor woman, but at least I’ll be sure everything I have goes exactly to where it belongs.
“There’ll be nothing in my last will and testament. If I’ve left you something, you’ll know about it tonight and leave here with it tomorrow. The paperwork is in my office and I’ve arranged for logistics around the smaller bequests—the jewelry and knick-knacks and stuff.”
Marsh was fairly certain that some of what Maw Maw considered to be knick-knacks were worth large sums of money—paintings and sculpture and such. But Maw Maw’s larger holdings were higher than the annual GDP of some small nations.
Maw Maw turned to Susie. “Welcome to your new house. I know you’ve always loved it here.”
Susie’s eyes were wide, and she blinked in surprise. Maw Maw didn’t wait for a response.
“Marsh, I’m leaving all of my company shares to you. My 51% combined with your 5% means that you will own more of the company than any one person has owned in more than one hundred years.”
Upon hearing Maw Maw’s words, Kate choked on her wine. It even dribbled down her chin a little. It was the least elegant thing Marsh had ever seen his mother do.
“What?” Marsh asked, at the same time as someone gasped and someone else let out a low, “Wowwww.”
Maw Maw kept her gaze on Marsh then. “All these years, I let you think that I kept you around because you’re a lawyer. I kept you around for your fresh ideas. You’ve always understood the human element. Brewster Textiles has survived a century because of the people. And you’re right, Marsh—it should be employee-owned.
“I don’t expect you to run the company—just to reorganize it. It’ll be good to marry a VC. She’ll be able to help you to restructure. You know, once she’s speaking to you again.”
Unable to fully process this, Marsh looked over at Biff, who swayed drunkenly in his seat while glaring intensely at Maw Maw. He looked like he was building up to say something, probably some grievance about how Marsh had been jockeying for this all along. But instead of words, he vomited into the blessedly empty chair at his side.
Minnie covered her nose dramatically and pushed back a little from the table, even though she was two seats away. Most of the other guests—Marsh included—frowned in disgust. Ashley was the exception—he only looked on with passive curiosity but maintained the same calm he had throughout.
“I want a divorce,” Krista announced. She pushed herself back from the table and threw her napkin into Biff’s lap. “You can clean up your own messes now.”
“Good girl,” Maw Maw winked and praised a furious Krista as she stormed out of the room.
Marshall Senior stood and looked at his ex-wife intently. “And I want to get back together.” He looked at Kate meaningfully, and for a long time. “No disrespect intended.”
Marsh couldn’t tell whether that last comment was meant for his mother or Ashley. He supposed it didn’t matter, judging from the fact that his mother hadn’t broken her gaze with her ex-husband to look at Ashley even once.
“And you…” Marshall Senior tore himself away from looking at his ex-wife long enough to send a pointed look at Marsh. “Don’t make the same mistake I did. Don’t let secrets get between you and the woman you love. You heard what Maw Maw brought you here to tell you. Now go get your girl. Before it’s too late.”
11 The Gazebo
Jada
Jada might have been content to stay in the gazebo she’d found down the hill behind the house, inhaling the smell of wood burning in the fireplace for hours. There was something magical about the combination of fire and ice—about what happened when the bite of the cold met with the spark of chimneys and embers. Snow covered the ground and the branches of the evergreen trees, and the lake was a perfect mirror. Some trees stood stiff, leafless and unmoving, ramrod straight in the frozen ground. Those that had kept their leafed branches moved in the wind.
If she hadn’t been so busy doubting everything she thought she knew about her relationship with Marsh, all of this would have been splendid. Hadn’t this been the winter getaway she’d been dreaming of? Hadn’t she thought that a single day spent meeting his family would bring them closer together? Closer to claiming what she’d never let herself admit that she desperately wanted?
Jada tightened the blanket around herself. Yes, coming outside might have been hasty. Her knees were freezing. The blanket wasn’t quite warm enough but it felt right that she should suffer the sting of the cold.
“Stay mad or make peace?”
She hadn’t heard Marsh approach. But she’d known he would show up, sooner or later. Marsh always showed up for her. This was their code—the way they told one another whether they needed more time, or whether they were ready to talk. It took her a long time to answer. She didn’t know whether she would.
“I want to make peace, but…” She let out a shuddering sigh. Knowing this had to happen, she turned to face him squarely. “This is my family…not me.”
She repeated his own words back to him—words he’d said to her not three-and-a-half-hours before. Words that should have accompanied explanations that should have come from the very beginning.
He took a step closer, kept his gaze on hers even as he shook his head.
“I didn’t ask for any of it,” came his baritone. “And I am different from them. Inheriting the money…growing up like this…and especially coming back here now…none of it defines who I am.”
She sniffled. Because he was right. But there were still too many unanswered questions.
“I don’t understand about the money…did you spend it or something?” she finally asked.
He blinked, but when he spoke, his eyes were clear and his voice was honest.
“I spent some of it, yes.”
“How much of it?” Suddenly, she
had to know every detail of every dollar.
“Around a hundred million.”
Her stomach dropped ant it took her a minute to find her voice. Even though Jada dealt in huge sums every day, $100 million was a lot of money. And Biff had been right—having that much money wasn’t easy to hide.
“On what?” she choked out.
“Causes,” he said simply. “Some of them are causes I found myself; some things I support are things that Kendrick brought me.”
Kendrick was Marsh’s friend who worked for The Loxley Foundation. Jada had met Kendrick twice when he’d been in town from New York. She loved the work the foundation did and she, herself, had become a regular donor.
“How much money do you have left?”
“A little under two-hundred million.”
She shook her head and felt on the brink of crying again
“I just don’t understand how you hid it all from me. We share bank accounts, Marsh. I know our balances and see who sends you things in the mail.”
He shrugged. “Paperless statements. And even though we live together, we still file separate tax returns. That would all change if…”
He stopped talking when tears pooled in her eyes. It was no use. Hearing this information, she knew she would cry again now. And again tomorrow and again the day after that. Because no woman wanted to find out that her boyfriend was such a smooth liar. Worst of all, it struck her as odd that he’d given up comforts he could easily afford. If he was so rich, why was he so cheap?
“So was it all an act?”
“JJ, nothing I feel about you is an act.”
“Not that. Pretending you were working class. I mean, Jesus, Marsh…you go bananas every time that protein powder you like goes on sale at Costco. You spent an hour on the phone last weekend optimizing our cell phone data plan. And you’d better have a bulletproof explanation for why the hell we fly coach.”
His eyebrows shot to his hairline and for a second he looked surprised. Then, astonishment melted into humor. She could tell from the way that his eyes twinkled and his lips twitched that he was trying not to smile.
