“Like my father had told me? Why didn’t I bring you in on all the dirty little secrets? Because you had too much integrity to ever be able to be happy in that kind of environment. The best I can hope now is it ends with me. When you hand this company over to your son, it will be with a clean conscious. The cycle ends.”
“That’s not possible,” James said, shaking his head vehemently. “I don’t see how I can make that happen.”
“Well son, I did give you the birds and the bees talk while sitting very awkwardly at the foot of your bed about fifteen years ago. Please don’t make me do it again. You know how to make a son, right?”
“Stop joking around,” James scolded, feeling his cheeks burn and pretending it was anger and not embarrassment. “I can’t get West Oil out of this mess. The damage this will do will sink us.”
“No,” JW argued, “it’ll sink me. But who cares. I’m dying anyway. They’ll sue me. They’ll take what money I have. Run my name through the mud. But it doesn’t matter a damn bit.”
“You could go to prison,” James said, drawing out the words as though his father were missing the gravity of the situation.
“I’m not going to be any one place too long, so it doesn’t matter. Listen, I’ve got it all worked out. I’ll admit to everything and make it very clear you had nothing to do with the failures of West Oil. You were not privy to the ethical and legal breaches made over the years. You’ll roll out your plan to correct the course of the company, and I know you’ll be able to earn the confidence needed to keep West Oil alive. More than that, you’ll bring the company back to life. Better than ever.”
“Wait,” James said, drawing in a deep breath, “you didn’t think my ideas were shit? You didn’t think I was too weak to run the company?”
“No,” JW choked out, wiping a stray tear from his sagging eyes. “I have done some hard shit in my life. But pushing you away was the hardest. I promised your mother, right on her death bed, that I’d protect you from the garbage and the crimes. She begged me for years to spare you the burden my father had left me. I always knew she was right, but I didn’t have the courage to do what needed to be done until after she died.”
“I would rather have been there with you,” James grunted out. “I would have tried to help you fix it all. Anything would have been better than—” He trailed off, torn between anger and understanding. If he’d been in his father’s shoes would he have had the strength to push his son away for his own good? Because of his father’s planning, he’d never have to face that choice.
“I did what I thought was right,” his father said apologetically. “The right thing and the easy thing are rarely the same.”
“But,” James argued, quieting suddenly when his father yawned animatedly.
“I’m tired son,” he whispered. “I need some rest. Just go on, and let me handle this. I’ve gone this far with it, let me take it the rest of the way.”
“What do you mean?” James asked. Libby stood and tugged his arm.
“We should go,” she whispered as his father closed his eyes and groaned. She led James out of the room and closed the door quietly behind them.
“What does he mean? What exactly is he going to do?” James had his hand on the door, ready to pull it back open and demand answers from his father.
“He means he’s going to do the right thing by you,” Libby answered gently as she took his hand from the handle. “Now all you have to do is let him.”
“No,” James snapped, directing the sudden surge of annoyance at Libby. “Who knows how much longer he has to live. I’m not going to let him spend it being ripped to shreds for his father’s mistakes.”
“And he doesn’t want you ripped to shreds for your father’s mistakes. If I’ve learned anything from what my mother is going through, it’s how important it is to give her the things she’s hoping for while I can. At some point it becomes all they have. This is all your father has; don’t take it from him.”
An intrusive voice crept up behind them with an awkward clearing of a throat. “James, sweetheart,” Marissa called gently, “he’s got to rest now. You should go home. There will be a lot of work to do.”
“So you know?” James accused. “You knew his plan to just throw what’s left of his life away? I know you; you can’t honestly support this. He’s your brother.”
“I think it’s the first good thing he’s done by you in a long time,” she said, clearly treading lightly with her words.
“I’m not doing this,” James said, balling his hands into fists. “Maybe he wants to put the company first, but I won’t.”
“No, he wants to put you first, James,” Marissa corrected. “This is something he’s going to do.”
“Over my dead body,” James bit out, charging down the hallway toward the elevator, leaving both Libby and Marissa in his dust. He was certain they’d have a lot to say to each other, being more alike than different. Both caring for him deeply. They’d agree he was being ridiculous, and he didn’t want to stand around to hear it.
He continuously punched his finger against the elevator button; it finally dinged and the doors opened. Before he could step in he bumped into the man stepping out.
“James,” Mathew coughed out as he righted himself. “Everything all right? I was just coming up to check on you.”
“We’ve got a problem,” James said, pulling Mathew back into the elevator and hoping his friend who’d always come through for him would know how to fix this shitstorm.
Chapter 29
James wished he could block out the smell of cafeteria food. Canned pasta sauce mixed with the smell of old hamburgers was turning his stomach almost as much as the information his father had just laid on him.
“You should have told me right away,” Mathew said, biting at the inside of his mouth. “The minute you got back from Peru you should have told me what was going on with the safety violations and cover ups.”
“I was trying to keep you from being culpable. The less you knew the more protected from this you were.”
“Save the bullshit,” Mathew snapped back, and James could tell he was more hurt than angry. “When has that ever been a consideration in anything we’ve ever done?”
“Since you’ve become my friend,” James countered, but Mathew wasn’t interested in the proclamation of loyalty.
“I gave up everything to come down to Texas and get behind what you had planned for West Oil. I put my name on all of this, and now you’re telling me this company is about to go under?”
“Not if my father has his way, but that’s what I need from you. Help me come up with another way. My father wants to throw himself on the sword. He’ll take full responsibility for the crimes and lies and, because I’ve just found out about all of it, he thinks my hands will be clean.”
“Are they?” Mathew asked, eyeing him skeptically.
“Of course,” James answered quickly. “I knew nothing about this. But people like Arthur Wallace are spreading rumors that I did. He hates me. Libby went to him to look for answers, and he took advantage of the opportunity to say it was all my idea. But that’s all it will be, accusations. My name isn’t on any of this. My father wants me to come out, say we’ve stumbled upon this, and then throw him under the bus. He’ll confirm that I knew nothing, open himself up to the scrutiny, and likely go to jail. We can’t let that happen.”
Mathew sat quietly for a moment, and James held out hope that he’d come to some miraculous solution that would help them all move forward unscathed. “He’s right,” Mathew said finally. “That’s the only way. It’s been done before and companies have survived under new leadership once it’s clear they had no association with the old issues. After an investigation West Oil could come back from this but only if all the old problems are associated with your father. It’s brilliant actually. He set this up on purpose. He sent you away and cut you out so that one day he could save you and the company.”
“It’s not brilliant,” James argu
ed, slamming his hand to the plastic hospital cafeteria table. “If he’d have kept me around I could have helped him get out of all of this.”
“That’s not likely,” Mathew argued in his usual logical tone. “I don’t see any other way to move forward. But what I can do is call in some of the best Boston lawyers I know to defend your father. Corporate prosecution hardly ever ends in prison time. And with his failing health, I’m sure they’ll go easy on him. They’ll drain him of his personal assets, but it’s not like you’ll let him starve.”
“He’s dying,” James said fiercely. “I lost a decade with a man who I just found out five minutes ago isn’t the heartless stubborn pain in the ass I thought he was. Now I’m going to watch him dismantle the life he’s built.”
“By choice, he’s doing it by choice.”
“Only because we haven’t found him an alternative. You aren’t even trying to think of some other plan.”
“There are three options, James,” Mathew said in an even tone. “You bury these secrets and hope they don’t come to light. They haven’t for all this time. You keep paying the people your father paid. You keep making deals with the devil. Option two: you come out publically and claim you knew all along. You take the heat from your father and make him claim ignorance. Or, option three: you do what your father has invested a decade orchestrating.”
“You say that like the choice is easy.”
“No,” Mathew corrected, “I like being the guy who lays out the options and processes the facts and figures. You’ve always been the guy to make the final decisions. Just about every day of my life since we’ve met I’ve been thankful not to be in your shiny over-priced, uncomfortable shoes.”
“You’re an enormous help,” James scoffed sarcastically.
“I’ve always given you the odds, the stats, the options. Now you know what you’re working with. You need to decide.”
“And if I decide to bury this, what does that mean for you?” James thought he knew this answer. Mathew was not the kind of man to compromise ethics.
“I’ll get my shovel,” Mathew declared with a very serious look on his face.
James should have realized the only thing stronger than Mathew’s moral compass was his loyalty.
“I need some time to figure this out. There will be no way to unring this bell once we get in front of the press. If we do it, it’ll have to be strategic.”
“Take some time,” Mathew said, patting the cool green surface of the cafeteria table as he stood. “I’m going to give Jessica a ride home so she doesn’t need to grab a cab.”
“Really?” James said with a sly smile, glad for a bit of levity in a heavy moment.
“Don’t even start. She’s not my type.”
“Gorgeous isn’t your type anymore?”
“She’s crazy. Like she could be clinically insane. Loud. Opinionated. Dramatic. She’s a handful.” Mathew averted his eyes as the list of reasons he didn’t like Jessica grew longer.
“Right,” James said, sounding completely unconvinced. “I’ve known you a long time. You’ve dated kindergarten teachers, that girl from the bank, and a string of other perfectly boring women whose jobs I can’t even remember.”
“Exactly, that’s how I like my women. Perfectly boring.”
“How’s that working out for you?” James challenged with a smile.
“I don’t need crazy,” Mathew argued. “No one needs crazy.”
James let out a booming laugh and shook his head as though Mathew had no clue. “Everyone needs crazy every once in a while. Everyone.”
Chapter 30
Making love to Libby had been the only thing that seemed real. Everything else was a nightmare he couldn’t wake up from. Pressing her naked body down on top of him, Libby kissed his temple and brushed back his hair. “You’re amazing,” she whispered.
“This week is shit,” James sighed. “But you are still the best thing in my life.”
Libby understood for the first time the term walking on egg shells. James was hurt. Confused. Nothing she could say would help him make the decision that needed to be made. Nothing would help him process the realization that it was love that alienated him from his father, not hate or disappointment.
“Come with me to visit my mother today,” Libby suggested, as she slid back into her clothes and pulled her hair into a bun.
“Why?” James asked, still lying in bed like a frustrated teenager. “I will if you want me to, but why?”
“I’d like her to meet you. She’s been fairly lucid the last few times I’ve visited. She might even recognize me.”
“All right.” James shrugged and with much effort pulled himself out of bed.
A half hour later they were pulling into the facility where her mom lived. “Isn’t your mom young for dementia?” James asked, looking thoroughly nervous about this encounter.
“She’s only fifty-six. It’s rare to have such an early onset, but it does happen. They don’t know if it’s linked, but in her late teens she suffered a head trauma in a car accident. They say the brain is a mysterious thing. They may never know what caused it.”
“Is she ever upset? Like will seeing us upset her?”
“Sometimes,” Libby admitted. One of the hardest parts of watching her mother slip away was trying to comfort her when the confusion was just too much for her to wade through. “But I’m sure that won’t be the case today. Like I said, she’s been doing pretty well lately. She started on a new medicine; it’s not curative, but it’s helping.”
“I don’t do well with this stuff,” James admitted as they walked across the long, beautifully landscaped entrance and opened the first set of double doors.
“No one does,” she smiled. “But we still show up.”
The security at a facility like this was daunting. The numerous passcodes, badges, and locked doors were all to keep the patients from wandering off, but to an outsider it felt claustrophobic.
“Here’s her room,” Libby whispered, slipping her hand into James’s and tugging him forward. “Hello, Mom,” she said tentatively, holding her breath the way she always did when she entered, waiting to see if she’d be recognized.
“Hello, Libby,” her mother sang back with a big smile. “What are you doing here?”
She squeezed James’s hand so tight that he winced, but her excitement couldn’t be contained. This would be a good visit, and she’d have a chance to introduce her mother to James. “I want you to meet my friend, James,” Libby explained as they took a seat on the two small chairs at the foot of her mother’s bed.
“Hello,” James said, immediately clearing his throat. “It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Saint-Jane.”
“Oh, please call me Theresa,” she insisted as she made a move to get out of bed.
“Stay, Mom,” Libby insisted, waving her mother back to bed. “Don’t get up for us. We just want to sit with you a while if that’s all right.”
“Of course.” Theresa beamed. “But won’t you be late for science class?” she asked, looking worried as she checked the clock by her bed.
“No, Mom, I’m not in school anymore. I graduated. I have lots of time to visit.”
“Oh yes,” Theresa said, close to scolding herself for the mistake. “Of course you aren’t in school anymore. I tell you—my mind some days.”
“It’s okay,” Libby assured her, patting her mother’s leg through the warm quilt spread across her lap. “We can just visit.”
“I was thinking yesterday,” Theresa said, nodding her head as though the thought were becoming clearer by the second. “I think you should sell the house.”
“No, Mom, it’s our house. I can afford it. I want to keep it.”
“No you don’t,” she countered. “Why would you? You don’t work anywhere near it now that you’re in the city. It’s a terrible old house where things break all the time. Sell it.”
“Okay, Mom,” Libby placated. “I’ll sell it.”
“Good,” Theresa said triu
mphantly. “Good girl.”
“You remember I work in the city now?” Libby asked.
“Yes, for West Oil,” Theresa said with a scowl. “Jessica told me.”
“Oh,” Libby replied, a wave of terror rolling through her body as she glanced over at James.
“I think it’s good,” Theresa asserted with a clap of her hands.
“You do?” Libby asked, not sure what could possibly make her mother think working for the company that essentially caused the death of her husband would be good.
“Sure. You can change things there. You can take all the stuff that’s wrong and make it right. That would make your dad so proud. What better way to make a difference than right there in the middle of it? What a great opportunity.”
A deafening silence filled the room. James and Libby could not look at each other, both too overwhelmed by the gravity of the moment that seemed to have risen out of thin air. How could a woman, barely able to remember her own name or what day it was, so sincerely cut to the heart of the matter that was hanging over them both? Wasn’t this the point JW had been making? A clean slate, working at it from the inside would be the only way to change anything. James could get out from under the old deals and lies. Libby could get out from under the anger and pain. Together, from the inside, James and Libby could shape West Oil into something that helped people rather than hurt them. What a great opportunity.
“I thought for sure you’d be mad,” Libby said, finally breaking the silence. “They took a lot from you.”
“One day, if you choose to have any children, you’ll understand. There is no amount of pain, anger, or sacrifice I wouldn’t endure for you to be happy. There was nothing your father and I wouldn’t do for you. If you can work there and find peace, how I feel doesn’t matter. That’s what parenting is, lifting your children up so they can have a better view of the world than you had. So they can have an adventure you didn’t get to have. So they can accomplish the things you weren’t able to accomplish.”
The Barrington Billionaires Collection 1 Page 19
