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Casually waving to a group of his friends, he says, “Walk with me.”
Silence stretches between us ominously as he leads us down the steps to the second deck, where music is drowned by laughter and easy conversation. Golden lights sway in the breeze, highlighting a fully stocked bar and an enormous sitting area in a comforting glow. But I’m feeling anything but at ease.
I can’t get a feel for his mood, and it’s pointless to wonder, really. The man keeps his emotions tightly in check, never showing his cards until he’s sure he’s already won. Unlike me, easily read despite years of trying to disguise my thoughts.
Another failure.
“I don’t need to remind you of the past and the hardships we faced,” he says as we look toward the center of the space where we spot my mother. She’s tipsy as hell, guzzling bubbly on a circular couch, surrounded by a group of Dad’s business partners. “This was the vision I had for us that kept me from giving up. This is the life of luxury we’ve worked so hard for.”
Expensive wines float from table to table behind the couch, and plates of food I once would have begged for are passed around by greedy fingers.
It’s true when they say you don’t know what you have until it’s gone. And he’s right; I don’t need a reminder.
We went from never wanting for anything to canned tuna and plain crackers becoming a delicacy. And regardless that we’ve made our way back to this side of wealth, I’m disgusted by these men and women, taking their fill of food and alcohol until they’re thoroughly drunk and satiated. They swipe small samples before each dish is discarded altogether, forgotten, yet entirely full.
“Seeing her this happy… I can’t find the words,” he says, smiling at her tinkling laughter.
I smirk despite myself. “Reminds me of when she won a hundred dollars on that gas station scratch off ticket.”
We ate like royalty that night, stopping at five different drive-thrus for random bites of food. I still remember the taste of that strawberry box cake we stayed up making, and the mouthwatering flavor of cream cheese frosting.
“Yeah, and the next morning, we found mice had torn through nearly all of it,” he says to my recounted memory, and the grin that was dimpling his thinly scruffed cheek is gone as fast as it appeared.
I stare at a blend of his colleagues, partners, and competitors—dressed in their finery, with not a single care in their world’s as they dance and party.
He’s missing the whole fucking point.
No, I never want to go through the fear and uncertainty of poverty again. But at the time, none of what we suffered through mattered more to me than having two loving parents.
He pauses, looking beyond the party at the horizon as if it holds his next great conquest. “I swore on my life I would never put us in that position again.”
Unlike the history of his fall out with Patrick Vance, this is one story I’m no stranger to.
A friend managed to convince him to buy into an investment scam, but unbeknownst to my father, he was a crook who siphoned his money and assets right out from under his nose, leaving him with virtually nothing to his name.
Life as we knew it went to shit after that.
We barely scraped by for two years after we’d lost everything, and at sixteen, I had no idea what my future held outside of providing for my family. College wasn’t even on my radar, but my education was everything to him, and something he refused to budge on, no matter how much I was working overtime.
It was that final truancy warning that pushed him over the edge the day he hit me.
The metallic tang of blood on my tongue. The shockwave of adrenaline that followed being struck. The despair of being a disappointment.
I drain the contents of my glass, desperately wanting to forget the memories.
I don’t know what’s come over me when I eventually say, “Guess we ought to be thankful for the sanctuary the Vances gave us, then.”
I know I’ve struck a nerve when his body goes unnaturally still.
“Thankful?” He scoffs. “I have no gratitude for cowardice, son.”
He motions for me to follow him to the office on the yacht’s lowest level, and we take each step below deck silently while my heart rate ratchets.
Red carpet and a heavy mahogany desk, positioned in front of two built-in bookcases, adorn the room, reflecting an aura of power and wealth, much like the man himself.
I wasn’t ever brave enough to ask what happened that day–partly because I took responsibility for the way things played out. I’d pushed him past the point of anger after he caught me and Penelope in the barn, but now, I can’t help but wonder…
“You two were friends and colleagues for years,” I say, careful not to seem too curious. “I’ve never understood why he would back out on the business you created together?”
