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Poppy rarely acknowledges his illness, treating dementia like seasonal allergies, making his momentary graveness surprising.

She helps him light the thick end and watches his satisfied inhalation.

“Don’t worry. Just a few puffs, my dear. Promise. A man retires only once. The occasion warrants a… a…” He peers intently at the cigar like it’s labeled with the word he’s looking for. He looks visibly relieved when he comes up with it. “A… Cuban.”

During his deep drag, Simone considers pointing out his slipup in using Leland’s name instead of Alex’s, but stops herself. Poppy isn’t a man who likes to be corrected, and the moment has passed. Besides, it seems insignificant to everyone except her husband—the manifestation of his lifelong struggle to measure up to a ghost.

“You seem cold. Want my jacket?” Poppy begins removing it before she answers. Nobody else wears this heirloom blazer. Nobody. She’s uncertain whether he’s forgotten this sacred rule or is making an allowance because of the celebration. Either way, she won’t risk damaging the precious heirloom.

“No. Keep it. But it’s cold. I should get back inside.”

“Go ahead. I’ll be there shortly.” He gestures toward his cheek. “Give me some sugar, kid.”

She kisses him and rests her head briefly on his bony shoulder.

“You’ve done so well, Simone.”

He probably means the party, which she worked hard to pull off. But for Simone, the validation is more than that, extends beyond that. She has done well. She’s built this life. She savors that, this shimmering moment, this happiness. Nestled in her cocoon of contentment, champagne warming her bloodstream, she decides she’ll agree to do Kwame’s panel after all. She slips away from Poppy and with frozen fingers pulls her phone from the pocket of her dress. Simone types fast, before she can change her mind. Thanks for the invite, I’m in.

If only she’d known what those six simple words would lead to. But Simone remains blissfully unaware as she types and then rejoins the party to hug her son, dance with her husband, and toast their promising future.

CHAPTER TWO ALEX

Alex spins around in the worn leather chair, and for a split second he’s a kid again visiting his grandfather at work. This was the only silly indulgence that Poppy allowed him when Alex came to the office as a child, and it feels equally ridiculous and right to be twirling around with abandon in the old man’s chair on his first day as CEO. One last turn on this old creaky relic before he retires it to the building’s basement. The new one—a modern ergonomic model—will be delivered tomorrow. Along with the Italian leather love seat and a sleek glass coffee table Simone picked out for him. He knows the office makeover is his version of faking it until you make it (create the office of the CEO you want to be!), but he’s trying not to think like that.

He’s brought two large boxes from home this morning filled with new coffee table books, a misshapen mug Langston made for him in art class, and photos and artwork for the walls that had been completely bare except for Poppy’s diplomas from Tate and the University of Wisconsin. All of it is aimed at transforming the spacious corner suite on the twentieth floor that had been Poppy’s office for thirty years into his own. Alex has put a considerable amount of faith in the power of some new furniture and decor so it doesn’t feel like the old man’s ghost is still looming in here, watching Alex, judging the job he’s doing.

The unpacking and decorating have to wait for the moment, however, along with the rest of his to-do list. There’s something else he needs to handle first this Monday morning. Buying his wife a house.

When they’d toured the 5,000-plus-square-foot mid-century masterpiece overlooking a particularly dazzling stretch of Lake Michigan a few weeks ago, the look on Simone’s face was one that he’d thought she’d reserved only for him—pure adoration. They’d passed the sign for the open house on the way home from errands and stopped on a whim, just for fun. While they walked through the architectural gem, Simone kept pointing at this feature and that with delighted squeals, like the house could one day be theirs. His wife’s giddy delight as she oohed and ahhed over the bold red Aga stove, the period-perfect furniture that came with the house, including Eames lounge chairs, made him want to sneak her up to the impeccably staged primary bedroom and rip her clothes off then and there.

When they stood arm in arm at the far edge of the house’s backyard that overlooked the lake as the sun set, Alex knew he had to do this for her, make this dream wonderland hers. Theirs. Making Simone happy has always given him more pleasure than anything else besides their son. He gets a deeper sense of accomplishment out of pleasing them than he ever does at work, but at least it’s a means to that end.

The price tag for this particular dream is an obscenely high number, and it was almost physically painful to see all those zeros on the cashier’s check for the good-faith deposit he’d messengered over to the Realtor, Tilly, this morning. He has the same sense of fear and exhilaration as he attaches the signed contract to an email to shoot over to Tilly. He reminds himself that he can swing the five-digit mortgage payments now. Becoming CEO and taking ownership of the company means fuck-you money. Though Alex would never be crass enough to say that out loud. He’s always preferred to think of himself as comfortable, upper middle class, and went to great pains never to act like the rich douche he always feared people would assume he was.

As he presses send on the email, he envisions Simone’s face when she discovers his surprise. It’s something of a gamble, but he’s banking on the fact that Simone will be so overcome by this grand gesture she won’t mind the secrecy. After dinner, he’s going to drive her and Langston over and present her with the monogrammed gold key chain he bought her to hold her new house keys, and say, It’s ours, babe. He’ll wave grandly at the lakefront mansion that represents the shining embodiment of this next phase of their life while she squeals in surprise and delight. Simone’s joy will help offset that constant tiny needling in the back of his brain that taunts him, that whispers he’s not quite enough. A feeling that was born when she’d hesitated on agreeing to their first… and second and third dates. When he was trying to sweep her off her feet, and they’d remained so stubbornly planted on the ground. Those first few months, whenever he’d come to see Simone, he’d spend the entire ninety-minute train ride to Chicago wondering what it would take to win her over once and for all. Which frustrated him, to be honest—he had everything to offer her and she didn’t want it? And then—he’s never been sure what changed—suddenly Simone was more into it. Into him. That initial reluctance has always stuck in his mind, though, like he’d started their relationship already behind in some integral way, and he’s struggling to make up the distance.

He turns his attention to unpacking, a more productive use of his time than daydreaming. The first thing he pulls out of the box at his feet is his new name plate, heavy as a murder weapon. After rubbing the etched words, CEO, HARTWELL INC., a few times, as if for good luck, he puts it at the edge of his freshly polished desk.

When he grabs the next item from the box, the vertigo is instant. A framed photo of his parents. Simone had found it in some boxes back when they’d first moved to Sawville and had placed it on the mantel above the fireplace and below the flat-screen without asking him. He wasn’t crazy about having to look at his dead parents every time he watched Game of Thrones, but it would have been heartless to pack it away. Same reason he didn’t outright object when Simone pushed him to bring it to the office. Alex can almost convince himself that he recalls the day the photo was taken, the feel of his mother’s warm skin against his chubby baby cheek, his parents standing ankle-deep in the sand of Bradford Beach, squinting in the sun, the breeze lifting his mom’s striped shirt to reveal the pink bikini underneath. But, of course, he can’t actually remember any of it, as much as he wants to or as hard as he strains to try. The last time he saw them he was four years old, strapped into his car seat. That moment he does vividly remember: his mother reaching for him, screaming his name seconds before their car slammed into the tree.

The thing about being an orphan is you can spend a lifetime caught up in fantasies about what could have been. If Alex’s parents had lived, he would have been off the hook to take over the company this soon, or maybe ever. His father would be at the helm right now, and exactly the kind of successor Poppy always wanted, not the one he basically got stuck with. Maybe his parents would have encouraged Alex to study philosophy and literature, to become a teacher or a professor, or run some sort of arts philanthropy, unlike Poppy, who constantly told him the only subjects that mattered were math and gym so he could balance the books and learn how to “kick ass” in all the sports he didn’t really care about. Maybe his mom and dad would have nurtured all the traits in him that Poppy hated. And all of it would have resulted in Alex having a completely different life, sliding doors–style. The thoughts of what might have been lurked in the shadows of his mind. But he’d never know.

I couldn’t be more proud to entrust this company, and its legacy, to my son, Leland.

A slip… or wishful thinking?

When he was little, Alex used to walk around the house in his grandfather’s wing-tipped loafers, and he’s suddenly overcome with that feeling now. Like he’s pretending to be CEO. A little boy spinning in a chair, playing pretend, who might fuck it all up.

Especially when he considers how much hazing (or in Poppy’s words: “grooming”) he endured to get here. His grandfather had started Alex mopping floors at various stores when he was all of eight years old. He worked behind the butcher counter whenever he was home on break from Tate, scrubbing blood and guts off the slick floors before he got promoted to stocking shelves. During summers home from college, Poppy had him driving a Hartwell delivery truck on endless trips back and forth from the warehouse and the dozens of miles between stores, unloading crates of apples and boxes of flour and coffee beans until his back muscles screamed in protest and went on strike.

When he graduated from college, Poppy put him to work in the warehouse for two long years until he finally promoted him to junior account executive. That’s when the panic attacks started. Alex hated going to all those sales meetings, trying to squeeze the lowest price possible from local producers who could barely make ends meet but who were also desperate to stock their products on Hartwell’s shelves.

“Tell them they have to prove themselves, then we can discuss more favorable terms. But until we make a profit, they don’t. Fair’s fair.” But it never seemed fair to Alex to fleece the local dairy producers and farmers out of those extra pennies. It’s how he knew he was going to make a terrible businessman, and it seemed like Poppy agreed. He’d begun shadowing Alex in meetings, practically running them himself, and then expounding for hours afterward, well into the evenings, about everything Alex had done wrong.

After enduring seven excruciating years, Alex broke. Quitting Hartwell was the most impulsive thing he’d ever done in his life, but he also felt he didn’t have a choice. When he told Poppy he was leaving, his reaction was bad enough—red face, bulging veins, and a whole lot of expletives. But when Alex explained that he was going to get a graduate degree in English at a program Northwestern offered in Barcelona, Poppy’s reaction was even worse. Laughter. He cackled for a full minute in this very office. Then he turned deadly serious and said, “After everything I’ve done for you… if you walk out that door, don’t expect me to have mercy when you come crawling back. And mark my words, you will be crawling back.”

The only thing that made Alex brave enough to follow through on his plans was that he’d convinced his new girlfriend, Simone, to go with him to Spain. They could finally live together instead of spending almost every weekend on Amtrak between Milwaukee and Chicago. She had initially balked that she couldn’t leave her job at the Trib, even though they were treating her like shit, in Alex’s opinion. Simone was also, understandably, worried about how they would support themselves with no income. Alex decided it was finally time to fess up about his trust fund—the million-dollar settlement from his parents’ car crash that would pay him monthly dividends starting on his thirtieth birthday, which was conveniently months away.