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“It makes no sense,” he agreed. Then he gave me a contemplative look. “You’re absolutely right. How could there not have been a click in Ethan’s mind when he heard my surname?”
“It is kind of unique.” Like the man himself.
He said, “There’d never been even the tiniest flicker of recognition in his eyes. Not a hint. And he’d spent that first year and a half courting me the way professors do with favored students.” He drained his tumbler and splashed in more scotch.
“I wouldn’t really know. I’m not a financial whiz or a rocket scientist.”
He grinned. “You’re plenty smart. And resourceful.”
“I do like complicated puzzles. Now, you were saying about Ethan…?”
“Right. So he spent the first few semesters dazzling me with his own economics knowledge. We attended faculty-student networking functions, lectures, global presentations. He seemed to have no idea who I was, and that did make sense, because I’d wiped the slate clean on the Internet, as far as my family was concerned.”
“Which is a mind trip unto itself.”
“With Amano’s help and contributions to the right organizations I made sure I wasn’t the least bit relevant on the Web, aside from a few approved articles from the Wall Street Journal. I’d covered my tracks. By the time I’d arrived at Harvard, I was just a smart, rich kid who’d broken the code to get in when he had no family connections and no real hi
story to draw upon.”
“Your father didn’t go to Harvard?”
“No, he was a Yale man.”
I did a little pacing of my own. “That alone would keep the Board from letting you in, I’d think.”
He chuckled. “It doesn’t exactly work that way. Anyway, since my parents died when I was just a month old, there wasn’t any family obligation, connection, funding, whatever. Amano and Aunt Lara were cognizant of how to ensure I got into the right schools, but they were more practical about it than political.”
“Meaning they didn’t suck up?”
“Exactly. GPA, student body standing, extracurricular activities, volunteering—those were crucial and I focused on them. Naturally, I had the money to buy my way in, but then again, so do a lot of kids.”
“What made you stand out?” I had to ask.
“From my understanding, it was the volunteering and charitable donations. I was able to devote free hours not related to school activities to community service. Ivy League universities want well-rounded, socially conscientious students. The difficulty in that affects students who can’t keep up their GPA, activities, and fund-raising efforts for tuition all at the same time. I’m not a fan of the system, but it’s a respected institution regardless.”
“And you did what was required of you. That’s admirable, Dane.”
He seemed to grind over this. “If Amsel wants Harvard, I don’t know how I feel about that.”
I stared at him, incredulous. “You want our kid to go to one of the best universities, right? And wouldn’t you advocate from the get-go that he follow your educational path? Continue your Harvard legacy?”
“What if Stanford offers him a football scholarship or Duke wants him on their basketball team? Am I going to say, ‘No, you have to go to Harvard because that’s where I went’?”
“Point taken.” And I acknowledged it as a selfless one on Dane’s part. “But let’s put that aside for the moment. It’ll be at least sixteen or seventeen years before he goes to college, if he’s on the Dane Bax schedule. Though chances are, we’ll end up with a genius who pushes a decision at twelve.” I had no doubt our son would be absurdly ambitious. Though I added, “That’s currently neither here nor there.”
Not that a hint of panic didn’t creep in on me. I’d married a brilliant man, after all, whose father had also been brilliant. Sort of went without saying that our son would follow in those significant footsteps.
But I digressed.
“Okay, so you got into Harvard. You kicked ass. Ethan took notice. But again—how did he miss the connection between you and your dad?”
Dane set aside his glass. “I don’t know, truthfully.”
“What about the hard drive Ethan brought back from Switzerland? Anything of value on it?”
Dane’s entire demeanor went rigid. A chill ran through me.
“Dane?”
