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I shrugged. “Christian hated New York. He hated apartment life and not having a big yard, and he absolutely loathed public transportation and busy sidewalks. Both his parents are originally from Atlanta. They divorced when he was five, and he mostly lived with his mother after that. His father relocated to work in the family business in New York, so he went back and forth. I think part of the reason he hates the city so much is because of what it represents to him—his family being torn apart. It’s easier to blame something other than your parents.”
“How long were you two together?”
“Three-and-a-half years.”
Merrick nodded.
“What about you? Did you always live in the city?”
“I spent a week every summer down here with Kitty and my mom. But yeah, born and raised in New York. My mom went to college in the city and never came back. She was one of the few women on the trading floor in her day. She passed away six years ago of breast cancer.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.”
“What about your dad?”
“He retired to Florida last year. Never remarried after my mom. My sister lives down there and has kids, so he moved not too far from her.”
“You were…engaged once, too, right?”
Merrick’s eyes flashed to me quickly before returning to the road. His lips pursed. “You like to dig around, don’t you?”
“It’s an occupational hazard. I ask questions and try to fit the pieces together to see the whole puzzle.”
“Oh yeah? What pieces have you managed to put together about me?”
I didn’t want to mention the comment Will had made—that his fiancée had annihilated him—so I was vague. “I’ve heard around that you were engaged to your business partner and it didn’t end well.”
Merrick stared at the road. I thought maybe that was the end of our discussion, but then he cleared his throat.
“You’ve shared a lot about your life, stuff that wasn’t easy to live through. Yet you seem to have found a way to make peace with it. I have a harder time talking about things.”
I nodded. “We all handle things in different ways. That’s okay. I didn’t mean to pressure you into discussing something you aren’t comfortable talking about.”
Merrick went quiet for a long time. It surprised me when he started to talk again. “Amelia and I started the business together, though she didn’t want to be an equal partner and didn’t want her name on the door.”
“Why not?”
He drummed his fingertips on the steering wheel. “She said she wasn’t a people pleaser. She wanted nothing to do with any personnel or dealing with a board of directors. Used to say she wanted to play Monopoly for a living but didn’t want to own Hasbro.”
“Why be a partner at all then?”
Merrick frowned. “I pushed her into it. She was smarter than me and understood people more, even though she didn’t want to get involved with most. Plus, she out-earned every trader in the industry her first year, so she deserved more.”
“Wow. Sounds like she was some sort of a whiz kid.”
“She was.”
He didn’t offer more, so I debated whether to push. But I was curious. I knew she’d died, but I didn’t get the feeling it was her death that had annihilated Merrick.
“Can I ask what happened between the two of you?”
The exit for the airport was coming up, so Merrick put on his blinker to get into the right lane. Our eyes caught briefly as he looked over his shoulder before changing lanes.
“My story isn’t that different than yours. I found out I never really knew the person I thought I was going to marry.”
“I’m sorry.”
