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Tess needed to learn more than what he could give her. She had to be challenged, had to live outside of the bubble she’d been so safely ensconced within.
Maybe he was wrong. Maybe he was playing God, testing his daughter much like God had tested Job.
But he knew his Tess. She would not only survive, she would thrive.
“Yes, she is my daughter, and so I know she will make her way.”
“Make her way? Frank, she’s a hard worker and loves the company. Sure, she’s young, but you should have made her the CEO and hired this fellow to work for her.”
“I know what the company needs, Maggie. Trust me on this—it’s the right thing. The rubber is meeting the road and time will tell us where we go. You understand?”
His wife of forty-five years shook her head. “You’re a stubborn goat.”
“Like my daughter… and my sons.”
“I don’t see this as you do, but I will trust you. I have always trusted you. But tread softly, Frankie. These are strange times for us.”
He sighed. “Times I don’t wish on my enemy, but this is what we’re left with, Maggie.”
“Are you going to tell them about the cancer today? Tell them about the operation this past week?”
“It’s the wrong time. People want to feel joy at Easter.”
“It’s always the wrong time,” Maggie said, turning to the bowl containing the mascarpone cheese, stirring with a furrow between her lovely green eyes. Maggie meant business when she cooked for the family. “But you don’t have much more time. Next week you’ll start the chemotherapy. We’ve already hidden all the tests, and I don’t know how we managed that as nosy as this family is.”
“Easy to do when your kids are busy living.” Frank looked out the window at his shady backyard. Everything bloomed—the huge azaleas clustered around the sprawling live oak anchoring the landscape. A beautiful waterscape tumbled water over the stones mined from a quarry in Arkansas. Birds darted through the canopy and the world looked soft and beautiful… as if something as ugly as cancer couldn’t exist.
And it made Frank angry.
Why had this happened to him? Why now? At the end of his life when things should be simple… when he deserved to sink into his recliner and put his feet up?
He’d worked so hard his whole life, pouring blood, sweat, and tears into creating something worthwhile, something good. He’d come from humble beginnings, born the year after the U.S. entered World War II, his father dying that same year in the Pacific. He’d been raised by a working single mother who married a man who drank hard and hit harder. Eventually, Frank dropped out of high school and went to work sweeping a warehouse owned by a celebrated early float maker. Soon after he put down his broom and learned how to build the floats rolling for some of the earliest parades like Comus and then Rex.
Years later after a stint in the army, Frank returned and bought a warehouse with his savings and a loan from Maggie’s father. He’d started Frank Ullo Float Builders, and because he loved what he did, it had grown into the international business it was today. Finally, he’d been thinking about taking it easy, traveling to Italy for the summer, duck-hunting with his sons, and watching his grandkids play soccer every Saturday morning.
Irony bit a man in the ass sometimes.
A sound at the door told him his reverie must end.
“Papa Frank?” Max bellowed, feet slapping the wood floors as the five-year-old headed for the kitchen.
Frank spun as Maggie wiped her hands on her apron. “Sugar, I told you about running in the house.”
Their grandson skidded to a halt in front of his grandmother who smiled through her fussing. “Sorry, Gee, but look what the Easter Bunny put in my basket.” He waved a lacrosse stick in the air.
“Jeez, Max. Put that down before you break something,” Frank Jr. said, entering the kitchen, snatching the stick from his youngest son’s grasp and dropping a brusque kiss on his father’s cheek then turning to Maggie. “Happy Easter, parents.”
Maggie started the hugging and kissing as Max’s older brothers poured in, looking for snacks before dinner. Finally Frank Jr.’s wife, Laurie, stumbled in with a casserole dish and a tired smile.
Frank watched this part of his family, soaking in every detail, brushing away any annoyance he’d normally feel at the boys tussling over the remote or snitching too much chocolate from the candy dish. Then Joseph arrived with his quiet wife and even quieter twin girls. Michael showed up with a bottle of Cabernet and an Easter lily for his mother. And finally, Tess arrived to good-natured ribbing from her older brothers about being late as usual.
Frank’s mother, Bella, plodded in behind his daughter, sharp-eyed and grumpy about being late to dinner.
“She shows up ten minutes late. Ten minutes I had to listen to Ira Messamer complain about his damned gout. I didn’t know a man could whine so much about swollen feet.”
Tess, dressed in trim pants and a cotton shirt that hugged her figure, rolled her eyes. “I told you I had to stop for rolls. You said it was okay.”
“A little late, you said,” Bella, otherwise known as Granny B, muttered. “Not a whole ten minutes.”
