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“I’ve made mistakes, Cooper.” His father had clung to Coop’s hand from his hospital bed, looking pale, frail and afraid. “And I can correct them. Starting with you.”
“Me?” Coop would’ve taken a step back if his father’s grip hadn’t suddenly turned strong. “Shouldn’t you start by eating better and reducing your workload?”
“That’s it exactly. You can’t take any of my workload.” Dad’s bedside cardiac machine beeped faster. “Your office has cobwebs. Life is one big party to you. Fast cars. Fast women. A fast way to the ruin of everything our family has built. But no more!”
Coop tried to calm his old man, focusing his counter-argument on the point pertinent to the situation. “You haven’t needed me at the office. When I show up, you don’t let me do anything.” Nothing but tag along to meetings like an unwanted growth. It was part of the reason why Coop stayed away. The other reason being that he and his father were cut from the same cloth. Both wanted to be in charge rather than a second or third—or not even a little bit—in command.
“What can I trust you with?Huh?” His father’s face was turning red. The beeps on the machine he was hooked up to increased in intensity. Alarms sounded somewhere down the hall. “You will go away for three months. Tell none of your friends or the rest of the family where you’re going. Tell no one who you are.”
“Go away? Now?” When Coop’s father might actually need him? “Dad, you’re not making sense.”
Footsteps pounded in the hallway, fast approaching.
“Leave your credit and bank cards,” Dad wheezed. “Leave your cars, your electronics, and your clothes.”
“You’re cutting me off?” Coop went numb. “Okay, you can do that. Just…just don’t send me away now.”When you might be dying.
His father clung to Coop’s hand. “Leave. Find your gift. Fate knows the way.”
“My gift?”Fate?“Dad… No.” No on so many levels.
No, don’t die!
No, don’t send me away!
And lastly, selfishly…No, don’t be disappointed in me!
It was true that Coop had spent the last five years living what might from the outside seem like an aimless life. Unwanted at his family business, Coop had taken advantage of his trust fund and worked gratis at several start-ups in Texas, gaining all kinds of experience in solving business problems. If Dad was going to need time to recover from this set-back, Coop was ready to fill his shoes.
“No,” Coop said again, louder this time. “You need me.”
“I don’t,” Dad insisted, pitching his hoarse voice lower still, “Not yet.Like madness is the glory of this life.”
Coop identified the words as those of Shakespeare. His father loved Shakespeare and quoted him embarrassingly often. But Coop had no idea what his old man was talking about this time.
“Talk to Stratton about the next 90 days,” Dad wheezed as Coop was pushed out of the way and then out of the room, where his father’s assistant had plucked Coop’s wallet from his pocket, removed his credit cards, and then asked for his cell phone, house and truck keys.
All of which Coop had numbly handed over while he waited to make sure his father was still alive.
I’m still waiting.
Coop hadn’t heard from his father in two months. Pride kept him from calling home or searching for family news on the internet. After doing odd jobs for cash and hitchhiking halfway across the United States, he’d ended up in the Hamptons, landed some odd jobs, and a closet of a room to sleep in. Only then had he bought a cheap cell phone. Only then had he looked up the meaning of that last quote—Like madness is the glory of this life.It had some reference to over-spending leading to bankruptcy. But that was the literal meaning. The internet was full of hidden meanings and symbolic translations. Shakespeare’s words could be bent to any meaning you wanted.
What had his father been trying to tell him?
And what if Coop’s Hamptons princess who’d quoted Shakespeare back at him knew or had some insight about it?
Coop rolled his eyes.
I’m reaching for straws now.
“Chuck,” Rafi said again in the here-and-now. He stood near the tack room. “Will you come work for me when I have my own horse farm?”
“When will that be?” Coop asked instead of bolstering Rafi’s dream the way he usually would.
“When I win the lottery.” Rafi’s laugh was a bit sad. “Banks, man. They don’t lend money to people with nothing more in their account than dreams.”
“Someday, you’ll meet a banker who believes in you,” Coop told him, hoping that was true. The world could be unfair. Coop had been born with the resources to pursue a dream. Why couldn’t Rafi be afforded the same chance?
