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“Okay,” I said as we sat down across from each other at dark wooden tables carefully designed to look intimate and indie. “What's going on?”
He stared down at the cup in his hands, and I tried not to do the same. I'd noticed the significance of his order the second he'd placed it: smallest size, black coffee. The cheapest thing on the menu besides water.
My father never ordered the cheapest thing on the menu. He always said that looking poor invited being poor. That little cup of coffee between us on the table sent alarm bells clanging in my head, even more so than his tears. He could have been crying just to manipulate me, but appearing poor?
Something was definitely very wrong.
“Felicia, I need your help,” he blurted suddenly. “Everything's gone all wrong, and I can't fix it. I need you, you're the only one who can do it. Please, Felicia.”
Oh my god. I stood up. “You said this was about mom,” I snapped. “I'm leaving.”
“She's sick.”
Perhaps, I thought, sitting down was a better idea.
I sat. I blinked. “What??
?? I said, stupidly.
Tears brimmed in his eyes again, and I could have almost sworn they were real. But why would my father cry over the woman he had married? As far as I could tell, he'd never given a second thought to her after the ink on the marriage certificate was dry.
“She has cancer,” he said, and the words came out in a sob.
I felt cold. Looking down at my hands, I flexed my fingers, trying to warm them up. “What do you mean, she has cancer?” It was a stupid question. But I'd just talked to mom two days ago. Why had my father flown all the way out here to tell me she was sick? Why couldn't she have told me in a phone call? Surely she was already in treatment.
None of this felt right.
My father shook his head and mopped at his eyes with a napkin. “We found out a week ago,” he was saying, “but we couldn't start chemo.”
My mouth went dry. “Why not?”
He brought his hands to his face, and I was shocked to see them covered in liver-spots, wrinkled and papery. They were the hands of an old man.
“I'm ruined,” he said.
My mouth dropped open. “What do you mean, ruined?”
He shook his head, unable to speak, and took a few deep breaths. “There's no money left,” he said finally. “It's... it's gone.”
I pressed my lips together. “It's gone?” I couldn't believe it. My father was richer than King fucking Midas. How did that kind of money just... disappear? “How the hell did you manage that? You don't have the houses? The cars? All the artwork?”
“It's all leveraged. Everything. I owe it all.”
Shock numbed me. “You... is this about the company, or you?”
“Both.”
“You crossed the streams?” How was that even possible? The corporation should have had enough equity and assets to fund any venture, no matter how stupid.
“It was private. I wanted to start up a new company on my own. But it didn't work. And the company... well, financial empire building isn't what it once was. We're broke. I'm broke.”
I sat there in silence. Across the coffee shop someone burst into laughter and the noise grated against my nerves.
“Are you on drugs?” I finally said. “What on earth made you do those things?”
He finally lowered his hands, but he didn't look at me. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe I was.”
Holy shit, I thought. “How much do you owe?”
