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Bing stands quickly and answers, “I am now.” He turns to Jameson and says, “Let me know if you need anything.”
“Thanks, guys,” Petra says softly.
We all troop down the stairs with the dogs and leave Petra and Jameson to get acquainted without an audience.
Weston turns on the television while I think about what I just experienced. My feelings about Jameson have gone through several iterations in the past ten or so minutes. I’m no longer angry with him because he so clearly loves his daughter, and that love has nearly broken him. It’s as clear as crystal. He’s a little older than I expected, having a good twenty years onMaggie, so their relationship is a puzzle. But even if he’s possibly approaching seventy, he looks to be in somewhat ill health rather than exhibiting advanced age. Bing’s solicitousness to him underscores that. He’s a good-looking man, and Petra has his same facial bone structure and eyes. I thought she looked like Maggie, but the resemblance is much stronger with Jameson.
“They’re going to have a lot to work out, aren’t they?” I ask Bing.
“Oh, you have no idea,” he answers. “It’s not my place to talk about it, but I will say that I’m sorry for Petra that he took so long to come down here to see her. He didn’t think it was fair to make her travel up to Chicago again so soon to see him, but he was out of town longer than expected, and then he had to meet with his lawyer, and that took a few days. He was pretty exhausted this morning, so I let him sleep most of the way here. He planned to call ahead, but he conked out before he had the chance.”
“Why did he want to meet with his lawyer?”
“He’s settling his estate.”
Somehow that statement had an ominous ring to it, so I change the subject and ask, “Bing, Weston tells me you like to bake in your spare time. He generously shared one of the bear claws you sent him home with. It was delicious!” And that prompts a lively discussion about cooking that we carry on until the game starts. I get the sense that Bing definitely knows his way around a kitchen.
Bing Ma seems like a great guy. I have to think that Jameson is lucky to have him working for him. I wonder absently how they got together as boss/employee, but before I can ask, Declan throws a bullet of a pass for forty-seven yards, his nearly surrounded receiver jumps up, snatches the ball out of the air with one hand and runs it in for a touchdown. I’m suddenly engrossed in football. Go Buckeyes!
My phone chimes, and I look down, unsurprised to see a text from my sister.
Gracie: Did you just see that?!!
Callum: Wow! What a play!
Forty-One
Petra
I have somany questions for my father, but he seems tired, and there is a tinge of sadness behind the happiness and energy he tries to project. I can’t put my finger on it, so I decide to ignore the feeling that all is not well. He doesn’t seem to have any trouble asking me questions about my life, though. In fact, he peppers me with questions about my career and what I’ve been writing. He seems pleased that I’ve never confined myself to a particular genre and have done non-fiction, business documents, marketing campaigns, and trade manuals as well as fiction. Finally, his curiosity seems satisfied, and I decide it’s time for some answers from him.
I try for easy questions first, but right away it’s clear that the “easy” ones don’t necessarily have easy answers.
“How did you meet my mom?”
See? That seems straightforward enough until he tells me, “I found her.”
“Huh?” Always with the eloquent answers here.
He takes a shaky breath and begins. “I used to walk to work for exercise whenever the weather was nice, and a few times I saw this exquisite young woman sitting on a bench as I’d pass by. I guess I thought she was waiting for a bus or something, but I couldn’t help noticing her beauty. I began to smile as I passed, and she would look away as if she were shy. More and more I wanted to get her attention, so I stopped driving to work at all.
“One morning I headed out, and it started to rain quite unexpectedly. She was still there—sitting in a downpour. I wished I’d had an umbrella to offer her because she was trying to cover up with a sweater that I realized was inadequate. She then darted away into the opening of a building, but the doorman shooed her away like she was a piece of trash. I went up to her, hoping to assist. As I approached, I also realized that she was terribly thin and had a bruise on her chin. She was shaking like a leaf, even though it wasn’t all that cold yet.
“When I asked if I could help, she shook her head and told me something to the effect that no one could help, but I was armored and mounted on my white steed then, and I was ready to rescue the damsel in distress. ‘Have you had breakfast yet?’ I asked her and then made up some cock-and-bull story about being so hungry, I needed a Belgian waffle before starting my workday. That poor thing’s eyes looked so miserable and starved, I took her by the arm and led her to the nearest café. I sent a text to my assistant to let her know I’d be late and proceeded to order enough food for an army.”
“Um. Wow. And that was my mother?”
“Yes, Petra. She was so far down on her luck, she’d been on the streets for weeks, barely scraping by. She lived in a shelter at night at least where she got a small meal, but during the day she couldn’t stay there. We got to talking, and I realized she was quite bright, so I offered her a job at my company, effective immediately. She was so appreciative, it warmed my egotisticalheart, and I felt on top of the world. Foolishly, I also told her she could move out of the shelter and into my guest room, and I’d see to it that she had some proper clothes. Winter was coming, and I hated the idea that she might freeze.”
I don’t know what to make of this story, so I ask, “Can I get you some more coffee?”
“No, thank you, but I would like some water if it’s no trouble.”
When I return with the water, he continues, “I won’t go into all of the details of what happened over the next couple of years, but suffice it to say that I was smitten, and she had me wrapped around her little finger. I bulldozed her into a job on the custodial staff because the HR department refused to give her anything else without experience or a background check. But I insisted. She seemed so shy and reticent at first, but later I came to realize that was all part of an act. I fell for her hook, line, and sinker and soon she was sharing my bed rather than using the guest room. It was the happiest I’d ever been, and when she told me she was carrying my child, I tried to rush her to City Hall to marry her. But she didn’t have a birth certificate. We were never legally married because although I tried and tried to locate her birth records, I never could. She had given me the wrong city, wrong state, and the wrong year of her supposed birth, so I came up with nothing.”
This brings up one of my biggest questions. “Why isn’t your name on my birth certificate?”
“It is, dear one. Why would you ask that?”
