Chapter 6 - THE FORTY-TWO PEOPLE HE USED AGAINST ME
Seventeen people.
Not forty-two.
That should not have mattered as much as it did.
Seventeen families could lose income just as painfully as forty-two.
But Daniel had chosen forty-two because he knew that number lived inside me.
Forty-two people worked at Hayes Woodworks.
Robert knew every spouse.
Every child.
Every retirement party.
When a machinist named Ed Alvarez developed lymphoma, Robert kept him on the health plan almost a year after Ed could no longer work.
Daniel had grown up around those people.
He knew I would picture their faces.
And he used them.
“I want to go downstairs,” I said.
Daniel frowned.
“Why?”
“I want to talk to Harold.”
Harold Jenkins had been Robert’s shop foreman for twenty-seven years.
He was sixty-one now, broad through the shoulders, with gray hair and the same red carpenter’s pencil behind his ear.
When he saw me, he removed his safety glasses.
“Margaret.”
Then he hugged me.
Not carefully.
Not politely.
The way old friends hug after death has left a permanent empty chair between them.
“I’m sorry I missed the funeral.”
“You were in Ohio with your daughter.”
“Still should’ve been there.”
“Robert knew.”
Harold looked toward Daniel.
His expression changed.
Not hostile.
Guarded.
“What’s going on?”
I told him enough.
Not everything.
Just the forty-two.
Harold stared at Daniel.
“You told your mother Rivergate employed forty-two people?”
Daniel rubbed the back of his neck.
“I was talking about everyone affected.”
“No, you weren’t.”
Harold’s voice was quiet.
That made it worse.
“You used our head count.”
“It was a bad choice of words.”
“Your father would call that lying.”
Daniel’s jaw tightened.
“Everybody apparently knows exactly what Dad would say today.”
Harold took a breath.
“You know what? You’re right.”
That surprised all of us.
Harold walked toward a row of lockers.
“I don’t know what Robert would say today.”
He opened one and removed an old brown work coat.
“But I know what he said four months before he died.”
He handed the coat to me.
Robert’s.
The elbows were shiny with wear.
There was dried glue near one pocket.
I pressed it against my face.
Cedar.
Even after all those months, it smelled like him.
“What did he say?”
Harold leaned against the workbench.
“He told us Daniel was having financial trouble.”
Daniel’s head snapped up.
“You discussed my finances with employees?”
“With me.”
Harold corrected him.
“Because you had access to a company investment account.”
Arthur, who had followed us downstairs, went still.
Harold continued.
“Robert moved operating reserves after that. New controls. Two signatures required. Employee retirement assets separated completely.”
I looked at Daniel.
“Your father protected them.”
Harold nodded.
“No one here is losing a pension because of Rivergate.”
That was the second reversal of the day.
The catastrophe Daniel had used to frighten me was impossible.
Robert had already built a wall around his employees.
Harold went on.
“Hayes Woodworks isn’t tied to Daniel’s real estate business. Not anymore.”
Daniel looked furious.
“He was supposed to transition management to me.”
“He changed his mind.”
“Because he was angry.”
“Because you took money.”
Daniel looked away.
Harold softened.
“Your father loved you.”
“I’m getting tired of hearing that right before somebody tells me what he took away.”
Harold stared at him.
“He didn’t take the company away from you.”
“What do you call it?”
“He stopped you from taking it down with you.”
No one spoke.
I slid my hand into Robert’s coat pocket.
My fingers touched paper.
I pulled out an old photograph.
Daniel was eight.
Robert stood beside him in our backyard.
Between them was a thin maple sapling no taller than Daniel’s shoulder.
Both were covered in mud.
On the back Robert had written:
Daniel wanted to quit digging. Told him the ground was too hard. I told him hard ground is where roots learn to hold.
I had forgotten Robert took that picture.
Daniel stared at it.
His face changed.
For the first time since Arthur arrived, he looked like someone had finally reached the part of him beneath the defenses.
He touched the edge.
“I remember that day.”
“You cried for twenty minutes,” I said.
“I was eight.”
“You said Dad bought a defective tree.”
Harold laughed.
Even Arthur smiled.
Daniel almost did.
Then his expression closed again.
“I still have seventeen employees.”
“Yes,” I said.
“They didn’t do this.”
“No.”
“So what am I supposed to do?”
The question sounded younger than forty-four.
And more honest than anything he had asked all week.
“I don’t know.”
His eyes hardened.
“That’s easy for you.”
“No.”
I held Robert’s photograph.
“What would be easy is writing you a check because I cannot bear watching you fail.”
He stared at me.
“Your father did that.”
I looked toward the blue ledger upstairs.
“Again and again.”
My voice shook.
“And every time he caught you before you hit the ground, you learned that falling wasn’t dangerous.”
Daniel swallowed.
“I’m not going to do that.”
Lauren had been standing several feet away.
She looked at him for a long time.
Then she took off the house key hanging from her purse.
She placed it on the workbench.
Daniel frowned.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to a hotel.”
“Lauren.”
“I don’t know what’s true anymore.”
“You know I love you.”
“I know you say that.”
She turned toward me.
“I need to show you something.”
From her bag, she removed a glossy brochure.
Willow Creek.
My stomach tightened.
“I found this in Daniel’s desk this morning.”
She opened it.
A reservation confirmation was clipped inside.
Private cottage.
One-year commitment.
Deposit paid.
My name.
I looked at the date.
Then looked again.
Robert had been alive.
Not barely.
Not unconscious.
Alive enough that we were still eating dinner together at the kitchen table.
The reservation had been made seven weeks before his death.
Before the development option.
Before the funeral.
Before Daniel pushed the brown suitcase toward me.
Lauren’s voice was barely audible.
“He wasn’t planning where you would go after Robert died.”
May you like
She looked at her husband.
“He had already chosen it while Robert was still alive.”
