36. Yesterday, The Beatles
"Yesterday," The Beatles
Victoria
With Eric anchoring me, I felt braver facing the petty drama of the entitled elite that I’d once run from. I guided him through the house, my heels clicking on the walnut floors, until a scent made me pause. Sandalwood and bergamot, but different. Wrong.
When I looked through the doorway, my fingertips dug into Eric’s bicep.
Richard sat frail and shrunken in his chair. The last time we spoke, he called me weak and selfish. A disappointment. He said my mom would be ashamed of me for abandoning my birthright.
But now, staring blankly out the window, he just looked ... lost.
Eric whispered, “Should we go in?”
“I don’t know what to say to him,” I whispered back, pausing with my hand on the doorknob.
“You won’t be alone, Cobrecita ,” he murmured. So I stepped into the sun-dappled library to confront the man who thought I would never be good enough.
Richard brightened as we entered. A small, wistful smile tugged at his lips. “Regina?”
My breath caught, and Eric steadied my elbow.
“No, of course not,” Richard shook his head, then gestured to the olive upholstered sofa across from him. “Please, join me. It’s good to have company.”
“Who’s Regina?” Eric asked, tossing his ankle over his knee as I perched beside him. His arm rested along the back of the sofa, his fingers brushing the nape of my neck.
“My late daughter,” Richard said, scanning my face again. “You look just like her. Same determined expression, God help anybody who told her what to do.” He chuckled weakly. “Have we met before?”
“A long time ago.” I managed a tight smile. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. I had braced myself for his usual sharp wit, his impossible standards. But this gentle, forgetful man was a stranger wearing my grandfather’s face.
Outside, the caterers moved briskly between tables draped in white linen. Richard watched through the window. “What’s all that fuss about?”
Eric spoke up. “It’s a birthday party.”
“Looks extravagant. Who’s it for?”
Eric paused. “You, Mr. Sinclair.”
“Me?” He sighed, rubbing a hand over his jaw. “I've told her a thousand times that I hate these parties. Can you get my wife Patricia?"
I sucked in a breath at his mention of my grandmother, who died when I was a toddler.
"Your wife? Do you mean Beverly?" Eric asked kindly.
"Yes, of course," Richard said, pressing a fist into his leg.
"These parties always seem like a waste. Keep moving forward, don’t stop to look back.” He watched as a server carried out a towering cake. “Patricia was livid that I didn’t celebrate our wedding properly. Poured myself a whiskey and went back to the office.”
“Do you regret it?” I asked, not sure what I meant—his relentless ambition, the sacrifices he’d made.
Richard exhaled through his nose. “Regret is an indulgence for people who still have time to fix things.”
As Eric carried the conversation, my gaze caught on the giant mahogany desk in the corner. When I was six, Richard sat me in that executive chair and said fondly, You’ll grow into that desk someday, Vickie.
“You hear that, baby?” Eric said, squeezing my leg to catapult me back into the present. “Mr. Sinclair met Mick Jagger!”
“Please, call me Richard,” he said, his mouth tugging into a proud smile at Eric’s joyful outburst. He pointed towards a bookshelf. “Go get that photo album, son. Third on the left.”
Eric retrieved the album, and his jaw dropped. Richard smiled, expression wistful. “Exile on Main Street tour. Must have been ‘72, ‘73? When Patricia and I went backstage, Keith Richards offered her blow. She joked that she married the wrong Richard.”
His laugh quickly devolved into a jagged cough. He reached for a handkerchief, covering his mouth, and it dawned on me that the room smelled like old books and expensive cologne, but it was missing the ever-present cigarette smoke.
Once the coughing settled down, Eric said, “I can’t believe you met David Bowie and John Lennon. Why didn’t these photos make it into your memoir?”
“You’ve read that piece of shit?” Richard scoffed. I’d never heard him swear before, let alone about his self-importance.“I can’t believe someone your age even knows who I am.”
“At first I thought you were Colonel Sanders,” Eric joked, much to my mortification.
“I always thought I looked more like the popcorn guy,” Richard said with a throaty chuckle, then added softly, “The only band I wanted to see and never did was Fleetwood Mac. They were Patricia’s favorite, and after she …”
Eric’s voice was soft. “When did she pass?”
“1976,” Richard and I whispered in unison. I blinked rapidly, forcing the tears back. Eric reached over, his hand a reassuring weight on my knee.
Richard’s lips curved into a wry smile, eyes narrowing at me. "Have we met?"
I blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “You loved her?” I asked. “You said once you couldn’t afford the luxury of falling in love. Do you still think that’s true?”
Eric shifted, manspreading wider so his thigh pressed into mine. Richard’s fingers curled on the arm of his chair.
“Love,” he said slowly, as if tasting the word. “It complicates things.” I frowned, disappointed by his non-answer.
“You tell yourself there will be time later,” Richard murmured, his hands trembling faintly in his lap. “And one day you wake up, and there’s a party on your lawn for a life you don’t remember living.”
“You still have time.”
“Not as much as I used to," he said, his gaze tracking back out the window, brows lifting. "What's going on out there?"
"Your birthday party," Eric answered, and Richard's brow furrowed in. "You're turning 80. Apparently the governor is coming."
"What a useless blowhard. These parties are the worst," Richard sighed, then startled at the sound of my laughter. When I nodded in agreement, his expression lightened. "You agree?"
"I've always hated these parties," I admitted without thinking it through, "but you made me come."
His smile faded, and he blinked a few times, but it seemed like he was looking through me, like maybe he could see into the past.
Then his eyes sharpened. "Are you living in Chelsea now?" he asked, his voice urgent. "The house Regina loved?"
My lips parted, but I didn't know what to say. Eric placed his hand on my knee and answered, "No, we live upstate. Saratoga Springs."
"Beautiful city," Richard said softly. "Patricia loved the racetrack, wanted to buy a home there, and I should have …" He removed his glasses, pressing his fingers to his eyes. When he replaced them, his eyes were moist.
The stillness hovered between us as outside the window, the event planners placed elaborate floral arrangements and a string quartet began tuning their instruments, their warm-ups resonating to calm the churning in my stomach.
Eric broke the silence with a question I was too scared to ask. “Would you change anything, Mr. Sinclair?”
Richard was quiet for so long, I thought he wouldn’t answer. Still studying my face, Richard’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I had a granddaughter. She was bright—brilliant, really. The best of all of us. But I expected perfection. To fill the void her mother left before she was ready. And in the end, I think I just made her hate me.”
“I don’t think she hates you.” I bit my lip. “I think she just wanted to know she was enough.”
A spark passed through his eyes before it faded. He reached out a trembling hand, and I took it.
“If you see her,” Richard said softly, “tell her I’m sorry. And I hope I made it up to her, in the end. That she got everything she wanted.”
***
The library door opened with a sharp crack. My father entered, his steel-gray eyes dissecting the scene: my fingers angled with Richard’s, Eric’s broad arm resting behind me. When I flinched, Richard’s fingers tightened before I pulled away.
“Arthur,” Richard said with a hopeful smile. “Do you have those reports for me?”
“I’ll have them on your desk by Monday,” Dad said with measured patience, still watching me.
Richard’s smile faded. “I’m still the majority shareholder. Should we head into the office?"
“It’s Saturday,” Dad said.
“Never stopped us before,” Richard replied.
A nurse in pale blue scrubs followed, pushing a wheelchair. “Time to get ready, Mr. Sinclair.”
“Where are we off to?”
“Your birthday party,” the nurse answered.
Richard seemed surprised, glancing outside at the party he didn’t want. When he pushed himself up shakily,Eric instinctively reached out, but Richard waved him off with a quiet dignity. “Good of you to visit. Not many take the time.”
He gave me one last look, then let the nurse help him into the wheelchair and roll him away.
The minute the door clicked closed, Dad held out his arms. “You look good, Princess.”
I endured his stiff hug as he whispered, “Who the hell is that?”
“Eric de la Cruz, my boyfriend.”
“Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Blackstone,” Eric extended his hand.
Dad frowned at his forearm tattoos, ignoring the outstretched hand, which Eric dropped with a roll of his shoulders. Dad said to me, “When Beverly told me you brought someone, I expected Alexander.”
I sighed. Of course he hoped for that. The two of them hit it off at my B school graduation, drinking Scotch and debating about Yale vs Princeton. When Dad left San Francisco, he’d hugged Alexander tight and called him ‘son.’
“He’s just my business partner,” I said calmly. “We’re no longer romantically involved.”
“But wasn’t winning him back the reason you turned down the jobs I lined up for you?”
Of course he’d bring that up. When I got overlooked for a promotion at the law firm run by Dad’s college fraternity brother, he pulled strings to find me a job in Manhattan. He assumed I chose Saratoga to rekindle that relationship. And I’d let him believe that—maybe believed it myself—because it got him off my case.
Dad tilted his head towards Eric. “How old is he?”
“I’ll be 27 next month, sir,” Eric said, his jaw clenching when Dad didn’t bother turning to acknowledge him, which was really starting to piss me off.
“Robbing the cradle looks desperate.” Dad said, crossing his arms. “Did he sign an NDA?”
Jesus, I should have known he’d asked that. I lifted my chin. “No.”
“You let him speak to Richard without an NDA?”
“I won’t say anything, sir,” Eric said.
Dad ignored him. “You, of all people, should know better.”
“I trust him,” I said firmly, and Eric’s fingertips brushed my back. He was here to support me facing my elderly grandfather, and Dad was mad at me? I squared my shoulders. “And I wouldn’t have known what to include in the contract because you didn’t tell me how sick Richard was.”
“Would you have visited, had you known?” Dad said, calmly adjusting his cufflinks.
“Maybe if I’d—”
"You can’t have it both ways, Victoria. Not all of us have the luxury of running away.”
He thought escaping a toxic marriage was a luxury? My fists clenched, and he said, "Perhaps we should discuss this privately."
Of course he wanted to postpone the conversation, hide it away. But I wasn’t done.
“And you didn’t tell me Spencer would be here. He cornered me last night." I caught a flicker of surprise. Good. So he hadn’t orchestrated that particular ambush.
"He’s Richard’s brother-in-law, we can’t exactly exile him,” Dad said. "You were always too sensitive, Victoria. Bury the hatchet."
Bury the hatchet , he said as if Spencer were a petty workplace grievance.
"Funny," I said, "He got my house, yet I’m the one who has to get over it."
"I still have to work with him,” Dad sighed, and the excuse hit like a slap. Even now, after everything, Spencer’s feelings mattered more than mine.
Eric’s hand settled at the small of my back—an anchor in the storm. Dad’s gaze fixated on that simple point of contact.
"Party starts in half an hour,” Dad said, checking his Rolex. “We’ll finish this conversation tonight, Victoria. Just us." His emphasis on the last two words made my stomach clench.
Every muscle in my body tensed with the need to scream, wanting to shatter every heirloom in this library … but knowing how Dad reacted to my emotions, I kept my face smooth. There was only one place in this house where I could safely come undone.
“We’ll be right out,” I lied, my voice steadier than my hands. “I need to freshen up.”
Dad’s eyes narrowed. For a heartbeat, I thought he’d drag me out by my elbow like I was sixteen again, expected to play the role of the perfect daughter.
He turned, leaving us in the sudden silence. So many years of practiced composure, and he’d reduced me to a seething teenager in minutes.
"Well," Eric muttered, "that could’ve gone worse."
"No. It really couldn’t have,” I said, reaching for his hand—a conscious choice, not reflex. “Come on, there’s somewhere I want to show you.”