Chapter Sixteen
Adam
The days passed in a blur. One. Then three.
Finally, seven. I hardly noticed them. After that dinner, nothing mattered.
When I returned to New York for a few pending business meetings, I was a shell of a person, and I knew it.
I didn’t give two fucks about the business, or the new headquarters, or how much money we’d made with the pending IPO or any of that shit.
I just kept thinking about her, and the broken resolve I’d heard in Lila’s voice that night at St. Martin’s restaurant.
I’d tried calling, texting, and visiting, but it was as if she’d disappeared.
And that fucked with my head. My thoughts always wandered back to Lila, and I almost cursed her for it. As soon as she’d come back into my life, I had disarmed myself.
I should have known better.
The intercom system in my office buzzed, and Allison came on the line. “Mr. Greene, I know you have the door closed, but Mr. Samuels would like to see you.”
I sat up straighter in my desk chair and clicked out of the online news website I’d been barely perusing. “Fine. Let him in.”
I’d barely said the final word when Preston barged through the door. “Look, I don’t give a damn if you hate to be disturbed, this is important.”
“What is?”
Preston placed a binder on the desk and slapped the top of it. “In case you haven’t been paying attention, the property in Wellington is moving ahead. We’ve made a good negotiation over the last week and the seller is willing to let it go for twenty-seven million, well under your original demands.”
“See?” I smiled for the first time in a while. “What did I say? He overpriced his original offer, whoever the fuck he is.”
“You never miss an opportunity to remind people when you’re right.” Preston chuckled. “But besides that, the county and the city are willing to offer us a load of tax breaks in order to confirm the headquarters will be set up there, so we’re going to move on this, as long as you give us the okay.”
“You have that. You know you do.”
He gestured to the binder. “Don’t you want to look it over first and double-check my work?”
“You’re my best friend and the best business partner a guy could ask for. I trust you, and I’m sure whatever the deal is, you’ve done a great job with this one. That’s what makes you and me work together so well. Trust.”
“If you say so.” He raised his right eyebrow. “You’ll have to come down there with me, though. We can’t do a deal like this remotely, and the seller wants to meet us.”
I shook my head. “I’m not leaving New York right now.”
“Why not?”
“Because.” I picked up my iPhone. “This app redesign is already taking up enough of my time. We need to get it exactly right.”
A lame excuse, and he knew it.
“We have plenty of staff for that. Leave it to them.” Preston stood and spread a wide hand.
“You’re coming to Palm Beach with me this afternoon.
I’ve already booked the jet. Both of us need to be there to make this look right.
This is the company we founded, not the company one of us started.
” He gave me a curt nod. “No backing out of this one. Not now.”
“Look at you, making demands. Maybe you should be the one getting all the articles written about him, and not me.”
Preston chuckled to himself. “Nope. I’m fine with the way things are.
” He crossed the room but turned back to me when he reached the doorway to my office.
“Look, from what little you told me about your dinner with Lila, I know you’ve been upset.
I’m sorry things didn’t work out between the two of you, but you must put that aside for the sake of the business.
It’s clouded your judgment about the second headquarters. ”
“No, it hasn’t.”
“You’re completely distracted.”
“What?” I spread a hand. “I’ve been working fourteen-hour days since we got back to New York. I’m totally focused.”
Preston scoffed. “Keep telling yourself that, but the long hours won’t hide it.
She wounded you—again.” He sighed. “And you’re pretty sensitive under that hard shell you like to show people.
” He waited for a beat, studying me, and I could almost see the thoughts in his mind turning.
“But whatever she said, that’s all in the past, okay?
We’re moving forward here, and it starts with finishing the deal on the second headquarters.
That’s it. What’s good for InstaPost is good for all of us. ”
My best friend was probably right.
Lila
The phone call came two days after my meeting with Alexi, right after I’d vacated the house so it could be shown to a potential buyer. I didn’t have the number recorded in my phone, but I recognized it anyway.
“This is Lila,” I said in my calmest business voice. “Is everything okay?”
“Ms. Montague, I’m glad to get you on the phone this morning,” Sylvia replied, her nasally voice clipping through the receiver. “Are you busy right now?”
“No.” I sank farther into the driver’s seat of my car, which I’d parked a few blocks away from the house, on another Palm Beach side street, one lined with homes even more graceful and artistic than the one I desperately hoped to sell.
“I have about two hours free. How can I help you?” My stomach tightened as I asked the question.
Sylvia and the other staff from Homecare facility never called with good news.
“We’d like to discuss some developments in your mother’s condition. “We weren’t absolutely sure until this morning that we needed to bring it up to you, but certain things have become apparent. How soon can you come out here?”
“I’m on my way,” I replied, my body filling with so much dread. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
When I arrived at the facility about half an hour later, Sylvia and Brian, the center’s director, waited for me in the lobby. After a quick introduction, they ushered me into a sterile, bare-bones conference room adjacent to the main entrance.
“Please have a seat.” Brian pointed at the arrangement of hard plastic chairs encircling the oblong table in the center of the room. He was a reedy man of about sixty with thick grey hair that might have been courtesy of a toupee. “We’re glad you were able to make it this morning.”
“I make my own schedule.” I sat in the middle chair. “So it was no problem at all. And if this about the bill, I sent the latest payment the other day. I—”
Brian held up a hand. “No, that’s not what we are here to discuss.” He glanced at Sylvia, and they both took places across the table from me, their expressions unreadable.
I cleared my throat. “I get the feeling it’s not good news.”
Brian propped his elbows on the table. Sylvia followed suit. “There’s no good way to discuss something like this.”
At those words, my fingers found the sides of my chair, and wrapped around it in a death grip. In a way, I’d always known a conversation like this would take place during the journey of Mom’s disease. I just hadn’t expected it to happen in the middle of all the other shit going on in my life.
“Please,” I managed, my mouth as dry as the Gobi Desert, “go on. I’m listening.”
“The last few weeks, we’ve noticed a few developments in your mother’s condition. Specifically, she seems to have entered another phase of the Alzheimer’s Disease,” Brian said.
“A later stage,” Sylvia added. “A deeper one, if you will.”
“We weren’t sure right away,” Brian said. “And some days, you mother still appears to be in the middle phases of it. We’ve had a few great days with her, and know you’ve seen those.”
“I have.” I willed myself to stay calm, impassive, and measured. I recalled my recent visit with her in the garden of the facility. “Just a week or so ago, maybe two, we had a visit where she was almost like herself.”
“But you know that’s less and less likely as time goes on.”
I grimaced. “Yes, I’m aware. But I thought we had more time.”
“Unfortunately, we don’t,” Brian said, his attention focused on me. “We’ve had a number of days where she’s needed more care, and it’s gone on long enough that our staff has noticed a pattern.”
“They are trained for these kinds of moments,” Sylvia added. “One of the things they do best.”
I studied her, wondering if, in a way, she enjoyed this conversation.
She’d always been professionally distant, but we’d had more than one intense conversation about payment, bills, my bank, and whatever other excuses had come with my disastrous financial situation.
She’d never hidden the fact that she didn’t like me.
“Whatever she needs, just apply it to my bill,” I said, growing more frantic and desperate as the conversation expanded.
I had no real plan for handling the extra expenses, but in the moment, that didn’t matter.
This was my mother we were discussing, and no matter what kind of strain our relationship had endured in the past, I wouldn’t abandon her during her time of need.
“I’ll make sure the difference gets covered. I promise.”
Brian and Sylvia exchanged looks again before he shifted in the chair. “I’m afraid you don’t understand.” He leaned across the table, his eyes fixed on me, his face drawn and grave. “Your mother is at a crossroads with her disease. She’s at a point where she needs more help than we can provide.”
“But you’re the best facility in Palm Beach County. In South Florida, for God’s sake.” I shook my head, incredulous at what he’d just told me. “The very best.”
“This exceeds our capabilities,” Sylvia said.
“We have some brochures and information we can give you about a few places that are close to our area,” Brian replied.
“They will cost more, but many of our clients that have placed relatives and family members in these kinds of homes have discovered it is well worth the expense. Any one of them can provide the sort of help your mother needs.”
“We know how important she is to you,” Sylvia said.