3. Ellis
Chapter three
Ellis
My father owned several houses, but the thirty-million-dollar property at the edge of Stenton was his favorite: over three thousand square feet, six bedrooms, eight bathrooms, a library, a billiard room, a wine cellar, and a large pool. Situated on a slight elevation, it had private access to the Stenton River and a magnificent view of the city itself.
My father found it “befitting our status.”
I found it pretentious.
The furniture reminded me of a museum, and the house was too large for just the three of us: father, Harper, and me. It had felt especially empty since my father’s second wife left him. I hadn’t been close with her, but her bubbly, extroverted personality had at least brought some life to the house.
I’d moved back six months before, after returning to the States, but with every passing day, I missed my townhouse in London more, and I drowned myself in work to distract myself from feeling homesick.
Yesterday had been especially exhausting. I had to attend some children’s art contest with my sister in the morning, and after a quick lunch, there had been a four-hour emergency board meeting because a contractor in Japan had gone bankrupt, followed by a three-hour video conference with our potential new partners in Taiwan. Being the heir to a multibillion company meant twelve-hour workdays on Saturdays.
I was good at my job, but days like that could be a drudge.
Despite working on the new contract with the Taiwanese company until midnight, I was up again at the crack of dawn. My sleep was terrible. It had been like that for years, and Harper kept telling me I would die at forty if I didn’t start taking better care of myself. That was rich, coming from her. My wild, indulgent little sister was the last person to be lecturing someone else on taking care of oneself. Besides, I’d already tried every trick I could think of, from white noise to yoga, but nothing had changed the fact that I couldn’t fall asleep before midnight and never slept past six.
So, despite the exhausting day I’d had, I was up again with the first rays of sunlight. For a while, I stayed in bed, eyes closed, hoping to doze off again, but of course, that didn’t happen. It never happened. Once I was awake, my mind started working.
Harper was, of course, still asleep. Father was awake already, but he was in the library, and our family breakfast was scheduled at eight, so I took a few laps in the indoor pool instead.
Swimming was my favorite type of workout. The monotone boringness of doing lap after lap after lap, not seeing anything beyond the edge of the pool, not hearing anything but the splash of the water and my labored breaths, was strangely calming. It allowed my mind to sort through the tasks and challenges of the day ahead.
I spent almost an hour in the pool before I dried myself off and got dressed.
On the way to the dining room, I ran into a bleary-eyed Harper.
“Short night?” I asked.
She brushed her unkempt hair out of her face with a grin. “Or a long night, depending on how you view it. Camilla and I tried this new club. I would invite you next time, but you’re way too uncool. The bouncer would never let you in.”
I gave her a playful shove. I knew she didn’t mean it. Well, maybe she meant it, but not in a malicious way. Teasing was my sister’s way of showing affection. I’d gotten used to it.
“How long have you been home?”
“Two hours maybe?”
“No wonder you look like trash. You could have at least brushed your hair. Dad won’t like this fresh-out-of-bed-look.”
She grinned. “That’s exactly the point.”
We entered the dining room together. Father was already sitting at the head of the table, hidden behind a newspaper.
When he noticed us, he put the newspaper down just long enough to give us a stern look. “You’re late.”
Harper rolled her eyes at him before sitting down at the table. “It’s four minutes past eight, Dad.”
“Breakfast starts at eight.”
I sat down in silence. I’d lived there long enough to know better than to get caught up in their squabbles.
Harper pinched her lips together as our housekeeper, Bernadette, put a cup of coffee in front of her. “Last time I checked, this wasn’t an army base, and you’re not a general, so relax a little, will you? It’s not like we have anything to do today. Or have you scheduled another charity event without notifying us?”
My father’s jaw tensed. That was the only reaction he showed to Harper’s complaints. Typical for him. He wasn’t the type of man to get into shouting matches. He just punished you with icy silence when he was dissatisfied. And he was dissatisfied often. Harper had turned upsetting him into some kind of art form, but I got my fair share of scolding, too, no matter how hard I tried to meet his expectations.
My father leaned back in his chair. “How did the art fair go?” he asked.
Harper suddenly put her mug down and perked up. “Oh, it was really cool, actually. I ran into Cara. Remember her? Our old nanny, Cara Shepherd.”
I nearly spilled my coffee at the mention of the name.
Cara? My Cara? Cara had been there?
My heart dropped into my stomach as a wave of very mixed emotions washed over me.
Cara. The woman who had broken my heart thirteen years ago. The woman who’d made me love harder and deeper than any time before or after, before disappearing from my life without a trace.
“Cara was there?” I tried to sound unbothered, but just the thought of her was enough to make my throat tighten up.
“Oh, so you didn’t meet her?” Harper asked, seemingly not noticing the turmoil her words had thrown me in. “Yeah, I ran into her in the bathroom. She was there with her son.”
“Son?” I repeated with a hoarse voice. She had a child. The thought was like a painful punch to the gut. She was probably married, too, living a happy life with another man, while I was still thinking about her every time I tried dating another woman.
Harper bit into a croissant. “Yeah, crazy, right? She said he’s eleven.”
Eleven already. That meant she must’ve replaced me shortly after leaving me.
My father put his newspaper down with a rustle. “She’s just an employee we had many years ago. I fail to see the relevance.” His voice sounded surprisingly cold, even colder than usual, and there was a stiffness to his posture that never meant good things.
Strange. Not for the first time, I wondered if my father knew more about Cara’s sudden disappearance from our lives than he’d told me. I’d asked him, back then, but had gotten no answers.
As usual, Harper ignored his interjection.
“She said his name was Riley.”
Riley. That name rang a bell. I furrowed my brow. “Riley Shepherd,” I said. “Wasn’t that the boy who won first place?”
Harper raised her eyebrows. “Yes, now that you mention it. I think you’re right. He was the kid with the horse picture, right?”
“I think so, yes.” I wasn’t exactly an expert on art, but since I’d acted as a judge, I had to pay some attention to the pictures, and the one with the horses had stood out, even to my untrained eyes.
“Hey, Dad, hand me the newspaper. I want to check,” Harper said.
Father pressed his lips together. “No. I have more important articles to read.”
Harper sighed dramatically. “Bernie, can you get me another newspaper, please?”
Bernadette looked a bit unsure, but after a worried glance in my father’s direction, she followed Harper’s orders and brought us another newspaper.
Harper flipped through the pages quickly. “Here it is,” she said and leaned over to show me the article. “That must be him.”
The story included a small black-and-white picture of a boy, wide smile, holding up the winning horse painting. The caption said, “Riley Shepherd, from Brightwater, 7th grade, won first place.”
Brightwater . I wasn’t sure where that was, but I remembered hearing the name recently.
“Have you satisfied your curiosity now?” my father snarled. “Can we move on to important things?”
“What happened to Cara, anyway?” Harper asked. “I mean, she was there one day and gone the next. I remember being really confused. Ellis, do you know why she left?”
Before I could answer, my father slapped his newspaper onto the table. “I fired her,” he said, calm but louder than usual, “because she stole from me.”
My head whipped around. “What?” No, that couldn’t be true. She would never do such a thing.
Harper looked confused. “Are you sure, Dad? She didn’t seem like the stealy type at all.”
“What do you know, Harper? You were only a child.”
“But—”
“Enough of that, now. I want to have my breakfast in peace, so stop gossiping.”
Harper pouted, and so did I, although less visibly.
I was a thirty-six-year-old man with a law degree from Cambridge. I did not enjoy being scolded like a child. I also did not enjoy being taken for a fool. Cara did not steal. My father had made that story up, right on the spot, but the question was why. I’d tried to get answers out of him thirteen years before when Cara suddenly stopped responding to my messages and calls, and he’d given me nothing back then, either. I’d been so heartbroken that I resigned myself to believing it had just been a summer fling for her and nothing nefarious lay behind her sudden ghosting, but this lie my father had just told was suspicious.
I needed to find out more.
Brightwater. I kept repeating that word in my head while I ate my cereal. I was certain the place had popped up in one of our recent projects.
The rest of the breakfast was a tense affair. Harper remained stubbornly silent. My father tried to pull me into a conversation about work, but I was only listening with half an ear. My thoughts were fixed on Cara and I was only waiting for father to finish his meal so that I could leave the table.
The moment he emptied his plate, I excused myself from the table, mumbling something about working on the Taiwanese contract, and I went straight to my office.
After I locked the door behind myself, I sat down in the leather chair and called my personal assistant, Theo.
Despite that day being a Sunday, Theo answered right away.
“Hey, boss.”
“Theo, you need to find out something for me.”
“Shoot.”
“Brightwater. I’ve heard that place mentioned somewhere, but I can’t remember where. You need to dig through our and find it for me.”
“No need to dig,” Theo said. “I know exactly what this is about.”
“You do?”
“I just had the file in my hand on Friday. It’s one of the sites considered for the new chip factory. There’s a three-hundred-and-forty-acre private property of mostly empty, flat land that would be well suited for the factory. Price is still under negotiation with the owner.”
“Who’s currently managing that project?”
“Simon Philipps.”
I loved that about Theo. He was more than a mere personal assistant. He was a bottomless well of knowledge. Little went on inside the walls of Horizon Electronics headquarters that Theo didn’t know about.
“Send Simon Philipps an email, and tell him he’s going to be transferred to another project.”
“Which project?”
“Make a suggestion. I don’t care as long as it’s not the new chip plant.”
“Hmm. You’ll need to give me a few hours for that one, Ellis.”
“Fine by me.”
“Who will be the new project manager if it’s not going to be Philipps?” he asked.
“Me.”
Theo went silent for a brief moment. “Does your father know about this?”
I rarely acted without my father’s knowledge, let alone against his wishes, but these were unusual circumstances. If Cara was in Brightwater, I wanted to be there too. And that project gave me the perfect front to be there. I already knew my father would not enjoy my renewed interest in Cara. He’d always disapproved of our relationship, and the fact that he felt he needed to tell that lie about Cara stealing from us told me he was still trying to keep me away from her. But now that I knew where she was, nothing was going to keep me from her. I needed to find out what happened between us, why she left me so suddenly. Maybe then I could finally find closure.
“No, but leave that up to me,” I told Theo. “He doesn’t need to know right away, and if he finds out, I’ll come up with a compelling reason.”
“Okay. I’ll send you the project files. I think there was a meeting scheduled soon with the owner of the property. Let me check real quick.” The keys clacked on his computer. “Yes, it’s Tuesday, ten a.m. Do you want me to put it in your schedule?”
“Absolutely. And find me a hotel room in Brightwater. I think I’m going to stay on site for a while.”