Chapter Thirty-Two Hunter
Chapter Thirty-Two
Hunter
I drop my overnight bag at the bottom of the stairs and go into the kitchen to say goodbye to my mom.
Her birthday lunch yesterday with my aunt and uncle and two of her closest friends was fine.
My dad and I stayed at the opposite ends of the table and avoided any conversation that wasn’t about Mom.
That’s how it is now. That’s how it’s been since Bain Insurance went bankrupt.
Even so, I’m still pleased I made the trip.
“I’m going to head out,” I say. “There’s stuff I need to catch up with at the office.
” I’m not going into the office today, but I want to clear out my emails to make sure I’m ready for my early start tomorrow.
Ed will be back, and I need to spend a chunk of time on the phone to update him. I need to be ready.
“Thanks for coming, sweetie,” Mom says, turning to face me. She holds my hands in hers. “It was lovely to see you. But I’m worried you’re working too hard. You look tired.”
“I’m fine, Mom,” I say.
“Are you?” she asks. “You seem . . . like you’re missing out.”
Missing out. It’s an interesting way of describing what I’m feeling.
“Everyone’s missing out on something,” I say.
All I can think about is Lucy. I’m definitely missing out on seeing her.
Missing out on spending our nights curled up together, limbs entangled .
. . together. “But owning your own business requires sacrifices. There’s no one else to make sure everything is working. ”
She holds my gaze, and I’m not sure whether she’s holding herself back from saying something or she’s waiting for me to say more.
“Go talk to your father,” she says. “He’s outside deadheading my roses. Then come back and say goodbye.”
I head out and down the steps of the back porch. Dad has on a baseball hat and Mom’s gardening gloves, which are too small for him. “Hey, Dad, I’m just heading back into the city.”
“Already?” he asks, focused on the roses. “But this is your mother’s birthday weekend.”
“I came up for the lunch yesterday, Dad. Her birthday was on Thursday.”
“Yes, and this is her birthday weekend.” He throws some dead roses in the wheelbarrow and dives back into the bushes with the pruning shears. If I didn’t hear him speak, I would have thought he didn’t realize I was standing right next to him.
“I have some work to catch up on.”
He doesn’t say anything.
I haven’t brought up the demise of the family firm for a long time now.
It’s been years. Whenever I’ve raised the issue in the past, I feel worse afterward, because Dad never takes any responsibility.
So what’s the point? But something about his tone irritates me.
Like he disapproves of me working so hard.
Maybe if he’d worked a bit harder, I’d still be working in the family business.
I wouldn’t be making up for the failure that came so early in my life.
“It takes a lot to run a successful company,” I say.
“You don’t need to tell me,” he replies gruffly. “But you have to prioritize the things that matter.”
“Like keeping the business afloat,” I say. “That’s a priority for me.”
“Rightly so. But your mother only has one birthday a year.”
“Yes, and I was here for her lunch yesterday. Now I’m going back into town to make sure I have a business that doesn’t go bankrupt.”
Without saying a word, he shuffles a few feet to his right, away from me, to the next rosebush.
Normally, I’d just turn and walk away, but Mom saying I was missing out has lit a fire in my belly.
I am missing out.
And it’s because I’m so full of fear.
Fear of repeating my mistakes.
Fear of trusting Ed.
Fear of failing.
“I don’t want what happened to you to happen to me.
” As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I want to scoop them up and put them back in.
My heart is racing, and I freeze, wondering whether he’ll react or if he even heard me.
When I’ve hinted at the dire financial straits the business was in when I took it over, he always acts like he doesn’t know what I’m talking about.
But he does know. He has to know. For years I’ve tried to excuse his disavowal.
I’ve tried to explain the way he’s failed to take accountability.
I’m done.
“What do you mean, son?” he asks, finally standing tall and turning to face me.
“I mean, I don’t want Portis to go under like Bain Insurance did.”
“Well, I’m sure you’ve learned your lesson. Out of failure, we build success. I’ve said that to you before.”
He has said it. Many times. Every time I’ve ever tried to talk to him about the failure of Bain Insurance. Except I’m sick of wearing the failure like I wove the cloth and made the suit. It came off the rack.
“You’re right, Dad. I learned a lot from that situation.
I learned not to take on a long lease for too much money—like you did.
I learned not to keep on staff who were overpaid and underutilized—like you did.
I learned that when important decisions are put off, a once-successful business can go downhill—like Bain Insurance did. ”
He holds my gaze, and I don’t look away. My heart is pounding against my rib cage, but I try to keep my breathing steady. This is my chance. If I don’t say everything I need to right now, the time will have passed and I never will.
It’s now or never.
I don’t want to regret not telling him that I know exactly what happened. He should know why our relationship has suffered over these last years. He deserves to hear it, even if he knows it in his heart.
And I deserve to say it.
“I learned that I would never hand a business over to my son when it was racing toward failure, and make him think that failure was his fault.”
He looks away and goes back to the roses.
“I guess your reputation as a successful businessman was more important to you than your relationship with your son. I guess it was more important for you to feel like a success than it was to not have me see myself as a failure.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re not a failure.”
“I know,” I say. I don’t think I’ve ever believed it until this moment.
We’ve always danced around this subject, and it’s allowed me to doubt the reasons for the downfall of Bain Insurance.
I’ve never said it in so many words, that it failed because of him, which has allowed me to think that part of it was my fault.
“I tried my best to find a way to sustain it, Dad, but it was dead before I took over.”
Dad inhales but doesn’t look at me.
“It lost money every month,” I continue. “The sales team wasn’t bringing in enough to sustain the staffing levels. People weren’t renewing.”
“The business had its challenges. I’ll give you that.”
“You’ll give me that?” I ask. “It’s just a fact. You’re not giving me anything. The business was failing, and had been for some time, but you handed it over and let me take the blame.”
He mumbles under his breath and throws more dead roses into the wheelbarrow behind him.
“I’m going back to the city, because when I have a son, I don’t want to hand him a business doomed to fail.”
Dad sighs and dumps some dead leaves and his shears on top of the pile in the wheelbarrow. “You could have turned that business around.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“Life isn’t as simple as you make it out to be,” he says. “There are no guarantees in business.”
I huff out a laugh. “You’re right. No guarantees. Except if your costs exceed your revenue, you’re losing money. That’s a guarantee.”
“What do you want from me?” he says. “You’re back in the game. A little failure is good for you.”
I nod slowly. Nothing good will come from this conversation.
He knows what he did. He just doesn’t want to say the words out loud.
He doesn’t want to be the monster that would hand his son a failing business and let him take the blame.
No one wants to believe they’re a monster.
He’s made excuses for himself so he can be a hero instead.
“I know what you did, Dad. I know who you are. And that’s not the man I want to be. Live with that.”
I don’t wait for a response. I turn and head back inside for a final goodbye to my mom.
I don’t look back. I’m leaving my past in the yard, like the dead heads of the roses piled high in the wheelbarrow.
I’m done waiting for answers I’m never going to get.
I’m done wanting to know why my father would set me up for a fall.
I’m done living my life in the shadow of someone else’s failure.