Chapter 41 THAT’S NOT WHERE I WAS SUPPOSED TO LAND WHEN I FELL #2
I glance at the duffel bag that’s still packed with hundred-dollar bills that he brought up from the car. He left the other two in the car, like he did the first night.
Bags of money—it’s pennies to him, but I think he very much understands that several hundred dollars isn’t pennies to the people we’ve met so far along the way.
“Are you planning on giving all of this money away before you reach your final destination?” I call. “Like, all of it?”
A grumbled answer that I’m pretty sure is a yes comes from the bathroom.
“Do you have an actual plan besides leaving tips everywhere we go and paying for other people’s dinners when we stop at real restaurants?”
Silence.
I’m gonna assume silence means no.
And that makes my heart hug itself.
Some parts of Oliver’s plan to escape seem so well laid out—or did, until today. Then the other parts…
He’s an irresistible mess.
“You want some ideas of how to give it all away without getting made and having your face plastered all over everywhere?” I ask.
The door cracks open.
Thuds open, really. I didn’t know doors could thud when they opened, but I think that’s the effect of the humidity. It’s not hot hot in here, but the air conditioner clearly isn’t keeping up with the moisture in the air either.
Makes me glad I’m in a T-shirt and shorts. He has to be dying in jeans.
Especially considering how much food he ate.
“One of the last things I did with my trust fund before I lost access to it was to donate almost a million dollars to a zoo that needed to upgrade its giraffe facilities,” I tell him.
“Well, that and setting up a trust fund for a video game at my favorite pizza parlor in Athena’s Rest after having it fixed.
I know how to make good use of large sums of money.
Well, what normal people consider to be large sums of money. ”
The bathroom door creaks wider open, showing me that he’s sitting on the edge of the tub, looking at his phone. His brow is wrinkled, but his voice is wary rather than irritated. “The kid at that ValuKart on Sunday is talking about it too.”
“Unless one of them has prodigy-level skills with drawing people and a large internet following to share something like that, I don’t think you need to worry about being made. But seriously, if you want some ideas of how to do bigger good more anonymously, I can help.”
“We do reverse hold-ups where we go in with masks and throw cash around?”
“That’ll get you arrested for being a public nuisance. It’s the reason I had to leave my second college.”
“I can never tell when you’re serious.”
I’m serious, but despite how much more relaxed he’s seemed this afternoon, I don’t want to push it by annoying him right now. “Do you have any money on gift cards, or just cash?”
“Cash was relatively easy to get.”
“That’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“My grandfather used to hoard it,” he mutters.
“He hoarded it.”
“Character quirk.”
“And your parents never thought to put it in a bank after he died?”
“It was pocket change.”
I don’t remember when the hundred-dollar bill was last updated, but I’m relatively certain his grandfather didn’t live long enough to add a significant number of them to his collection. “So you’re carrying around a bunch of old money? Literally old money?”
“Archie’s in banking. He said it’ll be fine.”
“Archie? Archie Westmore? He knows what you’re doing?”
“He’s not an asshole.”
“He’s the reason—no, wait, let me reprocess this… Yep. Still a little mad, but also it’s funny now.”
“What’s funny?”
“He’s the reason I had to go to third-grade jail. My father hated his family. And that’s what makes it funny.”
Oliver smiles again.
A real smile.
A friendly smile.
Not a pushover smile, not a manipulative smile, not a reluctant smile, just a normal old smile that makes my heart pitter-patter again.
Freaking heart.
“He didn’t suggest Visa or American Express gift cards?” I say.
“Maybe he’s a little bit of an asshole.”
“He was an absolute asshole in third grade.”
Oliver gives me the single brow lift of tell the story or quit talking about it.
“Do you remember Mrs. Zingle reading a story to you when you were in third grade about the melting polar ice caps?”
“No.”
I swallow back the of course you don’t. He and Margot were in third grade a few years before I was. Maybe Mrs. Zingle didn’t read it to them. But she probably did. She was old and set in her ways. “Well, I do, and I decided to do something about it.”
It would be nice if he’d roll his eyes and mutter a sarcastic of course you did here, but that’s not what Oliver does.
Oh, no.
The man smiles bigger at me, his eyes crinkling and his perfect teeth flashing and that thing he’s doing with rubbing his hand over his scruffy jaw finishing up the look of a man who wants to hear more.
Like he’s encouraging me.
Like he wants to know my story of triumph with a happy ending, even though he knows it ended with me in third-grade jail.
My first public activism that got me locked up.
“What does Archie have to do with you saving the polar ice caps?” he asks.
“Third grade—Mrs. Zingle reading us that book—that’s when I decided to save the polar bears.”
His eyes crinkle tighter at the edges as his smile grows. “All by yourself at third-grade years old.”
“Eight. You’re generally about eight in third grade. And yes. Of course I was.”
“Did Archie talk you into stealing Mrs. Zingle’s car to sell for the cause?”
“No. My parents laughed at me when I asked them for a jillion dollars to save the polar bears and the ice caps, so I took matters into my own hands and raided their closets, then started selling what I’d procured to my classmates.”
The man smiles even bigger. “They clearly left you no choice.”
“Damn right. I started small, like the shoes in the back of my mom’s closet and my dad’s cuff links that he never wore, and when I didn’t get caught for a week or so, I started pilfering their watches and diamonds too. They had so many. It’s not like they were going to notice.”
He shakes his head.
I wonder what he’s doing with his own cuff links and watches and designer wardrobe. He didn’t bring any of it with him, but I suppose he could’ve had what he wanted to keep shipped to his final destination.
My former wardrobe all went to a consignment shop to set me up with the tiniest of nest eggs. Comparatively speaking.
And that was after I paid off my speeding tickets.
“So Archie ratted you out,” Oliver says.
“No, I got caught when I walked into an appliance store with $38,000 in cash and asked how many air conditioners we could send to the North Pole. That was about the same time other parents started calling the school to ask questions about why their kids were coming home with used Manolos and Piguet watches. So I ended up in the principal’s office in third-grade jail for a straight week so they could monitor my every breath.
And then my father had the biggest shit fit of his life when he found out I sold his grandfather’s cuff links to Percival Westmore’s son. ”
“Not exactly Archie’s fault.”
“Technically not. But Archie called my shoes ugly and said I had a giant mole when I got my first pimple at school that year, so I charged him one hundred percent sales tax, and that had ol’ Percy calling up my father to yell about ridiculous pricing and fees, which got me an extra week of being grounded at home too. ”
“You were grounded for an extra week for price gouging your father’s least favorite person’s son? Would’ve thought he’d take you out to ice cream for that.”
“My father never took me out for ice cream, and Archie wouldn’t give me the cuff links back even at double what he paid for them, and also, my parents are assholes.
To the best of my knowledge, my mother still hasn’t noticed she’s short three pearl necklaces and a brooch that I sold from her jewelry closet. ”
Oliver’s smile slips, and he looks down at his phone again while his leg bounces under the harsh bathroom lights. “Did you charge Archie enough to buy new safety equipment for a gymnastics group?”
“Close.”
“Didn’t save the polar bears and ice caps though.”
“Not yet. If I’d known my parents were going to revoke my trust fund, I would’ve done what Margot’s done and filtered money out of it into a separate fund with a good money manager so I could’ve kept on doing bigger good in the world without being so dependent on the family.
Of course, she’s like you. Fully owns her own trust fund and got it early because she was so responsible. ”
His smile has fully disappeared now. “I want to live a life where I feel like I’m rich because of who I’m with and the satisfaction I get from what I do. Not because I was born with a billion-dollar trust fund.”
“Being CEO wasn’t satisfying?”
He lifts his head and stares at me, and I see it again.
The way he looks so much older than his thirty-one years.
The random gray hairs. The bags under his eyes. The slump of his shoulders. Even his skin seems old and worn, though less than it was when we started this trip.
“Yeah. Zero sleep and massive stress and second-guessing myself becoming my primary occupation and constantly having my mother whining that I wouldn’t let her sell any of her stock to keep up appearances with her wardrobe and her parties and her cars was so bone-deep satisfying.”
I wince. This man is not going back into that role. And that’s a shame for all of the nonprofits he funded. “At least you know you did a good job.”
“Kept the lights on and made the stock price go up,” he mutters. “Way to go, Oliver. Way to set your family up to make more money that they don’t need and definitely don’t deserve.”
I should’ve expected him to be this self-aware by now, but it still takes me by surprise. “You don’t think they deserve it?”