Chapter 4
The house in East Hampton was impeccable when Charlie arrived, as it was every year.
It was a big, rambling family home, with many bedrooms, and a couple who lived there year-round and kept it in excellent repair.
Charlie loved it and had tried several times to buy it from the owners.
They had inherited it from their parents.
They lived in Boston and had a house in Maine that they preferred.
But they wanted to keep the house in the family for their children, and as an investment.
Charlie was their only renter, and since their children were young teenagers, he figured that he was still good there for several years, and he hoped they would relent and change their minds eventually and sell it to him.
The owners weren’t part of the old-guard snobbish Hamptons social scene.
They were avid sailors, and preferred the boating life in Maine.
The Hamptons were the only place where Charlie got some respite from his intense business life and constant travel.
He stopped everything when he stayed there every year.
The owners had even let him stay there a few times in winter, when he was in New York and needed a break for a few days.
He loved it in winter too. And he loved having Liam there with him now.
He gave him a big sunny guest bedroom on the main floor, where the kitchen, dining room, two living rooms, a cozy den, and guest suites were located, so Liam didn’t have to negotiate the stairs.
Charlie’s master suite was upstairs at one end of the house, with a charming balcony and a widow’s walk, where he could see far out to sea.
He stood there every morning, watching the ocean.
He kept his beloved sailboat at a marina nearby, and left it there all year.
Unlike his mother, Liam shared his father’s love of sailboats, although it would be tricky getting him on the boat this year, with the broken ankle.
Charlie doubted they could do it, and Liam couldn’t walk on the beach, but there was plenty to do in the Hamptons, and they wouldn’t be bored.
There were restaurants and shops, places to explore.
He had books to read, games to play, and Liam was good at entertaining himself with video games and his computer.
Charlie was happy to be his chauffeur for the duration of his stay.
There was a terrific bookstore in town, which Charlie always visited and where he bought a stack of current books he hadn’t had the time to read.
The housekeeper was happy to cook for him, but he enjoyed cooking for himself, or dining at any of the very good restaurants while he was there.
There was a very active social life in the Hamptons, which ranged from casual to formal dinner parties, but Charlie usually kept to himself, enjoying the downtime and the long walks on the magnificent white sand beach that stretched for miles.
The house had a decidedly New England feel to it.
It wasn’t showy, but it was solid, well kept, well laid out, and handsomely decorated in a restrained New England way.
It reminded him of grand homes he had seen on Cape Cod when he was in college.
It didn’t have the lavish flash more typical of California, or the grandeur of some of the older estates in Southampton.
Charlie didn’t want to show off there, he just wanted to relax.
He and Liam lived in shorts and T-shirts and bare feet.
There was a large swimming pool the current owners had added when their parents died, and they were thinking of putting in a tennis court and had more than enough land to do it.
The Hamptons were an interesting combination of beach and country.
Most people seemed to treat the area as more of a country retreat, but what Charlie loved about it was the ocean.
There were extensive lawns on the property, and Charlie frequently saw deer crossing them in broad daylight with their young.
It was the only place where Charlie rested and felt at peace, other than on his sailboat.
He loved working on his boat every year, and keeping it in perfect condition.
He enjoyed maintaining it almost as much as sailing on it, which he usually did alone.
He knew his neighbors, but didn’t socialize with them.
He wasn’t part of the Hamptons social New York crowd.
He remained an outsider and a visitor, and was content to do that.
Entering the local social whirl would have been a burden and an intrusion he didn’t want to deal with.
One of the things he loved about the Hamptons was that you could live life there however you wanted, quietly alone, or as part of all the social events that went on constantly.
He could be himself there. And Liam enjoyed seeing that side of him, and sharing the rare downtime with his father.
Charlie wasn’t stressed here, barely checked his emails, just enough to stay in touch with his office.
He was fully accessible for emergencies, but he tried not to engage in July and August, and he and Liam had long talks about life as they lay in the sun on the deck, or looked up at the stars at night with a glass of wine.
Charlie had always treated him like an adult, which Liam appreciated.
They had a relationship of mutual respect.
They’d been there for a week when Liam cautiously told his father that he didn’t want to go back to Yale, or at least not yet.
While exploring chateaux in France and famous castles in England, Liam had found that he was more fascinated by their gardens and parks and mazes than he was by the actual structures.
For him, the gardens were living, breathing beings that grew and changed and evolved and combined historical designs with newer techniques.
He had found a French school that taught landscape architecture, and he wanted to defer his graduate studies, to focus on that and study in France for a year.
As he put it very modestly, he had discovered that he wanted to be a “gardener” when he grew up.
It was a great deal more than that. Le N?tre, the master designer of the gardens of Versailles, had even laid out parts of Washington, D.C.
, originally. Liam shared his dreams with his father, and Charlie didn’t want to disappoint him, although he wished that Liam had loftier aspirations than working on gardens.
Liam saw the opportunities as limitless, to work on parks, historical chateaux, and more modern outdoor spaces around museums, monuments, and even grand private estates.
It could be as simple as a country cottage or something as major as Versailles, with a full range in between.
Charlie was reminded of the times when he had tried to share his visions of the future with his father, and he had brutally crushed Charlie’s dreams and dismissed them.
He didn’t want to do the same to Liam, and had to force himself to open his mind, broaden his view, give up his own aspirations for his son, and listen to what he wanted.
Liam said he couldn’t discuss it with his mother, who only saw two templates for his future: law school or business school.
No other options were acceptable to her, as Charlie knew.
She had no imagination or tolerance for anything outside those fields, and thought that any other plan spelled disaster.
Charlie wanted to respect who Liam was and what he wanted, even if it wasn’t what he had envisioned for him.
He could still remember his father derisively calling him The Delivery Boy and The Fast Food King when he established his two startups.
He was determined not to do the same, when Liam called himself a “simple gardener.” His dreams were far more sophisticated than that, and he had a real connection to the earth, the way Charlie did with business in a way his own father had never understood, nor tried to.
When Liam explained his plans to his father, he looked at him with hope in his eyes, and Charlie didn’t have the heart to dash it.
His real goal for Liam was for him to be happy and fulfilled in his life, and if building magnificent gardens was his passion, who was he to belittle it or say he was wrong?
“I know it must sound crazy to you, Dad, and it’s about as far as you can get from what you and Mom do, in the world of finance and venture capital and startups, but it’s what I love.
” He was so simple and direct as he said it, and so humble, that all of Charlie’s hesitations dissolved, and he smiled at his son.
“You have to do what you love, Liam. That’s where it has to start.
I love the businesses I’ve been in. It’s a game I love, starting from nothing except some crazy idea and building something I can turn into a giant if I do it right and get lucky.
Like you starting with a seed, and turning it into a garden like Versailles.
It’s the same principle. And your mother has a real talent for venture capital.
You have my blessing if you need it, to do whatever you have to do to get there.
Don’t ever let anyone stand in the way of your dreams, not even your mom or me.