Chapter 44
KENT
By the time Phineas suggested we get some food, I was well past the point of making good decisions. The whiskey had done its job too well, dulling the sharp edges of my guilt and self-loathing but also making the world tilt at odd angles when I turned my head too fast.
“Come on, boy,” Phineas said, sliding off his barstool with surprising steadiness for someone who’d matched me drink for drink. “You need something in your stomach before you pickle yourself completely.”
I laughed, the sound coming out harsh. “Look who’s talking about pickling themselves.”
“At least I’m a professional,” he replied dryly. “You’re just an amateur drowning his sorrows.”
The irony wasn’t lost on me that Phineas Withers, the town drunk, the bitter old man everyone avoided, was the one playing my savior today.
If my father could see me now, stumbling out of a dive bar in the middle of nowhere, being looked after by someone he would consider the dregs of society, he’d probably have a heart attack.
Phineas led me down the street to what looked like the only restaurant still open, a small diner called Mae’s that had definitely seen better decades.
The vinyl booths were cracked and patched with duct tape, and the fluorescent lights flickered in a way that made my whiskey-addled brain feel seasick.
“Two burgers, extra fries,” Phineas told the waitress without consulting me. “And coffee. Lots of coffee.”
I slumped into the booth across from him, my head spinning. “You don’t have to babysit me.”
“Someone needs to,” he said. “Lord knows you’re not doing a very good job of it yourself.”
The coffee arrived first, black and strong enough to strip paint. I wrapped my hands around the mug, grateful for the warmth and the bitter taste that cut through the whiskey fog.
“So tell me about your father,” Phineas said, settling back in his seat like he was preparing for a long story.
“What about him?”
“What kind of man expects his son to lie to good people just to make a profit?”
I took another sip of coffee, considering the question. “The kind of man who built a billion-dollar empire from nothing. The kind who thinks sentiment is weakness and profit is the only thing that matters.”
“And you admire that?”
“I used to think I did.” The words came out easier than they should have, probably thanks to the alcohol.
“Growing up, everything was about the business. Every conversation at dinner was about deals and acquisitions and market shares. My brothers and I were groomed from birth to carry on the family legacy.”
The burgers arrived, greasy, enormous things that looked like they could feed a small army. I picked at the fries, my appetite nonexistent despite Phineas’s insistence that I needed food.
“But you’re not like your brothers,” Phineas observed.
“No, I’m not.” I laughed bitterly. “They’re natural-born killers in the business world. They can make the hard decisions without losing sleep. They can destroy people’s lives in the name of profit and then go home to their families like nothing happened.”
“And you can’t.”
“Apparently not.” I took a bite of the burger, chewing mechanically. “My father always said I was the screw-up. I’m not cut out for business. He was probably right.”
Phineas studied me over his coffee cup. “Being human isn’t a character flaw, boy.”
“It is in my family.” I met his eyes. “Do you know what my father’s going to say when I tell him I can’t go through with this deal? He’s going to say I’m weak. That I let a pretty girl cloud my judgment. That I’m not worthy of the Bancroft name.”
“And what are you going to say back?”
I stared down at my untouched burger. “Nothing. Because he’ll be right. I did let Sylvie cloud my judgment. I let myself feel things I had no business feeling, and now I can’t do what needs to be done.”
“What needs to be done?” Phineas’s voice was sharp. “Destroying a family’s legacy for oil money? That’s what needs to be done?”
“From a business perspective? Yes.” The words tasted like ash in my mouth. “The oil is there. The land is valuable. The Northwoods are going to lose everything anyway. At least this way they get paid for it.”
“And you believe that bullshit?”
I was quiet for a long time, picking at my fries while the diner hummed around us. A few other customers sat scattered around the restaurant, but no one paid us any attention. Just two men having a late lunch, nothing remarkable about that.
“I don’t know what I believe anymore,” I finally admitted. “I came here thinking I was doing a job. Simple acquisition, clean and straightforward. But then I met her, and everything got complicated.”
“Love usually does that.”
“I didn’t say anything about love.”
Phineas snorted. “You didn’t have to. It’s written all over your miserable face.”
I took another drink of coffee, letting the bitter warmth anchor me. “Even if I am in love with her—which I’m not saying I am—it doesn’t matter. She hates me now. She’ll never forgive me for lying to her.”
“Maybe not. But that’s not really the point, is it?”
“What is the point then?”
“The point is who you want to be. Do you want to be the kind of man who destroys things for money, or do you want to be the kind who tries to build something better?”
I pushed the burger away, my stomach churning. “Easy for you to say. You don’t have a family legacy breathing down your neck. You don’t have billions of dollars in expectations weighing on every decision you make.”
“No,” Phineas said quietly. “I just have a lifetime of regrets about all the times I chose the easy path instead of the right one. Trust me, that’s a heavier weight to carry.”
We finished the meal in relative silence. Phineas paid the check over my protests, and we walked back out into the cold December air. The sun was starting to set, which only reminded me painfully of the sunset I’d watched with Sylvie just the night before.
“Go home, Kent,” Phineas said when we reached the corner where our paths diverged. “Sleep this off. And when you wake up tomorrow, decide who you really are.”
“What if I don’t like the answer?”
“Then at least you’ll know the truth.”
I watched him walk away. Then I turned and walked in the opposite direction, my feet carrying me toward the neon sign of another bar I’d spotted earlier.
The smart thing would have been to go back to the lodge, pack my things, and drive back to New York.
Face my father’s disappointment and figure out how to move on with my life.
But I wasn’t feeling particularly smart.
And driving anywhere wasn’t an option. I didn’t want to go back to the lodge just yet.
I was a chickenshit and had every intention of sneaking in when everyone else was asleep.
That meant I had some time to kill.
The second bar was even seedier than the first, a place called Murphy’s that looked like it was straight out of the nineteenth century. The bartender was a grizzled man in his fifties who looked like he’d seen everything and had been unimpressed by most of it.
“What’ll it be?” he asked when I slumped onto a stool.
“Whiskey. Make it a double.”
He poured without comment. I drank without tasting. The alcohol wasn’t helping anymore. It was just making everything feel more distant and surreal, like I was watching someone else’s life fall apart instead of living it myself.
My phone buzzed with a text from my father. What’s the news?
I stared at the message for a long time, my thumb hovering over the keyboard. Fuck him. He just helped ruin my life. I didn’t feel like talking to him.
Instead, I ordered another drink and let the phone go dark.
Later, I wandered through downtown Northwood in a haze of whiskey and regret. Christmas lights were strung everywhere, wrapped around lampposts and in every shop window. Happy families and couples strolled past me, their laughter and warmth creating a bubble I couldn’t penetrate.
The glittering shopfronts transported me back to childhood. It was one of the few good Christmases I could remember. I must have been eight or nine, young enough to still believe that maybe this year would be different.
Dad had rented a cabin in upstate New York, not far from where I was standing now, actually, and he brought all of us boys along for Christmas Eve through New Year’s Day.
The whole point was that he’d spend the entire week with his sons, giving us the kind of father-son time we never got during the rest of the year.
But just like every other family event, it didn’t last.
He left after two nights. Some business emergency that couldn’t wait. That was always more important than us.
I’d felt let down at the time, but honestly, the rest of the week hadn’t been half bad.
My brothers and I, ranging in age from four to eighteen, had been left with our nannies to fend for ourselves.
Just like always, we made the most of it.
Snowball fights, sledding, staying up late watching movies we weren’t supposed to watch.
We all got to hang out with no one needing to go to practice or some other extracurricular activity.
We didn’t get to hang out with him, but we got to spend time together. It helped us all reconnect.
That was how it always was with Dad. Grand promises followed by disappointing realities.
But I’d forgiven him for all of it years ago.
It was just the past, just the way things were in the Bancroft family.
He was a single father doing his best. He was the head of a very successful company.
The company alone was enough to take anyone’s time.
Add in a herd of kids and there wasn’t enough hours in the past.
That was then. We all survived, and despite some setbacks, we were all in pretty good shape. I had moved on.
But Northwood wasn’t in the past. It was here and now. And so was Sylvie.
I found myself standing in front of the massive Christmas tree in town square.
It was the same tree that had been lit with such ceremony just days ago when Sylvie’s mother had hosted the celebration.
A block down the road, carolers were singing in front of a row of townhouses with their front doors open, families standing on their thresholds to listen.
This place felt like a whole other world from the one I came from.
I wondered what it would become under Bancroft ownership.
Would all this charm fall away to modern infrastructure and efficient development?
Would Dad bring in franchises to replace the mom-and-pop shops that lined Main Street?
The Northwood Café would become a Starbucks.
Mrs. Rosetti’s restaurant would be bulldozed for a chain.
Olive Garden or something along those lines.
Would the oilfields create jobs that made things better around here, or would it just destroy the community that already existed?
Would the disruption change everything about this place?
New people experienced with drilling operations would move in, but locals would be forced to move away.
The rig workers tended to be single guys.
Some might bring their families, but drilling changed the footprint of a town.
The quaint image would be gone.
Because of me.
The impending destruction of Northwood, the devastation of the family who’d built this community, and Sylvie’s broken heart were all my fault. I couldn’t blame my father or the family business or Bancroft expectations. I made every choice that led to this moment.
“Fuck me,” I groaned.
I was exhausted and ready to pass out. I was pretty sure I drank my body weight in cheap whiskey. The burger Phineas forced on me was long gone. There was nothing but whiskey pumping through my veins and rotting in my stomach.
All I wanted was to go back to the lodge and make things right with Sylvie. Even if I couldn’t actually fix anything. The least I could do was apologize properly.
But getting there was a problem. I had a vague idea about where I parked the rental, but driving was still out of the question.
A family walked toward me. I stepped into their path, probably looking like exactly the kind of drunk stranger parents warned their children about.
“Excuse me,” I said, pulling out my wallet. “I need a ride out to the Northwood Lodge. I’ll give you three hundred dollars cash if you’ll drive me there.”
The father looked at his wife, then at me with understandable suspicion. “Are you alright, son?”
“No,” I admitted. “But I will be if you can get me there. Please. I need to fix something I broke.”
My desperation must have convinced them because five minutes later I was in the back seat of their minivan, sandwiched between two car seats, heading back toward the one place I probably wasn’t welcome anymore.