Chapter Fifteen #2
“You won’t remember this, probably, but when you were about ten, we walked the beaches looking for precious stones, and I found two that I thought matched your eyes.”
“I think I remember that.”
“I still have them,” he said.
I was speechless for a moment. He looked through the window and then proudly paid our bill.
We continued our walk until we were close to the gallery. When I paused, Jamie said, “We can start back.”
I thought for a moment. If I don’t confront this emotional event, I’ll always retreat.
“Don’t you want to look at my painting? It’s still on the wall.”
“Sure,” Jamie said, surprised.
We headed to the gallery. Eddie Doyle stepped out of his office just as we entered. He looked from me to Jamie.
“Lisa. I was afraid you wouldn’t come back.”
“It has nothing do with my love of art,” I said, and he smiled.
We went to my painting.
“I don’t know much about it,” Jamie said, “but it sure looks professional to me. I always believed you’d be famous someday.”
I laughed. “I have a ways to go yet, Jamie.”
“You’ll get there.”
We left, but I could see that he was troubled and debating whether to ask me anything. I helped him out.
“I made a mistake in judgment, Jamie. My grandfather tells me what my great-grandfather told him: what doesn’t destroy you makes you stronger. I’m not going to feel sorry for myself.”
“Good,” he said, lighting up.
“Let’s have a good sail home.”
We walked faster to the pier.
That night, Grandfather said, “Why don’t you invite the fisherman’s son to dinner one night?”
I went ahead and did so. Jamie was now able to drive his father’s truck. He came the next night. When Daddy heard he was coming, he suddenly had an important dinner meeting. Neither Grandfather nor I said a word.
What surprised me was how much Grandfather enjoyed talking about fishing with Jamie. It brought him back to his earlier days. At times it was like I wasn’t there, which made me laugh.
A few days later, Jamie and I had a picnic at the Crest. We were both careful about talking about ourselves and the future.
He was more optimistic when it came to the work he could do with his father, but he didn’t bring up the cottage.
It was just very comfortable for me being with him.
I wasn’t quite ready to talk about emotions and deeper feelings for each other.
I had already burned myself rushing to do that.
We made dates to continue doing things together, but I kept my mind on my work and the landscape painting.
One night, I saw Daddy brooding about something in the living room.
He just stood by the window looking out.
We had had few personal conversations these past few months.
He was seemingly always in a rage. Was I partly to blame? Was I being unfair?
I decided to try.
“How are you, Daddy?”
He turned and stared at me for a long moment. “The last time your mother asked me that, you weren’t yet a year old.”
“Why was that? Why were you two so estranged? You were in love with her, and she must have been with you.”
“We each had different ideas about love,” he said. That was the most he had ever said about it.
“Well, what was different?”
“I don’t like retreading the disappointments of the past. Just know that it wasn’t all my fault. Your mother was far from perfect.”
“I don’t think that you should say that. She’s not here to defend herself.”
He smiled. “Sure she is. There’s you,” he said, and walked out.
I searched my mind for instances when he had acted like a loving father.
They were few and far between. Most of the time, it seemed like my mother had protected me from him, from his sarcasm and his superior attitude, especially when it came to ordinary citizens of Birdlane.
I think I understood it all better when I realized he was treating me more like a possession than a daughter.
Days of summer moved on. The work at the business did seem to grow. Grandfather complimented me often, and I could see that Daddy was annoyed. If I corrected something he had done, he would almost explode.
“She shows no respect,” he once told Grandfather, who was sitting at his desk.
I came up behind him to defend myself.
Grandfather raised his eyebrows and glared back at him. Then he said, “If that’s true, where do you think she got the idea?”
Daddy turned and walked out, nearly knocking me over.
Grandfather looked at me and shook his head. “Tantrums. Both he and his sister grew up having them, but your grandmother always smoothed it over. There’s such a thing as being too good,” he said. “I loved her to death, but she was stubborn about satisfying them.”
“I’m sorry, Grandfather.”
“Me too. Back to work,” he said.
I tried to concentrate on that and not think of what was my family. The summer days were beautiful, and when I was off and not working on the landscape, Jamie and I sailed, took walks on the beach, and seemingly relived our youth together.
One day, I paused while looking back at a business account.
The payments to the company were consistent, but I couldn’t find them on the received side.
Why had we been paying them, and for a number of years?
They were called Shell Fish Ltd. The oddest thing was that the payments had stopped just after I had come to work.
I didn’t want to bring this to my grandfather’s attention without doing more research.
I decided to talk to our attorney, Mr. Orseck.
I explained why I wanted to hold back on mentioning anything to Grandfather until he and I researched it.
He was a perfect attorney, never showing his thoughts.
Gray-haired, with a neatly kept beard, he was a tall, lean man in his late fifties.
I liked his down-to-earth but factually supported statements.
“No address?”
“No. Just the name, really. And the fact that the payments stopped recently.”
“Let me look into it. I’ll keep it between us until I know something concrete.”
“Okay, thanks.”
“You might have done good work here,” he said as I rose to leave.
“I hope it is good,” I said.
He called me two days later.
“What we have here is a shell company located in the Cayman Islands. There’s only a door with the name on it.”
“What is that?”
“A way to avoid taxes and hide what you’ve socked away,” he said. “We’ll have to tell your grandfather. It looks like your father has been basically stealing from the company.”
“Oh, it will kill him. He’s fragile now,” I said.
“He’d be angry if we kept it from him.”
I nodded. He was right, of course. Had I done a good thing or a bad thing? What was going to happen now?
“I’ll tell you what,” Mr. Orseck said. “I’ll call your father in, confront him with what we know, and give him the opportunity to put the money back. Then no harm will have been done.”
“Thank you,” I said, breathing easier.
“I’ll let you know,” he said. “Don’t blame yourself.”
“Okay,” I said, and left.
Every day at the company, I was filled with anxiety and tension.
Whenever I saw Daddy, I expected him to burst into a rage at me.
I first saw that the money had been returned to the company account, and then, hours later, I saw Daddy.
His eyes were filled with such anger that I could easily imagine fire coming from them.
He said nothing, but he nodded to indicate that he was never going to forget what I had done.
Nearly a week later, Grandfather called me into his office to thank me for the mature way I had handled the shell company issue.
“Right now,” he said, “he thinks I don’t know. We’ll keep it that way, but you let me know if he does anything to harm you in any way.”
“Okay, Grandfather,” I said.
He gave me a hug.
I went home that night feeling protected but expecting that my father would find a way to get revenge. He was that kind of man.
It wouldn’t be long before I found out.