Chapter 27 Harrison
HARRISON
“Good morning, Susan,” I said on my way into my office. “Anything I need to know about today?”
She glanced at me briefly, then refocused on her computer. “Everything is in your calendar, as usual.”
I repressed a sigh. Normally, Susan treated my daily schedule chat like an opportunity to catch up and gossip. She’d mention something like my upcoming meeting with accounting and detour into a deep dive about our controller’s divorce. I still wasn’t used to this frosty, dismissive version of her.
I didn’t need to ask her what was wrong. She’d made her feelings about Gwen’s departure quite clear even without actually discussing it. It was the blessing and curse of having a nosy assistant who liked to cosplay as my mother.
“Please make note of your lunch appointment,” she called in after me. “It’s important.”
I instinctively ground my teeth because it sounded like a warning. What now?
I settled at my desk and squinted at my calendar.
“When did you book this?” I shouted. We had an intercom, but sometimes yelling felt better.
Most times. Especially lately.
Susan appeared in my doorway. “Yesterday. Do you have a conflict? Because your father was quite eager to make it happen.”
After the news at his party, I didn’t like the idea of surprise lunch dates. The Ashfords rarely bothered with casual hangouts, which meant that my father had an ulterior motive for summoning me home. And that in itself was concerning as well. I hadn’t set foot on the property in ages.
“Can we shift it—”
“He said ASAP, and I moved mountains to make it happen today. So no, there’s no shifting this one.”
My chest went tight. Was it a new health scare?
“Do you know if my brothers will be there as well?”
“Just you,” she said over her shoulder.
Fantastic. A solo audience with the king at his castle.
I settled in my chair and stared at the mounted surfboards hanging across the room.
As always, I had plenty to do, but there was no way I was in the right headspace to tackle any of it.
The stress of what happened with Gwen combined with whatever fresh hell awaited me at home was enough to convince me that I needed to get out of the office for a few hours.
If I didn’t take a break, there was a chance I’d do something I might regret. Or more things that I’d regret. There were a couple of interns that literally hid in closets when they saw me coming.
I grabbed my briefcase before I could change my mind.
“I need to head out—something came up,” I said to Susan as I strode past her desk. “Call if you need me; otherwise, I’ll be back after lunch.”
She said something to me, but I was already gone.
I heard the same refrain echoing in my head every time I got back out on the water.
Why don’t I do this more often?
Growing up, surfing was my passion, and one of the few things my brothers and I had in common. We had our locals-only secret spots, where we’d spent hours under the sun without a care in the world. Now, I wasn’t even sure if either of them still owned a board.
I had half a dozen that rarely saw any action, but after today’s session, I was determined to find a way to carve out more consistent surf time.
I managed to forget about the state of my life for the few hours I was connected to my board, like surfing was a drug that blotted out everything but the pleasant sensation of going very, very fast.
The active meditation was so powerful that I lost track of time, leaving me scrambling to change back into street clothes and make it home in time to meet Dad. He was so perceptive I wondered if he’d notice the salty ocean smell lingering on me.
The main gates slid open before my car could even pause at the base of the driveway. Dad clearly had the house staff on high alert for my visit.
I drove up the driveway fighting the usual warring emotions.
A brief flicker of happiness, because this house was infused with so many wonderful memories, and then the stabbing reminder that I wasn’t going to find my mother curled up in the lounge with a book or out back in the yard tending to her flowers.
The white Tuscan-inspired mansion was so my dad.
Elegant, but just a half step away from over-the-top, what with the columns, circular windows, and arches that greeted visitors.
I’d hoped for a few minutes to collect myself beneath the shade of a weeping willow, but the giant main doors swung open the moment my car came to a stop.
It was my father himself, not his house manager. I studied him as I crossed the driveway. He didn’t look overly stressed, and I wasn’t sure if it was wishful thinking or reality, but he looked more vibrant. Less sallow and gaunt than he’d seemed at his party.
Maybe it was purely a social call after all?
“New baby?” Dad pointed at my black Aston Martin.
“Ish,” I replied.
I didn’t want to get into the fact that I’d bought it on a whim a few days prior, hoping that a small, reckless car could take my mind off the empty seat beside me.
We embraced briefly, another anomaly. Who was this huggier version of my father?
“Come see what I’ve been working on,” he said, beckoning me to follow him in.
I steeled myself for the wave of memories as I crossed the threshold. I still half expected to hear my mom’s voice echoing down the main hall. She wasn’t here, but she was still everywhere.
I followed him through the house, trying to ignore the empty vases scattered around. Filling them was always my mom’s job. Even though Maria, our house manager, could’ve taken over, Dad preferred leaving them empty as a way to mark the fact that she wasn’t with us.
“Remember those plans your mother had, to increase the size of her rose garden and revamp the potting shed?”
“Of course. I think she loved her roses more than us.”
Her potting shed—a misnomer if there ever was one—was her passion project that she hadn’t had a chance to finish, and the in-progress area toward the back was the only blight on a property that was otherwise magazine-worthy.
“What the hell is that?” I asked when I saw the new construction in the distance.
“It’s the Victorian greenhouse she wanted, from that company in England. She, uh, never had a chance to make it happen. I decided it was time.”
We walked over to check it out. The foundation was set, and the footprint was big enough to consider the greenhouse a guesthouse.
“This is…a lot,” I said. “Do you really want to take it on?”
His mouth went tight. “I do, no question. This area has been a mess for too long. Every time I looked at it, it was a reminder that your mother wasn’t here to see it through. Now I’m closing the chapter for her.” He paused. “We needed to do something. Plus, greenhouses are great for resale value.”
I turned to him abruptly. “Why would that matter?”
My dad focused on deadheading a rose bush. “I couldn’t leave the mess like it was. So here we are.”
I was about to press him on his decision-making, but he kept talking.
“Let’s walk before we eat. I have a few things I need to say to you.”
I swallowed hard and fell in step beside him. We walked past the pool and pool house to the gravel path that led to the towering Versailles-style hedges.
“Harrison, I owe you an apology,” he began.
I’d prepared myself for a discussion about the state of Ashford Holdings’s stock price, so the quiet admission was the last thing I expected.
“For what?” I asked incredulously.
He let out a soft chuckle. “Too much to get into all of it, but the most pressing one is for keeping you in the dark about the testing I was having done. Drew’s been beating me up about it. I don’t have any excuse other than that I didn’t realize it was such a big deal.”
“Well yeah, it’s everything, Dad. It’s your health. After what we went through with Mom—”
“Which is exactly why I didn’t think I should tell you,” he interrupted. “Why stress you out before I knew for sure whether or not I had a reason to?”
“Because you shouldn’t have had to go through something like that alone,” I protested.
He started to speak but stopped abruptly.
“What?” I demanded. It looked like he was keeping yet another secret. “Did something change with your results?”
“No, no, I would’ve already told you if it had. I learned my lesson about keeping you out of the loop. I’m fine, and I’ll tell you if my status shifts,” he said quickly. “I’ll never hide my health concerns from the three of you.”
“Okay, good,” I said with a satisfied nod.
We walked on in silence.
“You know another anniversary is coming up.”
Losing someone to cancer meant a thousand sad milestones.
“Of course I do,” I said quickly. I hoped he didn’t want to make a big deal about it. I preferred to mark the day she was diagnosed—the day our world turned upside down—quietly, on my own.
“It’s just got me thinking, you know? After my scare, everything started shifting into focus.
I’m seeing myself in a new light, and I don’t like what I’m discovering.
For too many years now, my way of coping with the pain has been closing myself off from everyone.
Your mom used to call me on it, but now that I’m on my own… ”
We both stared at the gravel crunching beneath our feet as we walked, each caught up in our memories of the incredible woman we’d lost.
“You’re like me in that way,” he continued. “You box up the hurt and do your best to maintain business as usual.”
He was right, but I was still shocked at the comparison.
Drew was always the one who was compared to Dad.
The one who looked the most like him. The one who was the closest match to his personality.
I’d never really stopped to think about ways I was like Dad too.
I hadn’t thought he ever noticed, either.
“That tendency has served us well most of the time,” he said. “It allows us to focus, to push through tough times with a level head. That can be a very good thing. We’re both unstoppable when we put our minds to something.”
“Exactly,” I replied. “It works.”
“Partially.” He watched me out of the corner of his eye for a few steps. “It’s way too easy to use that single-minded focus as a crutch. We both tend to retreat into whatever problem we’re solving and ignore what we’re feeling because it’s too messy or complicated or scary.”
“There’s where you’re wrong,” I insisted. “I’m not scared of anything. I can handle whatever life throws at me.”
My father paused and turned to me. “Can you, though?”
Thoughts of Gwen resurfaced, but then again, they were always right there, no matter how hard I worked to push them aside. I didn’t answer him as we continued walking.
“Do you know that I was jealous of your mother when you were a baby?”
It was so out of left field that I snorted out a laugh at him. “Excuse me?”
He chuckled along with me. “You were our baby, but she was the only parent who mattered to you. I know it sounds ridiculous—I can admit that much now. But back then? I just wanted you to love me the way you loved her. It didn’t help that I knew nothing about babies.
I had to be shown everything, from how to change you to how to burp you—even how to hold you.
I used to try to soothe you, but I swear you’d arch your back harder and scream louder whenever I picked you up. I felt like a failure.”
I was dumbstruck. Dad was always such a presence.
For as long as I could remember, he’d been the smartest, most capable man I’d ever known.
Everything he touched turned to gold; everything he attempted, he mastered.
The first and only time I ever saw him fail at something was when Mom got sick and he tried to turn the world upside down to find a cure.
But had I been wrong about that? Had the great Oliver Ashford been fallible all along and I’d just never noticed?
Yeah, I knew we’d never been close, that Mom was the parent I defaulted to whenever I had a choice, but I never thought that bothered him.
I thought we didn’t have much of a relationship because he didn’t want one—not because he’d fumbled trying to build it.
“And it continued as you got older. The two of you had a bond that I couldn’t touch.
I had stretches in those first few years where I wondered if I was even cut out to be a father.
But then your brothers were born, and it got a little easier.
Diapers weren’t intimidating anymore, and I wasn’t afraid of breaking them every time I picked them up the way I had been with you. ”
He huffed out a breath and continued with his confession.
“It meant we bonded more, right from the start. And then Drew started taking a real interest in the hotels, and he liked coming to work with me—something you had never wanted to do—and working together made us feel more connected. But I never stopped wanting a connection to you. I just didn’t know how to make it happen. ”
“Dad, I get it,” I said. “It’s okay.”
It was my tiny olive branch. The confession had to be hard for him.
“No, it’s not,” he replied harshly. “That cancer scare was enough to wake me up to the fact that my time with you and your brothers is finite. My job now is to try to make up for some of the wrongs in my past. I want to connect with you more. Hell, I just want to see you now and then when it’s not for a business meeting, you know? ”
It was the last thing I’d expected from him.
“Okay, Dad,” I said tentatively. “We can try.”
He shook his head. “No, trying isn’t good enough. This isn’t some hollow promise. I mean it.”
He draped his arm around my shoulder. “I’m proud of you,” he murmured as he squeezed my shoulder. “I hope you know that.”
“I…yeah, I guess I do. Thanks.”
Honestly, I’d never considered if he was proud of me or not. It just…hadn’t occurred to me to look to him for that. We’d never really had that kind of relationship. It was a reset I’d need time to become accustomed to.
“I want to start over,” he said. “I want to get closer to you. I’m committed to it, and I hope you will be as well.
” He went quiet, letting the sound of birdsong fill the silence for a while.
“And there you have it, Harrison. The big reveal, the reason I dragged you back home. I’m ready to put the work in and right my wrongs. I hope you’ll let me.”
I shook my head at him, slowly and deliberately.
My dad dropped his arm and took a few steps away from me, his eyes wide in shock.
“I’m not going to let you,” I said quickly to ease his concern. “I’m going to join you.”