Chapter Nine #3
“I think you should definitely do it.”
“Really? So do I.” She nodded, satisfied. “Now, don’t contact anyone you know there and pull strings. I want it to be all on my own. You can have this copy, but when it gets published, I get to autograph it.”
“I don’t want your autograph. I’m the one with thirty-two million followers,” he replied.
“Thirty-one,” she corrected, punching him in the arm. This was now a custom apparently. “So, what are you doing today?”
Finn was caught off guard. She’d never asked this before.
He had three meetings, a conference call, an interview for the new head of business affairs, and about seventy other things.
“Nothing,” he said.
There was a buzz on the intercom from Gina in San Francisco. Gina seldom was at the estate and did her work from San Francisco unless otherwise asked. And sometimes even when she was asked, she didn’t move.
“Holly was asking to be let through the gate at the estate. Charlie wouldn’t let her through for some reason and he called me. I told him it was fine and she’s coming through now. Should be at your office in a minute. Just letting you know.”
Flora didn’t react much. She just grabbed her bag and opened the window.
“Bye, Finn.”
She jumped.
Gone.
Finn stood up, half-expecting her to be caught in the rose bush, but Holly walked through before he could confirm. She advanced towards him quicker than usual and perched on his desk as if she owned the place, sitting directly on the photo Flora had left.
Finn yanked the photo out from underneath her.
“Oops! Sorry. Didn’t see that. So,” she said, smiling demurely. “How is the world’s busiest man today?”
Finn set the photo in his top desk drawer and walked toward the window again. Flora was beelining toward Roman’s wing of the house with a grocery bag in her hand. She hadn’t had that when she’d walked in here. How had she moved so fast? What was she doing?
A nervous panic washed over him.
Roman was still laid up in bed most of the time when he wasn’t swimming at the pool or shooting pool. So that’s where he was, watching Family Ties, when Flora climbed up the trellis and knocked on the window.
“Flora,” he said, opening the window to let her in. “What are you doing?”
“I’ve just come to say hello and see how you are,” she said, handing him the grocery bag. “I got you everything, just like you asked.”
“Contraband,” he said, suddenly looking like a ravenous wolf.
He had been on a strict diet of “no fun” for a month now and had asked Flora to procure anything other than roasted carrots. She set the licorice, sour gummies, sour cream and cheddar potato chips, frozen mac and cheese, waffles, ice cream, and cereal on the table.
“I owe you one,” he added.
“All good. But if I ever sit on glass, I’ll expect the same from you.”
“If you ever sit on glass, I’ll make sure they don’t feed you carrots and turnips for a month.”
“Deal.” Flora’s eye caught on a set of red heels near the chair. “Well, I’d better get going.”
“Stay,” Roman said, that familiar twinkle in his eye. “I never did get to spend more time with you.”
“Roman,” Flora said quietly. “You’re engaged. I know you think you aren’t ready, but you proposed. Jane seems like a great person. She’s a resident and she’s only twenty-six… plus, not to be rude, but you didn’t even notice me before I got a haircut.”
Roman’s jaw dropped but then he grinned. “You are correct, but you did dress like a dairy farmer’s wife.”
Flora laughed. “Well, pretend I still do, alright?”
“You’re really something, Flora,” he paused, stretched his hand out, and then began to sing Africa by Toto at her.
Flora edged out the window again, shaking her head.
“Stop singing Toto at me! I’ll see you later.”
Finn didn’t know what was going on. He just knew she was with Roman. The rest of the day he was full of anxiety and panic.
What were they doing? Where had they gone?
He looked out the window every five seconds, expecting to see a stray golf cart go zooming by with Roman at the helm and Flora in the passenger’s seat or Roman’s Ferrari peeling out to San Francisco.
Between the nervousness and Holly eyeing him like he was see-through, he began to feel sick. He expected every phone call to be the one—the one telling him Roman had broken off the engagement, that the merger was in shambles.
At five o’clock, dinner arrived unceremoniously.
Jane showed up as usual.
Finn was relieved. The anxiety that had eaten away at him all day had been for nothing. He dropped Holly off in the foyer with her parents and then excused himself hastily under the pretense of grabbing something from his car. There was nothing in the car. He just wanted to be alone for a minute.
He leaned against the Defender, looking out over the estate—something he rarely stopped to appreciate—and saw a group of people threading down the hill, carefully avoiding the expensive pottery and rare plants his mother had procured from every end of the globe.
They were headed for the cliff to watch the sunset.
They had a portable speaker, a lamp, a blanket. Harmless.
Flora was among them, so was Allison, and the other two were guys. Finn moved to the gate between the hill and the meadow, squinting to see what they were doing and, more importantly, who they were.
“Careful!” Allison called. “There’s a lot of milk thistle. Nasty stuff. Flora, watch your step. Benji, stop walking so close to the edge there.”
“Jett!” Flora called to the one lagging behind taking photos. “Jett, come look!”
Jett looked exactly like her type—he had a manbun, loose joggers, a long string of beads around his neck, carrying a backpack filled with camera equipment and other nonsense. He probably wrote poetry, played guitar, and was in touch with Mother Earth.
Finn could not relate. He had been raised a staunch Catholic.
Finn contemplated how much longer it would take for his hair to be long enough for a man-bun.
Maybe a few more months. He shook his head, knowing he’d never buy a pair of hemp sneakers, or beads, or carry around a backpack with journals for poetry.
He’d gotten stuck in a general education poetry class at Harvard, and it nearly tanked his 4. 0 GPA.
Flora didn’t see Finn and the party disappeared down the stretch of dusty trail and out of sight.
He shook his head, irritated with himself. A feeling had overwhelmed him suddenly. He hadn’t felt it in so long, years maybe.
The fear of missing out.
He stood there for a moment, gazing at the vast blue ocean stretching to the Golden Gate, regained his composure, and went inside—
To the boring, stuffy dinner with white tablecloths, folded napkins, which he was beginning to hate, and food he didn’t really want to eat.
“Finn, you haven’t touched your meat,” his mother noted.
“I’m—” he looked around—“I’m taking a break from meat.”
The table went dead silent. As if he had announced he was joining the circus as a clown or moving to Spain to run with the bulls. Tyson and Anna Brooks looked intrigued but said nothing.
However, George Carlisle, ever the loudmouth, scoffed at this. “You cannot be serious. Joining that ridiculous vegetarian-vegan food movement—surely that’s not on the agenda for a man in your position.”
Roman, who had a habit of doing whatever Finn did, set his fork down and pushed his meat to the side.
Jane raised an eyebrow.
“Are we vegetarians now?” she whispered.
“I don’t know!” Roman whispered. “I do whatever he does. Just slower.”
Jane laughed and squeezed his hand under the table.
Finn was not laughing.
“Businessmen should be well rounded. I can’t support eating meat unless it’s local,” Finn said coolly.
Finn’s gaze, from the time he was three onward, could have frozen oceans, and he was staring down George as he said this.
“We need to support local farm practices to keep from big businesses taking over. Woodhouse Corporation does what it can to prevent small farms from becoming victims.”
The table again went silent again—outside of Jane who snorted, clearly entertained. Holly, on the other hand, looked deeply uncomfortable but didn’t touch her steak for the rest of the meal.
Finn didn’t press the issue further. He never needed to. Rooms shifted when he spoke—whether he intended them to or not. Though when it was time for dinner to be cleared, Rosa narrowed her eyes seeing plates full of steak. Roman saw and whispered, “It wasn’t bad, Finn just staged a coup.”
While this was enough drama for one night, it wasn’t until seven that the event that would be talked about for years to come took place.
They were on the patio, the June air buzzing with crickets, Holly close to him, talking about her friend’s wedding in St. Barth and how it’d be so much fun to go.
Jane and Roman were whispering, occasionally looking at him.
George was holding court about some boat he’d bought and his plan to tour the Caymans in September.
Tyson was listening with a furrowed brow, noting that this was idiotic because it was hurricane season.
All while his mother watched him in that careful way she had when she knew something was off.
Finn wasn’t really listening to any of it. He was staring out over the estate, toward the hillside, where the light was fading from halo orange to a pure, starry purple.
“I smell smoke,” Finn announced out of nowhere.
No one moved at first, like this announcement had merely been a drill. Finn stood up though and looked around—the barbecue, the main house and in law units, the garage—and saw smoke rising from the hillside.
“Fire,” he said, already moving toward it. “There’s a fire.”
He hopped the gate to the patio and tore off across the grass. Roman called the fire department. Jane followed Finn. Everyone else was frozen or shrieking in panic.
As he approached, the air was hot and acrid, heavy with smoke. Finn was thinking of the Flora and her friends. They were undoubtedly caught in this. Just as he was about to panic, he saw shapes emerging from the clouds of smoke.