Chapter 20 #3
Jet scowled and tossed his hair. “What about?”
“Your father.”
The stillness that overcame Jet was a little eerie, as the warm breeze died down around them at the same time. “What about him?”
“Can we sit?”
Jet shrugged, but plopped back down in the grass on the slight hill between the yards where he and Wyatt had been lying.
Myles got down next to him, deliberately not thinking about how much he might regret it once he had to get up again.
How was he going to start this conversation? He watched Jet wipe off his earbuds and carefully insert them into their case, then push the case into his pocket.
“Did you find out what he wants?” Jet finally asked.
Myles nodded.
Another stretch of silence drifted past as they watched Shelly hug Scratch, then toss the ball so the dogs could trip over themselves and each other to get it first.
“You going to tell me?”
“Partly, it’s about his will.”
“I don’t want his money,” Jet blurted.
Myles chuckled. “Do you have any idea what the man is worth?”
“About six million, according to the internet.” He shrugged. “Who knows.”
Myles nodded. “More than five, less than ten. These things can be a bit nebulous.”
“Whatever.”
“It’s a lot.”
“Don’t need it. I have the business.”
“You going to run your grandfather’s company?”
“Mom and I talked about it a lot. She was in the middle of fixing it.”
“There was something wrong with it?”
“Grandpa was a money-grabbing asshole. He put people on the street to buy their homes. He drove property values up until old people who had lived in their houses for fifty years suddenly couldn’t afford their taxes anymore.
He tore down affordable apartment buildings to build condos the original residents couldn’t afford to buy.
He raised rents to pay for renovations people didn’t want or need. ”
“I know what he was like. It’s why I refused to work for him.”
“I know.”
“It’s good your mom did. She made a good living—”
“She fought him on everything, you know. Made him change policies, made sure the people he was evicting had places to go. After he died, she changed everything. Or she was trying to change it. She fired a bunch of people. Kicked people out of positions that were just excuses to take his money and not do any work. She was relentless.”
Myles smiled. “Sounds just like her.”
“I want to keep doing what she was doing.”
“Jet, you’re sixteen.”
He snorted. “No shit. I didn’t say tomorrow or anything. But knowing now what I know, I get why she hired some of the people she did. They’ll take good care of things until I get there.”
“But you said you don’t want to go back.”
Jet narrowed his eyes at Myles. “You think people don’t need houses in Ontario?”
“So you plan to move the whole company?”
“Or expand it. Or shut it down and start over. Point is, I don’t need money from an asshole who never had the time of day for me my whole life. I’m not afraid to work for my own. I’m not even afraid to not have any while I figure it out.”
“I see.”
“I can work for Ozzy. He already said I shouldn’t run a construction company if I have no idea how to build a house.”
“And finish high school.”
“Well, duh.”
Myles chuckled. Leave it to Jet to have already worked out his entire life. If only things were as easy as all that.
“I’m thinking,” Jet said, “that we could sell Grandpa’s company to the people Mom has running it. Sell his awful house. We’ll have enough to relocate then. You can stop being all righteous about your trust fund, or you can get a job. I can get a part-time job. We can live here, Uncle Myles.”
“You have it all figured out.”
“One of us has to be a grown-up.”
Myles laughed.
“One thing I learned from Grandpa: If ever I wanted anything from the old bastard, I had to have a plan. I had to present reasons. He was stingy. But he taught me to figure out how I was going to do what I wanted to do before I ever asked him for anything.”
Myles studied Jet. The determined set to his jaw reminded him so much of Natalie. “You look like her,” he blurted.
Jet nodded. “I know.”
“You are like her.”
“Hope so.”
“My father taught me to resent him,” Myles said after another little while of watching Shelly play with the animals. “I never had the tiniest say in anything he ever did. Just got dragged along whether I liked it or not.”
“That why you joined up?”
“Probably. Only legit way—according to him, anyway—I could get away from him. I never meant to leave your mother behind. It wasn’t my intention. I just didn’t think…”
“You know that Mom never blamed you, right?”
“She wouldn’t.”
“She was never mad at you. Sad. And scared for you. She only ever wanted you to be okay.”
“I want to be okay, too. I shouldn’t have dragged you and Shelly here without talking to you. Without giving you any choice.”
Jet lay back, hands behind his head, trying hard to look relaxed and uncaring. His leg twitched as he kicked his heel up and down. “I love Mom, right? And I miss her.”
“Of course.”
“But she wasn’t perfect. She tried. She talked to me about things all the time.
Did I want to play soccer or join the swim team?
Did I want to play an instrument? Join the debate club?
Get a part-time job? You’d think she was doing it all right.
Giving me choices, asking my opinion, making sure I had a say in my own life. ”
Myles nodded, thinking if only his own father had asked him, even once, what he wanted, maybe things would have been different for him and Natalie.
“But when it really mattered,” Jet went on, “when I really needed to know what was going on and be a part of it, she didn’t say a word. You two were talking about hospice or dying at home before I knew how sick she really was, and that was a shitty thing for her to do.”
“She didn’t want to burden you, Jet. You’re a kid.”
“And you’re a recovering alcoholic, but she didn’t seem to be bothered about putting it all on you. Also, by the way, a shitty thing for her to do.”
“Who else could she have—”