Foreshadowing Brooklyn #2
Trey frowns. “I thought you’d be happy. You’ve always wanted to go back overseas. You’ve been saddled with me and the kids, not traipsing around the world like you used to. I know you long for the open road, baby. I thought it would be fun.”
Long for the open road. Oh, Trey. You have no idea.
“Fun for me, and the kids, yes, but for you? You hate to travel, for work or for fun. I can barely get you to leave the neighborhood.”
He waves a hand in a circle. “Just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean I won’t do it.
It’s high time we have a little fun. Besides, it’s a favor.
Bob has a conflict. Pat has that trip to Dubai, and he decided to go with.
He was supposed to have a meeting at an economic conference in Milan, and he decided to let me take over the account.
It’s a new client, a huge whale, and he’s handing me the keys. ”
“That’s great, babe.”
“I hate to say no to him, you know that. Stepping into his shoes on this one is a big deal.”
He’s not wrong. Bob Gussin is my uncle and Trey’s boss.
He and his wife, Patricia (“Call me Pat”)—fabulous people—run an investment firm here in Franklin, the Gussin Group.
TGG’s headquarters is right off the square downtown.
They are venture capitalists, the vaunted, necessary private money that quietly creates wealth by investing in people’s companies.
TGG is known worldwide and has investors who are so important that their identities are masked.
Even Trey, who is second in command, doesn’t know some of the account holders’ names.
Plus, Uncle Bob and Aunt Pat are the kids’ de facto grandparents.
My mom’s been gone since Margot and I were teenagers, and my dad .
. . We aren’t close, for myriad reasons.
Dad and Bob were never close either; they are half brothers.
Plus there’s a big age difference, nine years.
Trey had a falling-out with his parents when he was young, and they haven’t communicated since.
Despite passing along the family name—a tradition Trey wasn’t willing to part with—they’ve never met their grandchildren.
Or me, for that matter. I don’t even know where the elder Lockes live, specifically, only that they’re outside of some grand town in Connecticut.
Uncle Bob and Aunt Pat are the best. If Bob wants Trey to take on a job, it must be worth it.
“So you’d have to work?”
“Just for the first three days. Then we can tour the country. Milan, Venice, Rome, Florence. Tuscany. Verona. Don’t you have an ancestral family somewhere in northern Italy?”
“Pinerolo. Near the Italian Alps.”
“We’ll go to Pinerolo! Maybe we can go skiing. The world is your oyster. You can show us everything you love, and we can make some new memories, too. There’s only one catch. We have to go tomorrow so I can make the conference.”
“Tomorrow? You want to go overseas for three weeks . . . tomorrow?”
“It will be like old times, Brookie. Picking up and moving at a moment’s notice. We used to love doing that.”
“You have stars in your eyes, my love. Tomorrow . . . Trey, that’s too soon. The tickets are going to be ridiculous. And the kids, pulling them out of school before the holiday break is so disruptive. Neve has her cameo in The Nutcracker . . . Not to mention I’m on deadline.”
A luscious, silky deadline. I can’t help the internal eye roll.
“Baby, this deal goes through, and you will never have to work again. We can get Neve private lessons. Build Four a LEGO house out back. And we can start working on number three.” He wiggles his eyebrows suggestively.
Now I know something is up but leave that for the moment. “Logistics, babe. Passports, tickets, hotels. Someone needs to care for Bohdi. The kids’ passports are fine, and mine’s up to date, but yours is not. Remember? I tried—”
He laughs. “Listen to yourself. Where’s my adventurous wife?
Don’t worry. All that is taken care of. The reservations have been made, the flights and the first hotel booked.
Bob just changed his reservations over to me, and we added you and the kids.
We fly from here to Heathrow, then on to Milan.
And don’t worry about the passport. Pat knows a guy. ”
“Knows a guy who can get passports overnight? Is that even legal?”
“Sure. This happens all the time, babe. People have to go to meetings overseas, and there are ways to expedite them. We’ll have it tonight.
All we need to do is find places to stay in the other cities we want to visit, and I know you can manage that.
Easy peasy. Also, price is no object. This is all on Bob and Pat. ”
“That’s awfully generous. I should call them and say thanks.”
“Give it a few days. They’re tied up in meetings. Trust me. It’s going to be amazing.” He pauses. “Unless you’d rather me go alone . . . I just assumed you’d leap at the chance for a big trip.”
“You are not going to Italy alone,” I assure him, and his face splits open again into that heartbreakingly happy smile. “I’ll get the kids sorted. We’ll probably have to find a Nutcracker showing somewhere to appease your daughter. She’s been practicing for months.”
“We can do that.”
“But need I point out the last, but most obvious, flaw in your plan? You hate to fly.”
“Yes, well, sometimes we all need to make sacrifices.”
He kisses me once more and leaves me there, mouth agape, trying to figure out how I can make this work. How I can drop everything and leave the country in twenty-four hours.
So you understand—it was, it is, out of character, what happened. The days leading up to the moment things changed forever. The surprise. The trip. The leaving. The email. The stranger. The secret.
All of it.
I didn’t see any of this coming.
How could I?