47. Luke
Luke
“Dad, I really think it’ll be okay until I get back in a week and a half. Can we just push back the timeline a little bit?”
“No. We can’t keep pushing it back, Luke,” Dad says through the phone.
“The contractors are on a tight schedule as it is. You know that. Pushing back the reno will just make them withdraw their bid. Don’t forget, we ultimately wanted them because they have the lowest bid of all the other highly qualified contractors.
Yes, they do great work, but we also gotta save where we can.
We have to nail this down now and let them start. ”
Dad’s clearly in over his head with the Bat Cavity, and he’s trying to get me to come home for a few days to work out all the logistics alongside him. The place is a dump, and like any real cavity, it’s giving me a blasted headache.
I stop my irritated pacing down the gravel driveway. “Fine. I’ll try to fly out there in the next day or two. I’ll look at flights.”
Dad audibly sighs through the phone. “You’ll be happy when we get this up and running. It’ll take a load off your shoulders to finally hand this over to the builders. Speaking of taking a load off, how’s our troubled house in Atlanta?”
“You mean the one we have Gray covering? Terrible. The house is never up to par. We have to fire that guy before he makes it worse.”
“Probably for the best.” Dad sounds resigned to the idea. “Honestly I never liked the guy.”
“Me neither.”
“Alright,” he says, “I’ll do it next week. I’ll let him loose.”
I hold the phone a little closer to my ear, tilting my head. “You’re not gonna make me fire him?”
“No, of course not. You’ve got enough going on. You’ve been gone all summer, flying back and forth whenever I need you. Let me take care of this.”
Although we’re equal business partners, my father usually leaves the hard conversations to me, whether it be with our employees, contractors, or the tenants.
He prefers the background gig—contracts, payroll, ads for our rental listings, that sort of thing.
I’m honestly shocked he’d take the initiative on firing someone.
“Are you sure you can handle it?” I ask. “Gray might put up a fight about losing his job.”
Dad scoffs. “Let him. If he’s going to whine about me firing him for slacking on his job, then I’ll point out his attitude, and it’ll be the exact proof I need handed to me on a silver platter. I’ll tell him I thought we hired a grown man, not a child.”
“Wow. Dad, I didn’t know you could be so …”
“Harsh?”
“I was going to say to the point. But harsh is pretty accurate.”
He chuckles, his deep voice echoing through the phone from his home office.
“What do you think I did before you joined the business? I’ve had to fire plenty of slackers.
It doesn’t get easier changing someone’s life like that, but you stop caring about feelings the longer you do it.
As long as you know for certain they don’t deserve to be a part of your operation. ”
“What if firing them puts them in a bad spot?” I ask. I’ve fired people before, but I know Gray is dealing with a lot of his own struggles, the one off the top of my head right now being his broken arm and all the medical bills he’s acquired.
“What do you mean?” Dad’s voice is gruff.
“Like, what if he can’t get back on his feet after we fire him? What if directing someone else’s life by our own choices makes them resent us? Or, even worse, makes their life hell? What if firing Gray makes him lose his chances at a good life because he can’t move forward?”
He’s silent for a moment. I follow a squirrel with my eyes as it scampers up a nearby pine tree, thinking I’ve said too much.
Finally, he speaks up. “Something like that isn’t on us, Luke.
When it comes to work, we’re the employers.
We look for individuals who are hardworking, ethical, and who produce the outcome we want.
A business is like a machine, and we—the employers—see to it that the machine runs smoothly.
Whether we want someone to succeed or not doesn’t matter.
It’s up to them how they choose to work.
Either they work the way we need them to in order to make the business successful, or they don’t get paid. That’s all it comes down to.”
“Yeah. I guess you’re right.”
“I am right. Do you have something against firing Gray now?”
“No,” I say quickly. “Not at all. Gray causes me more work than less at this point.”
“Then what’s bothering you, son?” There’s a long pause before Dad says, “This isn’t about Gray … Is it?”
I haven’t told my parents about why I came to Maple Lake this summer.
They don’t know anything about Natalie’s desire for a kid or that I’m afraid of her getting pregnant after what happened to Mom.
I didn’t want to burden them with the details and the drama behind Nat running back here, but I also didn’t want to dredge up Mom’s past. But I hate feeling like we’re keeping something from them.
A family is like a machine too. It runs most smoothly on truth, trust, and—for Dad and me—a lot of time on the green.
After Mom’s depression faded, my family finally became a smooth-working machine, and I feared that bringing everything back from the past would bring the machine to a grinding, screeching halt.
“Dad,” I say hesitantly. “I have something to tell you.”
“Okay. What is it?”
I say it quickly, like ripping off a Band-Aid. “Nat left me at the beginning of the summer. That’s why she came back to Maple Lake.”
Each word loosens the knot that’s formed in my stomach. But while it feels right to have finally told him the truth, the Band-Aid pulled at scabs I hoped were gone, making me sick all over again.
Dad’s silence is loud. “Why? What happened?” he finally asks.
I sigh a shaky breath. “Natalie wants to have kids, but I’ve always told her no. She was ready to leave me because I couldn’t give her what she wanted.”
“Tell me, son, why couldn’t you give her that? What’s holding you back? You don’t want kids?”
“No, it’s not that. It’s not that I don’t want kids—at least not anymore. I’m working through some things … things that happened with Mom.” I wince as I say the words, digging into the pit of skeletons I’d buried long ago.
Dad and I never talked about Mom’s depression, and I sure as hell never made Mom feel bad for it by bringing it up.
“Oh,” Dad says, and I can tell from the way he says it that he understands. “Are you afraid what happened to your mother will happen to Natalie?”
I nod, even though he can’t see me. “Yeah.”
Dad groans the way he does when he rests his back against the brown leather chair at his desk. “I wondered if that messed with you. You never said anything, though … How long has that been bothering you?”
“Honestly? Forever.” I glance back at the cabin where Natalie is inside, editing photos on her laptop.
Dad’s deep voice is calm but strong. “Your mom dealt with a lot of emotions after those losses. But just because you saw her go through it doesn’t mean that Natalie will face the same thing.”
“I know that, I really do.” I’ve been reciting it to myself for months.
“I’ve looked up the statistics for miscarriages and the possibility for depression to follow, but those numbers don’t seem to help ease the way it scares me.
Seeing Mom like that—it was so hard. I was too young to know what to think of it.
How to handle losing Mom for those two years. ”
“I’m so sorry you felt like you had to hold this all in, Luke.
And I know I wasn’t there for you as much as I should have been during those years.
I was trying to help your mom and hold her together, trying to meet all her needs so she didn’t feel alone.
” He sighs heavily. “I didn’t stop to think you would have needed to be held together too. ”
A nervous tension fills my bones. Ever since Mom’s depression after her miscarriages, I’ve worked hard to never cause her more stress.
I was always a great kid—I followed the rules, I didn’t talk back, I helped her whenever I could with everything I could think of.
I cleaned the house, did my homework alone, mowed the lawn, and made her meals.
But I was so young. And I didn’t have my dad either for a lot of that time.
Now I’ve brought it all up again after I promised myself I never would, and it’s going to hurt her.
“Is Mom there?” I ask, needing to rectify my mistake immediately.
“No. She’s at the country club.”
My shoulders sink.
“Should I have her call you when she’s home?” he asks.
I kick at a stone in the gravel, fisting a hand on my hip. “No … No, I’ll talk to her in person when I get there. I’ll fly out tomorrow.”
“Call me when you’re at the airport.”
“I will.”
“And Luke.”
“Yeah, Dad?” I pause, holding my breath.
“You’re a good man. I love you. And you and Natalie are going to be fine. Don’t let the fear of your mom’s past keep you from enjoying the future.”
I let out a long held breath. “Love you too, Dad. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
The next day, Natalie walks into the bedroom while I’m packing for my flight back to Miami. If it weren’t for the Bat Cavity being a literal pain in my butt, I’d be enjoying the last couple of weeks with her in her hometown.
Natalie and I have grown in the months we’ve been here, both closer to one another and to her family.
I feel like we’ve hit a turning point in our relationship, even if we haven’t totally figured out everything around having kids of our own.
To combat my fears, I’ve done my due diligence in searching for a therapist in Florida.
Sandra, as a therapist herself, helped me search for someone who can help.
She said I’m suffering from secondary trauma.
I didn’t give her the specifics, but I owned up to my struggles and asked her for recommendations, and she gave me some names to look up.
Being a kid who grew up with a depressed mother, I felt the stress and loss she went through as if it were my own.
I lost my mother for two years, and I hold that in a tiny, little box in my heart.
Not only did her distance in my life change me, but the way she dealt with her own experiences shaped what I now feel toward the family structure and pregnancy as a whole.
Taking care of my own mind before making life-impacting decisions is the best thing I can do for Natalie and our future kids.
Outside of Natalie, I didn’t want to talk to anyone else about those difficult childhood years. I’d have taken my fears to my grave if it weren’t for her. But Natalie has encouraged me to open up about my past, and we’ve both been better for it.
She wraps her arms around me from behind, resting her cheek against my back.
“I’m going to miss you,” she says, her breath warm through my cotton shirt.
“I won’t be gone for long. Just a couple days.”
“I know. But we only have a little time left here before the summer ends.” She moves around me and sits on the edge of the bed, watching me pack.
I lift my eyes to her. “Dad’s freaking out about the project, but he’ll think more clearly if I’m around to help out. If it weren’t for that, I wouldn’t be going.”
She nods slowly.
I watch her. “Will you be alright here?”
She smiles and nods again. “Yeah, totally. Don’t worry about me. Jules and I are great now, so you don’t have to worry about what I might do. I think I’ll spend more time with the family so I’m not alone.”
“Are you having fun here?”
“Yeah.” Her smile reaches her eyes. “I am having fun. It’s been a great summer. I’m doing things I never thought I’d do, and everything right now just feels—it feels good. Right. I haven’t felt this way in …. Well, never I guess.”
I sit beside her and pull her hand into my lap, thumbing the diamond ring on her finger. “I’m going to miss you while I’m gone, too.”
The corner of her lip twitches. “Like you said, you’ll be back before you know it, and we’ll have another two weeks of summer fun before we have to go home.” She leans in and presses her lips gently against mine.
She pulls back, and I brush my nose over hers. “I think you know I could stay here kissing you all day, but then I’d miss my flight.” She gives me her most adorable come get me smile. I kiss her again.
I’m not late for my flight, but I am running through the airport after Nat drops me off at the curb outside. And while I rush onto the plane, I know I won’t feel whole until I’m beside her again.