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There’s an attachment on the email. Within minutes of looking at it, I realize I was wrong. This is the best gift I’ve ever gotten. It’s exactly what I needed—something money couldn’t buy, gifted to me by a man who could buy anything.
Within minutes, I’ve booked a flight back to Boston.
***
When I breeze into my father’s office without an appointment, he’s on a call. He frowns when I take a seat on the other side of his desk without waiting for him to summon me in.
“I’m going to have to call you back,” he murmurs before putting his phone on the receiver. His expression is tight with confusion. “You’re supposed to be in Paris.”
“Read this.” I drop the thick document I printed out onto his desk. It falls with a satisfying thud by his laptop.
He hesitates before he looks. His eyes travel over the topmost page and then he glances up. “What the hell is this?”
“Read it,” I instruct, folding my arms.
“It’s long, Julia.”
“Read it,” I repeat, refusing to back down.
To my surprise, he does it. My father sighs hard, but he closes his laptop and reads page after page, taking in words I’ve now read ten times over since Gus sent me the draft.
Chapter 15: Julia
The moment I first saw Julia Ridgeway, I began to doubt whether I had ever seen beauty in my life before. There had been forty-three years’ worth of sunsets and sunrises and broad expanses of ponderosas, fireworks on the Fourth, thick layers of fog on the beach. It all paled in comparison to her…
By the time my father gets to the last line of the chapter, the line where Gus wrote, Spending the rest of my life loving her will be my next great venture, an uncommon silence has settled between us. It’s a rare thing, heavy and notable because we’re two people who can’t resist getting the last word in.
He looks up at me. “He wrote an entire chapter about you in his memoir.”
“Yes.”
“This man loves you,” he states. The words are simple by definition, but complex at their core. My father keeps his eyes locked on mine, blinking every now and then, but keeping his focus squarely on me. The look holds so much: recognition, surprise, and remorse.
“I quit the job you gave me,” I tell him, wondering why I have an urge to cry. “I’m not supposed to be in Paris.”
“You love Paris,” he responds, almost like he’s reminding me.
“I love a lot of things.”
My father is quiet again, eyes oriented at the printed copy of Gus’s manuscript. His fingertip traces one of the corners, smoothing it to perfection.
“You can cut me off,” I continue. “You should cut me off. I’m twenty-nine as of yesterday. I have a college degree and plenty of savings. I’m going to get a job I actually want. I know there’s no way I can achieve anything without our last name and your influence clouding everyone’s judgment, but at least I can find a job more suited to my experience.”
The look he gives me is guarded. “Julia, I want the best for you. You’re not Davis, my successor in the most literal sense, but you are my successor. When I’m gone, you’ll still make your way in the world, and I wanted more for you than to be a plaything for a man like Gus Winter.”
“I understand. You’re anchored to who you are, and the decisions you’ve made. You’re on your third wife, and she’s thirty years younger than you. I’m not surprised the thought of Gus and me strikes you as inappropriate because deep down, you know your situation isn’t exactly above reproach.”
My father’s jaw lowers an inch. “Well,” he mutters, “that’s, frankly, the cruelest and yet most articulate thing anyone has said to me in years.”
And it’s not even my best work.
“Our relationship needs to change,” I tell him. “I’m your daughter through and through. I cower to no one, and I get what I want. It’s who I am, and I learned it from you, honestly. Which means, for me to be happy, I can’t cower to you and I want Gus. So, I’m going to be with him and you can cut me off. It’s fine. I’ll still come to your office to have lunch every two years, if you’ll let me.”
“Julia,” he begins slowly.
I wait.
“I’m proud of you,” he finally says. “Perhaps I don’t say it enough, but I am.”
