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Chapter 25
Oliver
I watched Holland for months across rooms and through conference room windows when she didn’t know I was there. I watched her body change, her skin begin to glow, her amazing breasts become even more perfect. I still thought of almost nothing but her…and increasingly, of the baby. I knew now with certainty that it was mine. The time apart, and Holland’s frugal use of the money I’d set aside confirmed to me that she’d never been out to manipulate me. I hated myself for ever thinking it.
Pamela handed me itemized receipts each week from Holland, a strict accounting of what had been spent out of the account. Besides the apartment rental and a crib, most of the items were small and monetarily insignificant. She wasn’t trying to use me. I got the impression she was doing everything she could to avoid letting me help at all.
During the months I spent outside Holland’s orbit, I accomplished a lot. I pulled the company back together after hiring a new lead counsel and announcing the MLB deal officially just in time to reassure the board members who’d still been thinking of selling. I appointed a new chairman in Adam’s place—Burton Pax. I was certain he could keep the board’s favor on our side. More than anything, I’d proven to myself that I was a competent and capable CEO. I’d doubted it when I left, believed that I was just a figurehead, that Adam was coddling me. But now I had to give him credit—he knew I could do it, and maybe I had been doing a good job before. I had just been too confused to see it.
Even in the face of my success, I felt torn apart and empty. I lay awake nights, replaying the last conversation I’d had with Holland—and the one with Pamela that preceded it. I’d never been less sure of a decision. In college I’d been too arrogant to bother thinking much about what I did. I just did things. And lately I’d accepted the possibility that after starting my company Adam may have been the one to gently steer the ship, though I’d always thought I was at the helm. I’d grown into my responsibilities, and before my parents died, I had been firmly in command at Cody Tech—though Adam had always been that calm, guiding presence when I’d needed it. But now? I was on my own.
At work. At home. In my head. In my heart. I was alone. And it was possible I’d made the biggest mistake of my life in letting Holland go.
“You did the right thing,” Pamela said, leaning against the edge of my desk one late afternoon. “If you couldn’t be there one hundred percent, you couldn’t be there at all,” she said. “Right?”
I spun my chair to face her, pinching the bridge of my nose between my fingers before I spoke. “What do you mean, ‘right?’ ” I’d spent a good amount of time blaming Pamela for my misery and wondering if I should ever have listened to her. Even in my anger, however, her words made sense. How could I be a father? How could I be part of a family when my own had turned out to be such a sham?
“I’m just asking,” she answered. “Oliver, just because I said that to you doesn’t mean I was right.”
I shook my head. My emptiness wasn’t her fault. “No, you were right.”
Pamela slid into the chair across from me. “Can I say something without you getting mad at me?”
“Probably not.” Pamela had a knack for hitting things right on the head, and since I’d been in the office a lot more since breaking things off with Holland, we’d developed a relationship that felt to me the way it might have felt to have a sister. “Go ahead.”
“Well, I usually am right.” She nodded as if affirming this idea for herself. “About most things.”
“And you’re so humble.” I lifted an eyebrow at her.
“Right. That, too.” She grinned. “But I was just going to say that maybe when it comes to relationships and things…well, I’m not like an oracle or anything. I mean, look at my own life.”
“You’re a single mom. You were counseling me from that point of view.”
“Yeah. A single mom who’s never really been in love.”
That made me look up, and pulled me briefly from my wallowing. “Kenner’s dad?”
She shook her head, a sad smile on her face. “We were young. I didn’t really know what I was doing, what I felt.”
I thought about that. I’d had those relationships, too, where I wanted so badly for it to be love, but where I’d known down deep it wasn’t.
“Watching you these last couple months, though…” She paused, shrugging her shoulders and squinting at me. “You’re a disaster.”
“This talk has been fucking uplifting. Thanks so much—” I stood, ready to be done hearing about how screwed up I was.
“Let me finish?” She motioned for me to sit back down, so I complied, narrowing my eyes and ready to usher her out of my office if she didn’t get to a point that didn’t feel like another rendition of the “enumerate Oliver’s failings” tune. “You’ve been sad for a long time, Oliver. But this seems totally different from what happened to you after your parents…” she trailed off.
“Died. Lied and then died.”
“Wait, what?” Pamela cocked her head to the side.
Did I really want to tell her everything? The only person I’d talked to about it was Holland. “They lied to me. My whole life.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was adopted. And they never bothered to tell me.”
Pamela actually shrugged, and I felt my anger spike. “Why would they tell you?”
