Page 112 of Just for Tonight

I pick up Abbie at Daphne’s to take her home with me for the weekend.

Daphne takes one look at me and gives me a hug. “Maybe he’ll change his mind,” she says, but I don’t think so.

“He’s got a lot on his plate,” Abbie reminds me. “His presentation to the family is on Monday.”

“You should come to my dad’s office for it,” Daphne says. “See Jake in action without him knowing better.”

“What do you mean?”

“Dad will be on the Zoom call. He asked Luke and I to be there, so we can hear what happens. You should come, too. Jake will never know.”

And I’ll get to see him. How sad is it that I really want to do that?

I may be desperate for crumbs, but at least Jake will never know.

33

Jake

It occurs to me that there is one loose end.

There’s a lot of time for details to occur to me, given that I spend Friday night and most of Saturday morning staring at the ceiling of the bedroom in the townhouse. It’s a perfectly good ceiling, if one undeserving of such a prolonged scrutiny. White. Flat. Smooth. Devoid of stains or evident leaks. What more can one want from a ceiling?

Expectations of people can be so much more complex. Mackenzie challenged me to do things for people I like, not just people I dislike, but there is one person I dislike who I’ve overlooked.

Well, maybe I’ve tried to forget about my embittered youngest brother, Ethan.

Maybe this is a good day to fix that.

That’s not just my kindness motivating me – such as it is. It’s the simple fact that I need family consensus on Monday that my compromise legacy plan is a fair one – and if they nix it, I don’t have a fallback plan, and Candace may lose the house, and that particular sequence of events isn’t one I want to experience – and I’ve realized that Austin isn’t the only one who might act out of spite.

I have the bill from the body shop to prove that.

I can’t do anything about Austin except hope for the best. He’s never available, and wouldn’t listen to me even if he was. There is no one less interested in the collective good.

But maybe I can talk to Ethan.

It’s Saturday. I call the house, but Candace says Ethan didn’t come home the night before. She doesn’t know where he is but is unconcerned. “He’s a grown man, Jacob. I don’t require him to report in all the time. He’s free to live his life!”

Fair enough, but that doesn’t help much.

Maybe he has a lover.

I call Mike but he just snorts. “I know where you won’t find him. He won’t be at Cavendish Enterprises on a Saturday.”

“Has he been showing up for work?” Our father gave Ethan a job at the company business before he died – actually, he gave Mike’s job to Ethan, the way I hear it, thus precipitating the entire argument that led to his heart attack and death.

“He flits through. I catch a glimpse of him maybe once a day.” He sighs. “Dierdre thinks I should fire him and be done with it, but that seems harsh.”

Dierdre is the office manager at Cavendish Enterprises, a smart organized woman old enough to be my mom who has a moral compass set in concrete. I like her. A lot.

“It would be harsh, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be right.”

“Repercussions, Jake. Ethan is all about getting even and we’ve both got enough to do.”

I’m reminded that I’ve been concentrating on the personal side of my dad’s legacy instead of Cavendish Enterprises, which is a legal entity in itself, of course, if one of his creation. It can rumble along until our October board meeting, I think. My father’s demise left the corporation to his three older sons, which means Mike and I have a controlling share. I’m avoiding the issue of Austin’s legacy, but I’ll get to Austin in time. I’d like to have an idea of what to offer him for his one-third share before initiating that discussion.

First, Ethan.