Tell My Sorrows to the Stones Page 9

  “I was. Still a little tired, that’s all.”

  She kissed his cheek. “Dinner’ll be ready in a little while. You should get Jake in here, get him into something dry.”

  Tommy nodded. He took a sip of beer and set the bottle down on the kitchen table, then went out into the backyard.

  “Daddy!” Jake called, racing toward him.

  Once, Tommy might have caught him and dangled the boy away from him to keep from getting wet. Not now. He let Jake jump up into his arms and hugged the boy to him. His son wrapped his legs around him, soaking his shirt. Tommy actually laughed.

  “Sorry, Katie,” he told the girl. “Jake’s gotta come in for dinner now.”

  “Can he come out after?” she asked, all wide eyes.

  “Sure,” Tommy said. “Why don’t you run on home and we’ll see you in a bit. I think Jake’s mom is gonna make brownies tonight.”

  Katie took off across the backyard toward her parents’ deck, arms out as though she was playing airplane. Tommy set Jake down and shut off the sprinkler, then stood and looked again at his son.

  “Mom wants you to put something dry on.”

  Jake smiled, pointing at him. “She’s going to want you to put something dry on, too.”

  “No doubt,” Tommy said. “C’mere, bud.”

  He hoisted the boy up again and went up to the screen door, letting them inside. Melissa had been watching from the kitchen window, a wistful look on her face.

  “Dry clothes, Jakey,” she said.

  “I can do it! I’ll get ’em!” the boy said, reaching to be put down.

  Tommy let him down and Jake tore through into the living room and then they heard him bounding up the stairs. He’d kick his clothes off onto the carpet of his bedroom and put dry clothes on, but that was all right. They’d pick the dirty clothes up later.

  Melissa slipped her arms around Tommy and pushed up close. He liked her there, where he could smell her hair and trace his hands along the small of her back.

  “It’s been so good for him, having you home for a while,” she said, her breath warm on his neck. “It’s been good for you, too.”

  “Yeah,” he said. And that was all.

  There were so many thoughts he might have shared with her, but Tommy had never been that kind of man. In that, he took after his father. He would have felt like a fool trying to explain to Melissa that the time he spent with Jake seemed to make it easier to deal with his father’s death, and to make it harder as well. But he wanted every moment he could have with them, there at home, because the doctor had been clear about his prognosis. Another week, two at the most, and he’d have to go back to work.

  He’d have to go back down into the mine.

  Jake came down the stairs and pranced into the kitchen to show off the t-shirt and shorts he’d put on. The shirt was on backwards, but Tommy didn’t mention it. The kid was so damned proud of himself.

  The t-shirt had a bunch of trucks on it. Jake loved building things and even at five, thought the coolest job in the world had to be making bridges and skyscrapers. “I want to build a whole city,” he’d said once, not long ago.

  “Good job, buddy,” Tommy said.

  “Dinner!” Jake commanded, slipping into his seat at the table and picking up his fork and knife, ready to eat.

  “Yes, your majesty. Coming right up,” Melissa said, rolling her eyes with a soft chuckle.

  “Then brownies!” Jakey cried.

  “But of course.”

  Tommy had to control the temptation to talk about the trucks on Jake’s shirt, one of which was a crane. Melissa had already pointed out how much he’d been harping the past couple of weeks on the construction thing. Jake was only five, she’d said. He’d change his mind almost daily about what he wanted to be when he grew up. Tommy had told her that all he wanted was to make sure Jake went to college. No one in his family had ever been to college.

  College, somewhere away from West Virginia. Away from the mine.

  He wanted his son to grow up to get a job doing something he loved, something that would make him happy. Hopefully. But if not, Tommy wanted Jake to do something he hated. Anything, really, except following in Daddy’s footsteps. Anything except the mine.

  But college cost a lot of money. Nobody in the Betts family had ever gotten that kind of education. Hell, Tommy was the first one to finish high school. They were a mining family, like so many others in the area. The odds were against them, and against Jake finding a different sort of life for himself.

  And so tonight, before bed, Tommy would tell Jake the first of the stories. Oh, he’d been telling his son stories almost every night, the past couple of months. All kinds of stories. But as of tonight, he would from time to time include tales of the ghost of a lost miner named Ostergaard. He would tell them as best he could, make them as real as possible. It wouldn’t be difficult. Jake loved ghost stories. But Tommy had to make absolutely certain that his son believed.

  Just in case.

  THE ART OF THE DEAL

  Craig met the negotiator away from the office like it was some clandestine afternoon fuck, the really dirty kind when you can’t even meet the eyes of people on the street because you think they’ll be able to tell. There would be no torrid sex during his rendezvous, but someone was certainly going to get screwed. Eighty-seven someones, actually.

  The Hotel Atheneum was a grand old dame, as they used to say in an age when the common man still understood what it meant to venerate beauty and high achievement. It stood a block from the Boston Public Library, just at the edge of Copley Square, some of the trendiest real estate in the city. To Craig it was nothing more than neutral territory. The negotiator from IllumiNet had wanted the meet to take place at their lawyers’ office at One International Place. Craig’s own attorney had suggested IllumiNet send their people out to Cambridge, thinking that they would benefit from home field advantage.

  But that was impossible. Craig hadn’t told his employees about the buyout yet. New England Electrical Safety Systems had been in his family for forty-two years. Half a dozen of his staff were second generation at NEESS and others had been there almost as long as Craig had been alive. His father had brought him into the offices as a kid and these folks had been his extended family.

  So much for loyalty, he thought as he pushed through the revolving door and stepped into the hotel. He glanced around, taking it all in. The chandeliers, the polished wood and brass, the strategically placed plants. At the grand piano in the corner an attractive brunette woman played an old Billy Joel song.

  He froze a moment. His face flushed warmly and bile rose in the back of his throat. Turn around, Craig. Just turn around and walk out. You don’t have to do this.

  But he did. NEESS had suffered its worst year ever. The industry was consolidating and he either had to let the company be merged into one of the bigger players or shut the doors completely. Craig had done everything he could, but they’d been hemorrhaging money for years. He had made a promise, once upon a time, that as CEO he would not take a salary higher than the best paid of his employees and he had kept that promise, no matter how much it had cost him.

  His marriage, for instance.

  Guilt and humiliation pinned him to the spot, there in the lobby of the Atheneum. The comparison to the covert assignations of a cheating spouse rose up in his mind again and nausea roiled in his gut. Hannah had been the one to cheat on him, not the other way around. She was the one engaging in sweaty hotel sex. Craig’s reward for fidelity was obscenely high alimony.

  Your Honor, the amount in question is fully three quarters of Mr. Spencer’s annual after-tax earnings. Are you penalizing the one person in this marriage who respected the vows they both made?

  Craig had just sat there with his mouth agape. The numbers were burned into his brain but he had been thinking he had misheard right up until the judge had fixed him with as disdain
ful a glance as Craig had ever witnessed.

  Mrs. Spencer’s counsel has made a convincing argument that as the owner and chief executive officer of his company, he is entitled to a far greater salary than he currently draws. Perhaps this is some outmoded sense of equity, but I’m inclined to believe the assertion that it is an attempt to elicit from this court an alimony payment far lower than Mrs. Spencer should rightfully expect.

  That had done him in. Craig had kept the company afloat during very dark times, had somehow managed to make it all work. In the wake of Hannah’s betrayal, he had given all his love to the job and used NEESS as his lifeline, putting all of his energies there. All his life he had tried to be a fair man, to provide for his family and his employees. Then the Commonwealth of Massachusetts had decreed that he was a sap. A sucker. Loyalty and equity were outmoded.

  Craig Spencer had inherited some integrity and principal from his father, some sense of people’s dignity. Somehow in the morass of cynicism the world had become, he’d held on to it. And they crucified him for it.

  Enough was enough. He had done all he could. At least this way, some of his employees would retain their jobs after the merger. He had no choice. It was the right thing to do.

  So what are you doing standing in the lobby looking like a fool, ready to puke on your shoes?

  “Mr. Spencer?”

  Somehow, in the buzz of voices and dinging of elevators that filled the lobby, the negotiator had managed to walk up on him unheard. The man had a name, but Craig never liked to use it, for it ascribed to him a humanity that he had clearly abandoned a very long time ago. He was a crusher of hope. A killer of dreams. All wrapped up in a mask of kindly concern and rationality.

  “Hello,” Craig said, voice sounding hollow even to himself. His hand felt numb as he held it out to shake. “Thank you for agreeing to meet here.”

  “Whatever you need to make you feel as comfortable as possible,” said the negotiator. He showed his too-white teeth in a shark smile, eyes sparkling with amusement disguised as genuine sympathy. His hair had a scatter of silver in amongst the dark and was cut short. Very now. Yet his face was young and cut and handsome, so much so that if Craig didn’t know any better—and really, he didn’t, did he?—he would have suspected the negotiator of adding those little flecks of silver to his hair to earn some of the respect that came with age.

  The man took him by the arm and propelled him toward the hotel bar. Like a somnambulist, Craig shuffled along. There were only a handful of people in the bar and for that he was grateful. Glasses clinked as the bartender racked clean ones behind the counter. The lights were low and the sunlight seemed disinclined to come very far into the bar, as though it hesitated to disrupt the gloom. The negotiator chose well, leading Craig to a corner table at the far end of the bar, the very spot he would have picked himself, hiding in shame.

  What he had not expected was that they would not be alone. Already at the table was a woman in a red dress. She stood as they approached and Craig did his best to hide the instant reaction he had to her. It was all he could do not to mutter ‘whoa’ under his breath. Tall and thin, she had Asian features and shoulder-length, stylish black hair that shone like silk in the dim glow of the bar. Her smile was knowingly sultry and suddenly his cock had a pulse. All the fucking luck. He’d barely had any interest in sex since Hannah had emasculated him in court. Now wasn’t the time.

  “Craig, let me introduce you to my wife, Anita. Honey, Craig’s the gentleman I was telling you about, from NEESS.”

  So interested, Anita nodded and held out a hand to shake. “Right. The family business. My husband’s told me a lot about the deal you two have going on. What you’ve been able to do for your employees is pretty amazing, Craig. They don’t make men like you anymore.”

  California girl, from the way she spoke. He ought to have been appalled by her presumptuousness. What was she doing talking about the deal anyway. As far as Craig knew she didn’t even work for IllumiNet. The negotiator shouldn’t even have been discussing the situation with her until the deal was done. That was how whispers started. And Craig didn’t want any whispers. Not until it was over and then he would face the anger and disappointment from his people all on his own.

  Sure, he ought to have been appalled. It was just the sort of bullshit sucking up that the negotiator always dropped into their conversations and that Craig despised. But Anita’s eyes were so kind and her expression so genuine that he felt a swelling of righteous pride in his heart. His father had been a good man. The kind of man you just didn’t find in the world anymore. An outmoded man. And Craig was happy to think even for a moment that he might measure up.

  Whatever it had cost him.

  After all, they didn’t make men like him anymore. Ask Anita. He smiled at her.

  “That’s very kind of you, Anita,” he said. “I’ve always tried to follow my father’s example. To do my best for the people who work for me.”

  As the three of them sat down, the negotiator signalled to the waiter. Meanwhile, Anita’s attention was on Craig. She gazed at him with those brown eyes, so filled with understanding.

  “But the world is changing,” she said, nodding sadly. “The way we do business is changing. No one man can do it all these days. It’s all about alliances.”

  “That’s it exactly, sweetheart,” the negotiator said. He focused his shark smile on Craig. “She has a way of getting right to the heart of things, doesn’t she? It’s her magic.”

  Craig nodded out of courtesy but the moment the bastard had spoken up he felt uneasy again. Where was the small talk? Where was the polite, happy bullshit they were supposed to start with? Nothing about this meeting was turning out the way he had expected. He didn’t want to be here. Not at all. Circumstances were forcing his hand. He had held fate off for as long as he could, and the negotiator and his employers knew that. But the least the fucking guy could do was let him work up to it slowly.

  “Listen,” Craig began.

  But his train of thought was interrupted by the arrival of the waiter, asking what they would like to drink.

  “I don’t think I—”

  “Go on, Craig. One won’t kill you. Sometimes it helps to have a glass in your hand when you’re hashing out the final details.” The negotiator glanced at his wife.

  “Well, while you boys decide, I’m going to have a Manhattan,” Anita said, flashing a radiant smile at the waiter and tucking a lock of that silken hair behind her ear. “It’s an old-fashioned drink, I know, but I’m an old-fashioned girl.”

  “Craig?” the negotiator prodded him, waiting to see what he would order.

  “Seven and Seven,” Craig said at last.

  Anita gave him an approving smile. “There you go. You won’t be sorry.”

  And that was the beginning. The negotiator took the departure of the waiter as his opening and the business began. No more preamble than that. Craig figured his idea of foreplay with Anita was a slap on the ass. The cosmic wrongness of it all was not lost on him. As the negotiator went over the points that still needed to be addressed—mainly having to do with how many NEESS employees would lose their jobs and how many shares of IllumiNet stock Craig would take away from the deal—he marvelled at how a woman of such obvious intelligence and integrity could be married to such a shark. The negotiator must have made her a hell of a pitch.

  The waiter came with a second round and as Craig sipped his Seven and Seven, Anita seemed more and more to lure the two men off into conversational tangents that had nothing to do with business. NEESS was in Cambridge, and she wanted to talk about Harvard Square, and a quaint little restaurant she’d been to there. Somehow the talk shifted to art, and then she really came alive.

  The negotiator kept pulling them back to business, but Craig would much rather listen to Anita talk about art. Her eyes lit up and she spoke with such fire that she made the subject fascinating, though his own interest in art w
as only a fraction of hers. The passion in her made her even more beautiful. He was aware during the conversation that Anita was another man’s wife and so he tried to keep up a façade of detached curiosity. But more and more he watched her lips as she spoke and admired the curve of her neck, where he wanted desperately to kiss her.

  “Look,” he said, standing suddenly even as the waiter delivered his third drink, unasked. “I’ve got to go. I’m . . . I need a night to sleep on all of this. You’re talking about less than a quarter of my employees keeping their jobs. I was led to believe the number would be much higher than that. These people are depending on me and . . .

  I just . . . I’ll call you in the morning. I’ll come to you.”

  The negotiator was startled and a flash of annoyance swept his face, revealing too-sharp teeth, completing the shark-allusion. “Hey, hey, Craig. What’s the problem? You knew all of these deal points before you got here. We went over everything with your lawyer this morning. It’s really a formality, now. I sent a messenger over to your lawyer’s office with the paperwork. You’re going to meet with him later, right?”

  Craig understood the question. The meeting really had been just a formality, an opportunity for him to ask last-minute questions. He was supposed to go straight to his lawyer’s office from here and sign the papers.

  “I’ll . . . look, I’ll call you in the morning.”

  He turned to Anita. “I’m sorry to leave so abruptly. It was a pleasure meeting you.”

  “And you,” she said, her eyes full of concern. “Don’t worry. My husband has a job to do, but you have to do things in your own time.”

  The negotiator seared her with a look. Craig smiled at Anita, pleased that she had annoyed her husband on his behalf.

  “Thank you.”

  That night as the clock ticked toward eight P.M., Craig sat at his desk staring out the window at the lights of Cambridge dotting the darkness. He could not bring himself to go home. The truth was that since his divorce, and perhaps even before it, this was home. This chair, this desk, this place. This company had raised him, in its way. In these halls he had grown from boy to man, with dozens of aunts and uncles to help guide him, from Sam Small in the mailroom to Debbie Tyll in the typing pool.