Family Merger

He’d certainly done that. He’d made the cover of several business magazines during the past year. The Charlotte Observer had run a feature article on him. “I won’t pretend to understand,” Kathryn said, looking at the rusted hulk of the trailer, “but everybody knows who you are now.”

“But they don’t accept me. I went to their schools and played touch football with them. I have the money, but I don’t have the pedigree. I don’t have the family history.”

Kathryn remembered how her friends made comments about people with less money, looks and sophistication. There had always been an unspoken barrier that separated them, that constantly reminded them they weren’t good enough. She’d never really stopped to think how that must have made them feel. Rather than discriminate against them, she should have admired them for having the courage to tackle and overcome obstacles she didn’t have to face. “Not all our families have a history I’d want.”

“It doesn’t have to be good. It just has to be well-known. Well, Cynthia’s going to have a history, even if it’s short.”

“Maybe she doesn’t want the same things you want.”

“Maybe not, but she doesn’t want to be a nobody.”

She felt sorry for him. His parents had died without giving him the love and acceptance he needed. His wife had died before he was much more than another Harvard MBA struggling to make a place for himself in the business world. Cynthia was too young to appreciate her father’s accomplishments. He had turned to the public to give him the feeling of acceptance and approval he couldn’t get anywhere else.

Her life hadn’t been perfect, but at least she had a family that loved her. Still, as much as she sympathized with Ron, she couldn’t lose sight of the fact her first concern was Cynthia. Ron was tough. He’d proved he could take care of himself. Cynthia had proved she couldn’t.

“Let’s go,” Ron said. “We’re conspicuous.”

Like a three-hundred-thousand-dollar car in a squalid trailer park wouldn’t be! He pulled to a stop at a boardwalk behind the fish camp that overlooked the lake. They got out. The breeze coming off the lake was refreshingly cool. It smelled of crisp water and honeysuckle.

“I used to watch the boats,” Ron said. “I’d try to imagine what it would be like to roar across the lake in one of those big boats without caring that my wake might capsize some little boat.”

“I always hated people who did that. Did you ever buy a boat?”

“Lake Norman is the place to be now. It wasn’t the same.”

Her father had bought a house at Lake Norman. He said Lake Wylie was for the middle class. “Did you do the other things you dreamed you’d do when you were finally successful?”

“I bought a house in the best neighborhood and sent my daughter to the best school in town. She has the best of everything.”

“What if she considers you the best of everything?”

“Cynthia knows I have to work, or we won’t have the money for all those things.”

“Maybe she doesn’t want them.”

“She would if she didn’t have them.”

“Maybe not so much.”

“Look, I can’t go to a company and say I’ll only do seventy-six thousand dollars worth of work because I need only seventy-six thousand dollars this year. They’d think I was a fool and hire someone else. I have to charge top dollar, or they won’t think I’m good enough to hire.”

“Even if it’s a million dollars?”

“You’re talking companies worth thirty, fifty, a hundred billion dollars. A million is pocket change to them. More than the cost, what’s important is the quality of the service, the expert personal attention to every detail. I have an office of fifteen full-time staff. That can double or triple depending on the job. Then there are bonuses and percentages. I have to get paid well. A lot of people depend on me.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that nothing can replace you in your daughter’s life.”

“Who do you think I’m doing all this for?”

He wasn’t getting the point. “Maybe you’ve reached the point where your success has isolated you from Cynthia.”

“I know it’s kept us apart more than I want, but I have to go where the work takes me.”

Now he was making excuses for doing what he wanted to do. She wouldn’t let him get away with that. “Every decision is yours to make one way or the other. Everything is a choice. Some of the choices you’ve made have hurt Cynthia.”

“I can’t help that.”

“Of course you can. It doesn’t matter that some decisions don’t work out the way you wanted or planned, they’re still your decisions and you’re still responsible for the results, for seeing that something is going wrong and doing something about it.”

She wondered what was going on in his mind as he stared out over the lake. Was he remembering his parents and his childhood here, his progression from school to school, or was he thinking of his wife and daughter? She wondered if his career left him time to think of anything else.

She wondered why he hadn’t remarried.

He was relatively young—the Observer article said he was forty—handsome and rich, characteristics that would make him the target of beautiful women the world over. Add to that intelligence, a vibrant personality, excellent taste in clothes and cars, and you had a catch of the first order. She was certain he wasn’t immune to women. She’d seen the way he looked at her.

Yet for some reason, she didn’t think he’d spent the last ten years traipsing through available bedrooms on both sides of the Atlantic. She had no knowledge of his personal life, but the articles she read failed to mention a constant companion. Even business articles these days rarely overlooked such interesting facts.

“Erin encouraged me to put my career first,” he said without turning away from the lake. “She didn’t want a family to hold me back. She said she would take care of things I forgot or was too busy to do. She wanted me to be successful.”

Kathryn remembered reading that Erin Egan had died of ovarian cancer.

“After she died I worked even harder. I felt guilty because I hadn’t achieved the success she desperately wanted for Cynthia, for all the other children we planned to have. She said we had to sacrifice in the beginning to get where we wanted to be in the end.”

Kathryn wondered if he was still so much in love with his wife he was still living his life for her.

He turned his gaze from the lake to her. “I’m not going to pretend I did everything for Erin, but we were like partners, each willing to do our part.”

“Do you miss her?”

“Yes.”

His smile seemed bleak, in contrast to the glorious spring day filled with sunshine.

“We were friends bound together by a mutual goal. I think that brought us closer than passion could. When she died, I was left to carry on alone. I realize now I should have known I had to reassess, but I thought Cynthia was too young to need me. I planned to work hard then so I could take some time off when she grew up. I guess I got too busy to realize the situation had changed.”

“She always needed you,” Kathryn said. “She just couldn’t tell you how much.”

“What can a grown man do with a little girl?”

“Love her.”

“I did love her.”

“I’m sure you did, but in a child’s eyes, love means being there, holding her hand, playing with her, telling her stories and kissing her good-night. Your physical presence counts far more than what you say.”

He turned back to the water. “So you’re saying I’m a failure as a father.”

Was she? She certainly considered her own father a failure, but she hesitated to make the same decision about Ron. If he hadn’t loved his daughter, he wouldn’t have left his meeting in Geneva. She didn’t know much about big business, but she did know people at his level weren’t expected to let anything interfere with their work. There was always somebody willing to make whatever sacrifice was necessary to reach the top. She wondered what his coming home would cost him.