An Unfinished Story(19)

If only that insouciance had rubbed off on him. If he looked back, maybe it had, but years of fighting an artist’s battles had made him start to overthink things and worry too much.

Do?a Quixote looked down at the present in his hand. “Do I need to inspect it? No more fireworks, right? And you know Miles can’t have dairy.”

Whitaker sipped the beer someone had handed him. “No dairy. No gunpowder.” She didn’t say a word about anything sharp.

Sadie moved in and whispered into his ear. “Be nice to your father. He wants to talk to you about something.”

“What did I do now?”

“Nothing, honey. Just hear him out.”

What in the world could that mean? Whitaker wondered.

When he finally ran into his dad, Whitaker’s clenched teeth compromised his fake smile. He could feel the rest of his family watching this encounter, as if Whitaker were part of a bomb squad approaching a man in a suicide vest. Or was Whitaker the one in the vest?

Both men were known to fly off the handle. The last time they’d been together, Whitaker had unleashed a rant that had cut to the core of his father. Though he thought the man deserved his fair share of harsh words, even Whitaker knew he’d stepped over the line, and he’d even gone as far as apologizing the next day. Somewhere down there, deep into the sludge, his father was a good man. It was a lot of sludge, though. Epic quantities of thick, PTSD-riddled sludge.

Jack stood two inches shorter than Whitaker, but he always looked down on him. Even if Jack were four feet tall, he’d still look down on his son. Though he’d been as strapping as Whitaker in his early years, according to Sadie, Jack had aged rapidly after the war. He had lost most of his hair and walked with a slight limp from a helicopter crash in the Mekong Delta. The hardhead that he was, he refused to use a cane. When the army had shipped him home from Saigon with his broken leg, he’d also brought back an unknown stomach worm that ran his immune system into the ground and nearly killed him.

Though the man had some rough edges, he’d been a good father. Perhaps overly stern, but certainly better than many others out there.

Staff Sergeant Jack Grant reached up and tugged at Whitaker’s longish hair. His mane was by no means of ponytail length, but he’d let it go wild since the divorce. “I’d forgotten I had another daughter. Should I call you Whitney? You haven’t seen your brother, have you?”

“Off to a good start, aren’t you?” Whitaker said. “I’d forgotten where my humor came from.”

Jack adjusted his VIETNAM VET hat. “Just pulling your chain, son.” He offered a hand, and the men shook.

“Mom says you want to talk about something?”

Jack looked around and nodded. “Why don’t we talk on the boat?”

Before he could say no, Whitaker found himself following his limping father around the side of the house. The landscaping could have won awards. They entered the backyard through a white vinyl gate, passed the saltwater pool, and walked down the short dock to Jack’s pride and joy, a forty-one-foot Regulator sport fisher with four 425 engines hanging off the transom. Climbing aboard, Whitaker took a seat on the bow, and his father dug two cold beers out of the cooler.

He tossed one to Whitaker. “Finally got our first sailfish of the year yesterday.”

Catching the can, Whitaker said, “Nice.”

“She was a big one. Almost worth mounting. Pulled in a couple hog snappers too. It’s that time of year.”

Whitaker hated talking about fishing with his dad. Though he’d inherited his father’s sense of humor, he’d not acquired his father’s love of fishing. In fact, much to Jack’s disappointment, Whitaker was prone to seasickness and had only once dared to go deep-sea fishing with Jack. With his father’s Poseidon eyes on him, Whitaker had spent the majority of the day heaving over the rail.

Jack took a seat on the bow cushion across from Whitaker and cracked open his own beer. “I’ve been thinking.” He paused, waving at a stand-up paddleboarder cutting through the channel.

“That’s good to hear, Dad. I was worried you were going senile.”

“No, the hamster’s still spinning the wheel up there. At least for now.” Jack smiled, confirmation that somewhere deep within his father’s grim reaper shell was the slightest bit of light. What was funny and sad at the same time was that little light was what Whitaker wanted most in the world. To see that light, to feel a bit of love and approval from his father, was up there or even beyond the importance of writing another book.

They both watched a sailboat maneuver the narrow inlet and then Jack asked, “What would you think about coming to work for me?”

There it was. Forty years in the making. Between the grind of managing construction workers and the potential agony of working for Jack Grant, Whitaker and his other siblings had never taken to the idea.

Jack looked proud, like he’d just offered Whitaker a kidney. “I want one of you to take over this business, and I think you have what it takes. You’d have to learn a lot, and I’d make you work from the ground up. But I’d pay you well . . . and you’d take over the company one day. There’s a lot of money to be had.”

Whitaker considered the best way to say no. But he wasn’t very good at walking on eggshells. “I’d rather you sell the company and leave me some money.”