Worthy Opponents(14)

“Hi, Mom,” he said easily. “You’re working late.” He got on well with his parents and had always hoped to have the same kind of relationship with his own children. He enjoyed spending time with his kids, but he was always being painted as the bad-guy absentee father at home, which didn’t help. And he missed them now that they were gone.

“We’ve got a million orders to fill, and our computers were down for three hours today. I’ll be here all night,” Beverly explained.

“You work too hard.” But he had a feeling it kept her young. “I have a crazy question to ask you. Have you ever heard of a store called Brooke’s? It’s somewhere downtown in a dicey neighborhood.”

“Oh my God. I haven’t been there in years. My grandmother took me there when I was a young girl. She bought a beautiful hat. They had a full custom millinery department. That was years ago. I haven’t thought of it in ages, and I haven’t been there since. Years ago, I couldn’t afford it, and now I just shop online. It’s easier, at least that’s what I tell our customers. Are you buying it? It used to be owned by a very elegant older man. He stopped to say hello to my grandmother, and he was very charming. I still remember him. He must be dead by now. They must have sold the store.”

“Apparently not. The researcher who mentioned it to me says it’s family-owned. Apparently, it’s still in the same place. His son must be running it.”

“It’s a very special store,” his mother said, remembering it. “I can’t believe it’s still there. I had forgotten all about it. What would you do with it?”

“Probably nothing. It sounds too small-scale and specialized for us. Something one-of-a-kind like that is too limited. Low-cost, high-volume is a better opportunity,” which Beverly knew too, as she had been an econ major in college. “Renee in my office thinks we should invest in it, move it uptown, make it bigger, and open branches across the U.S. Too big a project for too little return,” he said simply. “But I was curious about it. She said the same thing as you, that it’s a very special place.”

“It was.” Beverly Weston sounded nostalgic, and Mike smiled.

“I’ll have to stop by sometime. Don’t work too hard, Mom. I’ll call you for dinner with you and Dad next week.” Maureen had never warmed to his parents, which had always bothered him. Hers were much fancier, and her father had built a new fortune on old money. Mike’s parents had started from nothing and were simpler people. Maureen’s father had respected that. She and her mother never did.

“We’re going to Palm Beach for the week. Your father says we need a vacation. Maybe he does, but I don’t see how I’m going to get away,” Beverly told her son, sounding distracted.

“It’ll do you good too. You both work hard.” He hung up a few minutes later. He always admired his mother and the huge success she had made of her small company. It was mammoth now, and she still kept an eye on everything. He came by his work ethic honestly. Both his parents worked diligently. He was glad they were going on vacation. He wouldn’t have minded a week in Palm Beach himself, but he didn’t have time. He had meetings booked solidly for the next three weeks, and more to do after that. There were always exciting new developments in his business.

Maureen was out when he got home that night. She didn’t leave a note. She never did. If she was out, she was out. It didn’t matter where. They rarely ate dinner together, except on an impromptu occasion when they met in the kitchen, foraging for something to eat. She didn’t like making dinner plans with him, because she said he was always late, or canceled at the last minute if something came up, which happened more often than not, some conference call from another time zone that he wanted to take at the office.

Mike found some cold chicken in the fridge and made a salad to go with it. He ate at the kitchen table, and answered some emails and texts afterwards, and then looked at his watch. It was still early in California, and he decided to call Jenny, his daughter. He hadn’t spoken to her in three days. She loved her college life at Stanford, the classes she was taking, and the friends she had made there.

Jenny answered as soon as she saw Mike’s name come up.

“Hi, Dad. I was just thinking about you. I was going to call you later. I figured you might still be at work.” It was nine o’clock in New York, which said a lot about his habits.

“I’m home. How’s life in the Wild West?” She smiled. She loved talking to her father. He had been busy a lot of the time when she was growing up, but she admired his work ethic and his success, despite what her mother said about him, that he didn’t care about anyone but himself, and that his family meant nothing to him. She hated it when her mother said things like that about him. It had put a wedge in her relationship with her mother, much more than with her father. She was his staunchest defender, which made her mother even angrier at Jennifer and her father. She wanted the kids to be as angry as she was and support her position.

“It’s not so wild,” she answered him. “I’ve been in the library all week.”

“Trying to meet guys, or studying?” he teased her. She was a diligent student and had graduated from high school at the top of her class with honors. She took after him, and he knew she’d be a fine lawyer one day. He might even hire her to work for him.