chapter
Twelve
We merged onto 121 and came to a halt before we’d gone half a mile. An orange sign on the shoulder read RIGHT LANE CLOSED AHEAD. In the distance, a huge flashing arrow obstructed our lane. Isaac heaved a dispassionate sigh and put on his turn signal. We scooted forward a foot or so at a time until someone waved him into the center lane. He lifted a hand in appreciation, inched over, and stopped again.
People were calling into the talk show coming through his speakers, but he’d reduced the sound, and with construction equipment tearing up asphalt just ahead, the voices were nothing but a low, unintelligible drone.
I picked at a nub on my skirt. “In case it hasn’t been obvious, I’m really sorry about this whole situation, which wouldn’t have happened if we’d followed procedure. You were right.”
He was silent so long I almost thought he was going to leave my apology lying there between us, but after two months of working for him, I’d learned he was seldom in a hurry to respond. Isaac Maat did not react. He did not sound off. He did not shoot from the hip—not without plenty of reflection. He’d only lost his temper once, over something that made total sense, and even then he’d been low-key. He thought things out, considered every point from various angles, before revealing his opinion. I wasn’t used to that kind of constraint. It drove me a little nuts.
“You’re used to getting your way, aren’t you?” He stared straight ahead, and his calm tone and composed profile gave no clue as to the level of disapproval he meant to convey. The question itself accomplished that, unaided by scowls or indignant discourse.
Of course the owner’s daughter is spoiled. Haven’t I been battling that perception from day one?
But I’d obliterated any gained ground when I discounted Isaac’s foresight about that wall and had his mandate dismissed. Because I had been so determined to play the hero to every client, and as the owner’s daughter, I could.
I could, so I had.
My defensiveness melted to expose the insecurity at the core of it. “I suppose I am. Why did you agree to hire me? Or were you even given a say?” Or did you say no but were overruled?
“The determination to hire you wasn’t my decision to make,” he said, hedging. We got past the roadwork, one lane opening to three and releasing frustrated drivers from the bottleneck like a provoked swarm. He moved to the center lane. “I was asked to supervise the position once it was created, and I consented.”
Consent was a funny word, with shades from coerced to enthusiastic. I couldn’t envision the latter as Isaac’s reaction to the thought of supervising the owner’s daughter.
“I remember you, my first day. Before we met. You were watching from the second floor when my father and I came in.” I thought about the tentative smile I’d given him—the one he’d snubbed. I hadn’t known why then; I’d had no idea who he was. “You looked dead opposite of someone who’d happily consented to my being there.”
He glanced at me and back at the road. “I said I agreed to oversee the position. I didn’t say anything about happily.” Before I could reply, he added, “You didn’t even have an informal interview, let alone the sort of thorough assessment and scrupulous vetting expected for such a direct, client-impacting position.” His jaw was tight, but his tone had a guilty ring to it.
“So interview me now.”
His mouth twisted in a smirk half-visible to me since his eyes were on the road. “Bit late now, don’t you think? Horse already out of the barn and all?”
I decided not to object to being inserted into a horse analogy. “Interviews go both ways, you know. I had no idea what I was getting into. Not really.”
“Poor you, forced to accept a professional job and competitive salary right out of school.” He shook his head. “All right then, tell me about your prior work experience.”
I sat straighter in my seat, as if it were perfectly normal to be interviewed in a car for a job I’d been doing for two months. “In college, I was a hostess for an Austin steakhouse. By the time I left, I’d been there three years and was the hospitality lead. I coordinated weekly scheduling for all the hosts and even sat in on interviews for new hires. When I turned in my notice, I recommended the best person to replace me. They took my suggestion, and I trained her myself the last month I was there.
“Before that, I worked at a funky little clothing shop downtown. I loved shopping there and thought it would be a cool place to work. I didn’t know the owner was an inept micromanager who thought every employee was out to steal merchandise or just loaf around. I hung on for four months, until I got written up for chatting with a friend who’d come in to shop. Her mom was neighbors with the head chef at Perry’s; that’s how I got the hostess interview. And in high school, I worked for Delia’s, a retail clothing chain.”
“I’m familiar, actually. My cousin worked for the one in Arlington during high school and college. You were in Southlake?”
“Yeah. It was a fun job. Grueling some days and boring others, but I liked my coworkers, and I loved the discount. Major perk, except I spent most of my paychecks there. We all did. Your cousin too, I guess.”
“Jasmine was paying her own car payment and saving for college as soon as she turned sixteen. Helping her mama out with bills here and there. She didn’t have much left over for shopping sprees.”
“Oh.” I kept making assumptions that turned out to be off base. I’d never imagined that people who were as educated as Isaac, as well dressed, well spoken, and driving a nearly new BMW had ever been less fortunate. “Were y’all close?”
Our eyes connected briefly. “Sure. We’re family.”
“Leo is family, and we are not close.”
I wasn’t sure that any of us were close. I felt a deep-rooted allegiance to them, which seemed to be the gist of what Isaac meant. But maybe it wasn’t. A teenager who contributed to household bills and expected to pay her own college tuition? Those were foreign concepts to me—responsibilities I couldn’t imagine within my own life, even though I knew people did it.
“Leo…” Isaac glanced at me, and we both laughed.
“Is an entitled tool and always has been. Please don’t judge me by him. I’m unimpressing you enough on my own.”
“I try to judge people on their own merits.”
Too bad for me that my actions had caused a very recent dumpster fire.
“So how did you reach a managerial position at an upscale restaurant? And you must have been part-time?”
“It was more of an honorary title. I think I made fifty cents more per hour.” Working at Perry’s felt like a million years ago, but it had only been three months since my last shift. “I was good at keeping reservations straight while handling walk-ins. Seating tables—grouping them for large parties and breaking them back into four-tops for parties of two to four—is like a puzzle. I prided myself on low wait times even on busy nights. When they asked if I’d be in charge of the hosting calendar, I agreed because it gave me the power to take whatever nights off I wanted.” I laughed. “I didn’t consider the fact that everyone else would come at me with their own schedule requests and would be pissed off if I said no.”
“I have to admit, I’m surprised.”
“That I was good at something or that I was so gullible?”
“That you worked in high school and college—something many of your peers don’t do.”
Ah. “Because rich kids don’t work?”
He shrugged. “That’s the sort of thing interviewers are discouraged from prying into.”
“True, but that doesn’t keep an interviewee from spilling her guts, especially when the interviewer is biased about her work history, or the fact that she has any work history, in this case.”
“Touché.”
He didn’t ask another question, so I elaborated.
“Growing up, Daddy told all of us—Leo and I have two middle brothers—that we might have a cushy life because of his money, but it was his money, and if we wanted to live high on the hog as adults, we would have to figure out how to earn it for ourselves.”
I didn’t share the fact that I only knew these instructions by heart because they’d been drilled into my brothers. My way of earning it had been geared toward socializing in the “right” circles and marrying well someday, even if that objective hadn’t been explicitly stated. My brothers’ attractiveness was never remarked on; my academics were never exclaimed or fretted over. Their jobs were encouraged to foster work experience; mine were for shopping money. One plus one equals two.
“So what’s your ‘high on the hog’ aspiration? Where do you see yourself in five years?”
I forced a small laugh. “I can’t believe you asked me such a clichéd interview question.” I hadn’t shared my goals or wishes with anyone in a long time. I wasn’t sure what he would think of them, and for some reason what he thought mattered. A lot.
“Are you avoiding answering me?” He arched a brow, making light of the turn the conversation had taken. But when his dark eyes found mine, they were wide and curious.
“Maybe.”
“Why?”
“Well. My future probably isn’t in construction.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
I scowled.
“Not because I want rid of you—”
“Really? Even after the Anderson issue?” I deepened my voice ominously, as though narrating an apocalyptic doomsday chronicle.
He rolled his eyes. “You made a mistake—albeit a monumental one—and you apologized.”
“Albeit? Who even says that? How old are you?”
“Age is definitely not an appropriate interview question, Ms. McIntyre.”
“I’m not the one conducting the interview, Mr. Maat. You can’t ask me how old I am. I don’t think the reverse is true.” I wasn’t sure why I needed to know. Just that I did. “I’m twenty-two.”
He was silent for half a minute, and for the dozenth time in this conversation, I was sure I’d pushed too far. And then: “Twenty-six.”
“Whoa. Really?”
“Yes, really.” His profiled brow lowered, but he didn’t turn to look at me. “Why does that surprise you?”
“I thought you were older. Mature. Set in your ways. Like, at least thirty.”
“I’m not thirty, and I’m not set in my ways.”
“So you say.”
He frowned and stared straight ahead, and I repressed a laugh. Isaac Maat didn’t like being called a stuffed shirt even though he so was one.
“Back to your non-construction five-year plan…”
For some reason, not telling him wasn’t an option, but I took a deep breath and prepared for a response somewhere between mild ridicule and derision. Isaac Maat wouldn’t dissemble. He would tell me what he really thought.
“I had hoped to be out of graduate school in five years.”
“Psychology?”
“How did you know that?”
“When you were hired, I was curious about your field of study—how your skills or training might fit the job description and the corporate culture at JMCH. I asked Hank, but he wasn’t certain of your degree. He said, ‘Something-ology, I think. Sociology? Anthropology? Psychology? Maybe Philosophy?’” Isaac’s vocal imitation was spot on.
I hid my face behind my hands and mumbled, “Oh, Uncle Hank.”
“I asked if you’d minored in business at least. He said he didn’t think so, which I confess I found alarming. But after you admitted to psychoanalyzing our clients and operating as if what you discussed with them was protected by doctor-patient privilege? I deduced that your degree was most likely in psychology.”
His Wharton degree, his vocabulary, and the meticulous reports he generated for Hank made his intelligence clear, but that was deductive reasoning on another level.
At the same time, I’d been ten feet away and one door down from him for forty hours per week. “Why didn’t you just ask me about my degree?”
He said nothing, and I waited, fighting the urge to fill the silence with follow-up questions or contentions like I mean, I was right there every day. And it wouldn’t have been weird for my supervisor to inquire about the degree I’d just earned. We even speak the same language. No need for interpreters or anything.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I should have done that. So graduate school—private practice, not research, I assume, based on your inability to stay out of people’s business?” He teased me about my innate nosiness, but he hadn’t said graduate school as though it were a pipe dream.
“Not private practice exactly. I wanted to do therapy work in a high school or a college counseling office.”
This earned me another look. “You said you had hoped to have completed grad school in five years. When do you plan to get started? Have you chosen a program path? Prospective schools?”
I all but squirmed in my seat. This was less like a job interview and more like How Much Fail at Life is Erin? “Not exactly.” Once upon a time, I’d had a list of prospective schools. Dream schools. Backup schools. Program comparisons. “I’m trying to be realistic about my future. Not that I ever spelled out detailed ambitions to my parents, but they freaked enough when I brought up graduate school.”
“Why?”
“They don’t think I’m capable of it. Mentally, or whatever.” I waved a hand as though I wasn’t affected by the knowledge that the sum total of their hopes and fears for me had nothing to do with my intellect, work ethic, or heart, and everything to do with the genetic gifts they’d bestowed. The ones that made me the perfect ornament for the family tree. The perfect decoration for someone’s arm and not much more. I wondered for the first time if that was my mother’s valuation of herself.
Isaac took the Montgomery exit and moved to the right lane behind a block of cars waiting for the light to change. This was one area of Fort Worth I was acquainted with—Mindi would be back in town in two weeks to begin her senior year at TCU, and we would meet for artisanal pizza at Fireside Pies or beer and greasy nachos at the Pour House. What had happened to her three years ago, and the fact that she’d turned to me for help and support, had been the impetus behind my career choice. She’d transferred schools twice and slowly rebuilt her life, and she’d sworn I had everything to do with that.
The light turned and he took a right, glanced at the map on his phone’s screen, and then turned into a small neighborhood of old, well-maintained houses. My father’s company built gated communities of lavish stone and brick mansions that would swallow any one of these cozy, eighty-year-old cottages with their pier-and-beam foundations, wood siding, shutters, and porch swings. Pecan, red oak, and magnolia trees curved over streets and towered above the quiet community of pretty dollhouses they shaded. Rosebushes and crepe myrtles bloomed everywhere, and vines of honeysuckle trailed along arched gates. Sidewalks invited strolls geared more toward woolgathering than exercise.
We parked in front of a tiny, one-story home, white with pink—pink!—shutters framing the two front windows. The vintage porch light was antique copper, as were the house numbers just beneath it. A letter box, painted like a bumblebee, was affixed below, as if it were buzzing around the large, flourishing pots of geraniums on either side of the front door.
The entire structure would have fit inside my parents’ garage, but I’d never been so enchanted by a house.
Isaac leaned forward to look out the passenger window. “The house is both home and studio. Tuli works in several different mediums, but her first love was outdoor murals, experimenting with plaster and concrete to add texture or create separate supporting pieces. She’s developed into an inventive genius when it comes to mixed media.”
“You’ve worked with Tuli before, then?” A tiny pinprick of jealousy took me by surprise.
He nodded without looking at me, as if considering whether to say more. I waited.
“When I was in high school, I started an anti-gentrification project that turned into a community outreach. A few local commercial backers began working with neighborhood associations and volunteers to repair and weatherize homes for owners who were elderly, disabled, or so impoverished that they were unable to afford to make repairs themselves.”
“Like Habitat for Humanity?”
He angled his head. “Sort of, but small, local, and all restoration and noncosmetic refurbishment to combat what investor-backed developers call blight, not the sort of ‘beautification’ that attracts too much outside interest. We focused on stabilizing neighborhoods by stabilizing homes and public areas, making them livable rather than doing trendy renos and adding landscaping, dog parks, bike lanes…”
“Things that attract chain stores and hipsters.” White, upwardly mobile hipsters who end up destroying the local culture they ostensibly seek. “And then higher property values and taxes force original residents out. Displacing them.”
“Yeah.”
If those comically arched brows were any indication, I’d surprised him again.
“My, uh, minor was sociology. You started an impressive project like that by yourself? As a teenager?”
“With a couple of friends—one of whom was Tuli. It was a senior project.” He grabbed his iPad from a seat pocket as we exited the car. “We graduated, I started at UTA, the other guy went off to OSU, and Tuli moved to Fort Worth to care for a terminally ill aunt, so we turned the project over to the community leaders and helped them manage it until they got the hang of rejecting the offers of assistance that come with strings attached—like developer money.”
“That’s so cool.”
“I’ve loaded the images of the wall, before and after, to my iPad,” he said, bringing us back to the purpose of our field trip. “If she says she can do something with it, then we’ll see what the Andersons think. If not, well, we’ll cross that bridge before we light it on fire, eh?”
We stepped onto the porch, where a colorful welcome mat instructed: WIPE YOUR PAWS.
“You trust her evaluation and artistic skill quite a bit.”
He nodded and pressed the doorbell, which produced a muffled tinkling of wind chimes inside the house. Even the doorbell was adorable. “I do.”
“Then I trust her too.” I wasn’t lying; I was completely disposed to trust his stupendously talented, artistic friend, who lived in the most precious house I’d ever seen.
But I’d never realized how like heartburn jealousy was. My throat burned with it. I swallowed and stuffed my heart back down where it belonged. But I couldn’t seem to help the malicious wish that formed in my head: Please don’t be cute. Please, please don’t be cute.