I Married a Billionaire: The Prodigal Son (Contemporary Romance) (11 page)

Well, I supposed
that
might be the pregnancy talking.

Really, though, for all intents and purposes, I didn’t feel like a mom-to-be. Other than forgoing my glasses of wine in the evening, I hadn’t changed a single thing. I knew I’d have to make some pretty big adjustments before long, but at the moment it sort of felt like some strange hypothetical game. Or that health class assignment in high school where you have to carry around a bag of flour for a week and pretend it’s a baby.

I knew it was real, and I knew it was serious. But I suppose my brain was trying to take things one small, manageable bite at a time. And considering I hadn’t even seriously though about having a family until the charity dinner, I thought I was handling it pretty well.

Daniel was, to my immense relief, not becoming ridiculously clingy or over-protective as time passed. Not that I thought he would, exactly. But it was still nice to know I could continue living my life without him hovering.

Finally, one morning, I took my opportunity to begin an actual conversation.

“How are you feeling?” he said, the same as every morning these days.

“Fine,” I said. “How about you?”

He eyed me over the rim of his coffee mug. “…fine?” he replied, not sounding terribly convincing.

“Really?” was my only response.

He sighed, setting down his mug. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “And the answer is, I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m going to see him again.”

“It wasn’t…” I knew I had to approach this carefully. “It wasn’t…terrible, was it?”

“It wasn’t
terrible
,” Daniel agreed. “Certainly. He could have been outright hostile. Instead, he was just condescending as usual.”

“Well,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say. He was right. Walter gave me the distinct impression of looking down his nose at us.

“He thinks it’s all right for him to be patronizing, because he’s my father.” Daniel’s mouth twisted into a sort of bitter half-smile. “Do you know, one time when I told him to stop patronizing me, he proceeded to give me a lesson about the root of the word? Yes - I know it literally means ‘to act like a father,’ but that isn’t an excuse for treating adults like children who don’t know any better. He just thinks it is. And nobody’s ever going to convince him otherwise, so it’s not even worth trying.”

I couldn’t keep myself from laughing. “I’m sorry,” I said, as Daniel looked at me askance. “I just, I can’t imagine anything more patronizing than someone explaining the definition of the word ‘patronizing’ to someone who just accused them of being exactly that. It’s like he somehow made the concept of patronizing crawl up its own ass.”

“Yes,” said Daniel, letting himself laugh a little bit. “Yes - that’s exactly it. That’s my father in a nutshell.”

I drummed my fingers on the table. “Well, you know, I think…” I didn’t know what I thought, actually.

“I have to go to work.” Daniel cut me off mid-thought, snatching his keys off of the coat rack and heading for the door. “By all means, if you come up with a way to make him less insufferable, let me know.”

***

“Didn’t you tell them you’d have the biography done by the end of the year?” I said one evening, over dinner.

I could tell by the expression on his face that he’d completely forgotten. “Yes,” he said, evenly. “Yes, I did.”

“I think maybe we should get back to work,” I said. “We can skip over all the childhood stuff for now, if you’d rather not talk about it.”

Daniel took in a sharp breath through his nose. This, I knew, was always a prelude to something important. “I was actually thinking,” he said, “maybe it would be useful to talk to my father for the book.”

I looked at him skeptically.

“Don’t you think so?” he said, mildly, as if the last conversation we’d had about it hadn’t ended the way it did. I’d been left with the distinct impression he’d rather jam a pencil in his eye than talk to his dad again.

“I guess, sure,” I said. “If you…I mean, if that’s what you really want.”

“You certainly don’t have to,” he said.

I shifted in my seat. “No, it’s fine,” I said. “I like that idea, actually.”

He smiled. “If he gets insufferable, don’t hesitate to tell him to fuck off.”

“I’m definitely not going to do that,” I replied. “But it’s nice to know I have your blessing.”

***

“I don’t know how much I’ll be able to help you,” Walter was saying, as he sat down on the sofa. “But I guess I’m honored.”

I smiled, opening my notebook. “I just thought it might be interesting to get a different perspective on Daniel,” I said. “Especially his formative years.”

Walter shrugged. “He was a pretty normal kid.”

I surveyed the man in front of me. It was absolutely eerie to look at him; like a strange vision of an alternate future, where Daniel suddenly decided to start talking like a normal person instead of someone giving a dissertation.

“Normal,” I said. “How do you define normal exactly?”

Walter shrugged again. I had a feeling that a pattern was developing. “You know, just, more or less what you expect a kid to be. He wasn’t as, uh…he wasn’t as driven as his sister.” He looked slightly…not
uncomfortable
, exactly, but something. I couldn’t quite identify it.

“Normal,” I repeated.

“Sure,” said Walter. “Normal. I know he doesn’t really think of himself that way. And I guess he did get less normal as he got older. I just mean there wasn’t anything particularly remarkable about him, at least not then.”

“Was there ever?” I twirled the pen around in my fingers. “Was there ever a moment when it hit you, ‘there’s something special about this kid?’”

Walter smiled, hesitantly. “It’s going to reflect pretty badly on me if I say no, isn’t it?”

I met his eyes. “Just be honest, Walter.”

“Being perfectly honest?” He uncrossed and re-crossed his legs in the other direction. “No. I mean, everybody hopes - you know. Everybody wants their kid to be something special. But honestly, I had no idea. Even when he was in college, and he started trying to explain all those gizmos and gadgets to me. Everything he was working on that eventually turned into such a big deal. It all sounded like total bullshit to me. Excuse me.” He paused, seeming to suddenly remember where he was.

I waved my hand dismissively.

“I still don’t really get it. My fear for him, always, which I think he took as some kind of…I don’t know, resentment, was that the bottom would fall out. All these new systems and machines, they don’t make any sense to me and it never did. That really irritated him. He wanted me to just go along with it, I guess, but how could I? I didn’t understand it.”

He was looking at me like he wanted an actual answer.

“I don’t know.” I swallowed, thickly, suddenly feeling very nervous. If I said anything to Walter that Daniel didn’t like, I could potentially make their relationship even worse than it already was. Which would be quite an accomplishment.

“Well, what was I supposed to do?” Walter demanded, with a slightly raised voice. “I’m not a geek like him.” Suddenly, he switched gears and stared at me. “Don’t you write that,” he snapped, pointing at my notepad. “Don’t you tell him I said that.”

I didn’t answer. “I think maybe, at a certain point, he just wanted you to accept that he knew what he was doing, even if you didn’t understand it. He wanted you to trust him.” I took a deep breath. “To respect him, really.”

Walter gave me a look that I’d seen on my own father’s face one too many times. “Respect him? He’s my
son
.”

“Not everyone feels that way,” I said, amazed at my ability to stay calm. “This is pretty far off-track of what I’m trying to accomplish here, but if you want my advice, you could try apologizing to him for the ways that he feels you undermined him.”

“
Apologize
.” Walter’s forehead creased. “I don’t owe him any apologies. I always did the best I could for him.”

“All right,” I said. “Forget I mentioned it.”

“I don’t mean to be rude, Madeline, but I’ve known this boy for longer than you’ve been alive. I can figure out how to deal with him on my own.”

“This boy,” I repeated, softly.

“Don’t read into that,” he commanded.

“I’m sorry,” I said, not sorry at all. “You just seemed confused about the way he feels. I was trying to give you some helpful information.”

“
He’s
confused about the way he feels,” Walter shot back. “He doesn’t want to think of himself as ‘normal’ because that’s the kiss of death, as far as he’s concerned. But he can’t brag either. He can’t go around saying he’s better than everyone, because he knows that’s how you get cut down. So he does this instead. He calls himself strange or awkward or eccentric or whatever, and it’s this coded language for
I’m better than you but I’m going to say it, I’m going to make
you
say it.
It always bugged the hell out of me when he was a kid, and it only got worse when he was a teenager. By the time he went off to college, honestly, it was a relief to get away from that.” His eyes narrowed. “I’m sure he felt the same way about me.”

“Sounds like a personality clash,” I said.

“He was just disrespectful,” Walter replied, disdainfully. “Personality clash, my ass.”

“That’s an interesting word choice,” I said. I couldn’t help myself, as much as I’d walked into this hoping to just smile and nod in response to every ridiculous thing he said.

“Why? Every father wants to be respected by his son.”

“And every son wants to be respected by his father,” I countered.

“Well,” Walter said. “He’s got to earn that.”

“And you don’t.”

“No,” he said. “I don’t.”

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence.

“What about your daughter?” I said, finally.

“What
about
my daughter?” Walter shifted in his seat. “This book’s about Danny, isn’t it?”

“Well, yes, but we’re going to cover the whole family. Or as much as is relevant to understanding where Daniel came from.” I flipped a page in my notebook. “You said she was different.”

“She’s got a motor on her.” Walter nodded. “I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

“She’s very ambitious,” I agreed. “You must be proud.”

There was a moment’s hesitation. “Of course,” he said. He seemed to consider his next words for quite a while. “I mean, I don’t think that’s the dream every father has for his little girl. But I guess it’s what made her happy.”

“What was your dream for Lindsey?”

“Oh, I don’t know. A good husband, white picket fence, a happy life, all that stuff.” He looked at me. “That’s not so wrong, is it?”

“She has all those things,” I pointed out.

“I know,” said Walter, making a slight face. “But I guess, the way she went about it….it just doesn’t make sense to me. That’s not what I would have chosen for her.”

I had to bite my tongue to avoid saying something along the lines of
well, it’s a good thing it’s her life, then, and not yours.

“I just worry about them,” he said, sensing that he needed a save. “The only reason I left was because I’d convinced myself that I was doing more harm than good, as far as influencing their lives.” He sighed. “Now, I don’t know. I don’t know if I was right before, but I’m definitely right now. I’m just not sure I can undo what I did.”

“You can’t,” I said.

“Well, I know that,” he said. “Undo isn’t the right word. I just want to…live it down, I guess.”

“Faking your own death,” I said. “That’s a pretty big thing to live down.”

“Well.” He fidgeted. “I just sent a boat out, it’s not like I sent my car off a cliff with some drifter trapped inside.”

“So as far as fake deaths go, you think it was pretty low on the melodrama scale, and you deserve some credit for that?” I could barely keep a straight face, but I had a feeling that if I just up and started laughing at him, this would probably end pretty badly.

“I don’t know,” he said, irritated. “It’s like I said. I was irrational at the time. Things were…things were pretty bad.”

“I think from their perspective, they thought you had a pretty good life. They were helping support you, weren’t they? Financially, I mean.”

“The Social Security’s not much,” he said, “and God knows I don’t get a pension from that soul-sucking company.”

“But they were doing everything they could to make you feel comfortable.”

He shrugged. “Well, money can’t buy happiness.”

I decided to ignore the platitude. “Both of them, by their early twenties, were making enough that they were able to support themselves
and
make your life more comfortable. That’s pretty impressive. Most people don’t have kids that can pull that off.”

“Well, it’s like I said.” He cleared his throat. “They always were pretty extraordinary people.”

“You didn’t say that.” I bit the end of my pen.

“Really?” said Walter, looking at me. “Are you sure?”

***

“Holy fucking
shit
.”

Daniel looked up, mildly. “That bad, hmm?”

“Oh, my God. I wanted to tear my hair out.” I was spinning slowly on one of the kitchen stools, as if I could somehow rewind my memory to before the interview. “Some of the shit he says. And then at the end of it all, he starts ‘repeating’ things that he insisted he said, but never actually did.”

“That’s classic Walter,” said Daniel. “If he doesn’t like your reaction, he tries to alter your memory of his half of the conversation.”

“Does it ever work?”

“Well, sort of. People eventually stop arguing with him because it’s impossible. You can only tell someone the sky isn’t green a few times before you just give up.”

“I get the sense that he just sort of wants to gloss over the whole…you know, the whole thing about faking his own death and disappearing for years. I get that it’s probably uncomfortable to talk about, but he’s got to understand that people are going to need some kind of explanation for that behavior before they’re ready to jump right into a friendly relationship with him.”

“He doesn’t want a relationship,” said Daniel. “He wants someone to inflict his advice and worldview on.”