Hide-and-Seek
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“Christopher’s fine,” Christopher saved me from the introductory faux pas and shook Jared’s hand with a smile.
“How are you doing, Christopher?” Jared asked and looked at Natasha. “I didn’t know you’d be bringing guests tonight.”
“These two needed a bit of fresh air.”
We all laughed politely; the way people do when they have nothing to say.
“I’ll just escort my friends to the table,” Natasha said and took Christopher and me by the hands. We’ll see you later at the after party, won’t we?”
“There is an after party after this?” Jared asked, laughing.
“There always is.” Natasha smiled.
“Enjoy the event,” Jared said. “I don’t think I’ll be joining the party.”
He nodded to us with a smile and walked away to a group of twittering young people who met him with exciting greetings. I was glad he had not mentioned our little deal because I was not ready to make it public just yet.
“You seem to know him quite well,” I said when we reached our table, and I helped Natasha to take her seat.
“It pays well to get to know people like Jared Shannon,” she said and opened the menu. “Let’s see what we’ll be paying for tonight.”
“Speaking of which, what is this charity for anyway?” Christopher asked, sitting down.
“And where is that open bar?” I asked a more important question, looking around.
The event went well. We left the place a couple of hours later. We took advantage of the open bar, but we did donate some money to… I could not even remember what that blasted charity was for after we went to the after party. I did remember one thing. I did not particularly like the way Jared looked at Natasha. But I could not blame him for being smitten by her beauty either.
***
A week later, Mr. Goldberg and I were in a big meeting room with Jared’s team in charge, getting ready to iron out any wrinkles in the deal if necessary. This was when a young lady walked in and announced the new offer their boss was ready to put down on the table. She put it quite succinctly and yet extremely comprehensively: Jared would double his investment in the project, giving me more funds to make my small cottage community even better and thus attract more clients down the line, if we made one more deal–sell the house. He wanted Maple Grove House. His team had done the necessary assessment of the house’s condition when they were on the property checking the future construction site last week. The sum he was offering was very generous and he was eager to close the deal as soon as possible.
“What does he want the house for?” Mr. Goldberg asked me when we were out on the street.
“You heard her: ‘Mr. Shannon would like to give back to the community he was once a part of by restoring the house to its former glory and converting it into a cultural space for educational purposes.’”
“What on earth does that mean?”
“Beats me. Whatever it is, he’s willing to pay top dollar for it.”
“You still need to start the project with your money, though.”
“Yes, but there’ll be much more later. We just need to get a few offers and we’re golden.”
“If you get those offers.”
I smiled. Mr. Goldberg was a very cautious man. I tapped him on his shoulder. “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
We walked to the parking lot and stopped by Mr. Goldberg’s Range Rover.
“I didn’t know the house was for sale in the first place. Your parents had been keeping it and hoping that one day you’d have a family, and you know…”
Charlie would be found alive, and we would all go back to being a happy family in a big house.
“…you know what I mean,” Mr. Goldberg said, getting his keys. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it wasn’t for sale. Until now, I suppose. I mean, it’s been empty for more than a quarter of a century.”
He unlocked the car and we both got in.
“You aren’t seriously thinking about that preposterous offer, are you?”
“Well, it will be nice to have more cash for the project, but I need to speak to my father about this.”
“You bet you do,” Mr. Goldberg said, starting the engine. “Say hello to him from me and be sure to let me know the outcome of that conversation.”
Chapter 10
I couldn’t have that conversation with my dad because he passed away from some cold virus complications three days later. I had been going through the details of the proposal and postponing the talk to make sure I could present it correctly to him. I had missed a few calls from my mother and not bothered calling her back. I didn’t want to make any mistakes and miss any details, which was something I had been known for. When I thought I was ready, I had called my mother the day before and told her about my plans to visit them. My dad had been unwell for some time and couldn’t join the conversation, but my mother sounded happy and excited about seeing me. When she called me the next day to break the news, I’d thought she was merely wanting me to bring her the Turkish treats she liked and so didn’t bother to answer my phone. She always asked me to do that. When I saw that she’d tried to call me three times in a row, I picked up my phone.
No treats this time. Just a black suit.
“It happened so fast, Alex. He was doing better. He was excited about your visit and then he just stopped breathing while he was asleep last night. The doctor said it was some sort of a respiratory syndrome, a lung failure.”
She started to sob quietly. I was considering ways to console my mother, but all I could think about was the fact that my dad’s ancestors had all been buried in the family cemetery situated in one of the park’s corners, and he was probably going to be buried there as well. The corner wasn’t in the deal I was working on, but the idea of my dad’s headstone overlooking the house that wasn’t going to be ours anymore made me feel even sadder.
My father, Alexander Montague I, was the only child of Theodore and Adelaide Montague. He received a good education in the places where the children from upper class usually went to, worked with the tenants in the estate to make sure that everyone was happy, kept the income coming and started to develop some investment projects. He wasn’t susceptible to the charms of the local female candidates among the “equals” but was known as a desirable match for many. Before he was given the reins to Maple Grove House, he was sent to Europe to learn about art, for which he hadn’t shown any propensity but had been expected to understand well to help increase the family’s art collection. My grandfather had wanted him to know the difference between Manet and Monet and to be able to hang the right paintings in the right places in the house to impress guests. Not that the family had acquired a big art collection, but it was “an essential element of a good house” and Theodore had thought it was important. That was the trip on which my father met a young and beautiful French woman, Elizabeth Baudelaire-Nazarova, who spoke good English and who, a year later, would become his wife and, a year after that, my mother. He met her at a Roerich exhibition in Paris, while admiring Himalaya’s landscapes and the artist’s unusual choices of colors. He asked her if she liked the paintings, which he hadn’t really understood but kept that fact to himself. She did and the conversation went on for thirty indecent minutes, which neither of them could nor wanted to stop. My father was smitten and forgot all about social proprieties when he invited young Elizabeth, who was ten years younger than him, to have a cup of hot chocolate at a place on Rue de Rivoli where they discovered that they both had been fans of Jules Verne. The place was called Angelina, and this was what my father thought of this young woman, “an angel.” He had been calling her Lizzy my Angel ever since.