Page 45 of Brenna, Brat

“Yeah, I could see how you’d feel like that.” He caught up to where I stood, halfway down the flight of stairs toward my floor. “But you’re the one who keeps telling me that what happened at my company wasn’t my fault, that I couldn’t have seen it coming. Without going out to walk around the roof, you wouldn’t have known about the hole, either.”

“But I shouldn’t have rented a place in bad part of town,” I said.

“I shouldn’t have worked for the man who once told me that I could blame my mother for my lack of intelligence, because he had set me up perfectly with the Y chromosome that he’d contributed.”

“Your father said that? Why is he so mean?”

Campbell shrugged. “Are we going to your place for dinner?” he asked me, and I nodded. He was driving his other car, the SUV. It was almost as nice as the one that had been stolen so I was sure that he wouldn’t spend the night. The media trucks had moved away from his house and there was no reason to seek my bed. There was no reason at all.

But I could make a good dinner, even if I had just one burner and a microwave that only heated things a little. While we cookedtogether (even in my tiny kitchen, I did have more than one knife), we talked a lot about wedding stuff but I also got him to open up about the lunch date he’d had with his father, sister, and all their attorneys.

“It was…” He thought for a moment. “I think the best word is ‘guarded.’ No one wanted to say too much, but I kept trying. Once, my lawyer told me to shut up. In a more erudite way,” he qualified.

I tried to imagine a conversation like that with my sisters. “You and Carrington had talked about the situation before.”

“Not for a while. She’s not answering me anymore and neither is my mom. Anything we say could be used against us, right? It makes sense.”

Maybe it made legal sense, but when I turned to look at him, I saw that his expression didn’t match his words. Those had been calm and pragmatic, but he looked sad. “You must miss them,” I said.

“I don’t think that we ever had the same relationship that you do with your family.”

It definitely made sense that he wouldn’t have been close to the father who seemed to have berated and belittled him, and that he wouldn’t have had a lot of cozy feelings toward the mother who had picked on his sister to the point that she’d developed an eating disorder. And the one time I’d seen him with Carrington, she’d acted about as nice as a striking rattlesnake.

“Still,” I said. “Still, it sucks that you’re only speaking through attorneys. Did you get anything worked out?”

“Not really.” He hesitated. “I think my dad is up to something else. Once, when I was in high school, he paid off a ref at a hockey tournament so that my team would advance to the semifinals. I didn’t find out until years later, but when he told me about it, I remembered how he’d been acting back then. He was so pleased with himself, strutting around the rink like he was very proud. I knew he wasn’t proud of me, because I wasn’t playing well at all. I never seemed to rise to the occasion like he wanted me to.”

“He paid off a ref at a children’s sports tournament?” I asked.

“We were teenagers, but yes.”

Given the recent indictment, it shouldn’t have surprised me.

“He seemed just as pleased at lunch today,” Campbell continued. “He was trying to hide it, but it was there. I could tell.”

“You’re observant like that. You knew he was up to something at your company, too. No, I mean that you suspected it,” I corrected myself. “You didn’t know anything for sure.” If anyone happened to be listening in on our conversation, I wanted to make that clear. “Can you guess what he’s planning now?”

He shook his head. “All I can think is that he’s going to run. I don’t know why he hasn’t done it already, actually.”

“Maybe he doesn’t want to leave you and your sister with the mess he made all by himself. All by himself,” I said again, a little louder. “Dinner’s ready.”

We split the tray and sat on the couch together to eat, and he changed the subject. “I have an idea about your atelier.”

“I don’t want to call it that anymore,” I said. “It’s a leaky, moldy money pit.”

“I have a basement. It has windows, kind of small ones and far up in the walls, but they bring in a lot of sun.”

“Ok,” I said. “So?”

“There’s also plenty of overhead lighting,” he continued. “It has a high ceiling for a lower level and lots of open space. It’s totally dry, carpeted and finished.”

I waited.

“Why couldn’t you work there?” he asked me.

“In your house? Well, it’syourhouse, and I’m paying to use the other place.”

“But you can’t,” he told me. “It’s in bad shape, Brenna. We were just talking about the checklist you have for Juliet…ok, take a breath. You can get it done.” He patted my shoulder and left his hand there for a moment. “You could have a safe, clean, dry place to get it done at my house.”

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