Page 37 of On Thin Ice

His voice was soft, soothing, and I could feel it reverberate in his chest even as I heard it. “I don’t.”

I almost laughed, unbelieving—but I decided to take him at his word. Maybe he didn’t know. Although he was a decade older than I, he might not have been privy to everything his father did back then. Sinclair would have been younger than I was now…and I’d already had a good idea how cold his father had been, how little he told his wife about anything. It was possible he’d been the same way with his sons, even as they got older.

“Well…I don’t know how much you know about what happened to my father—and I was little, so a lot of this is what my dad told me. But your family had a mining operation in Winchester. It was a strip mine, tearing up the natural landscape of the hills just west of town. The evidence still exists, as you know from the time you’ve spent there. My father was vehemently opposed to that.”

I paused for a bit to see if he wanted to contradict anything I was saying or if he wanted to give me another perspective, but he didn’t. He was simply listening.

So I continued. “I don’t know what all he did to stop it, but I know he fought with local government officials and your family’s company for several years. More than once, he said he’d be okay with traditional mining, because it was less invasive. We still have boxes of books and articles on our back porch, things that tell in great detail how different kinds of mining impact the environment. My dad said it’s not just about how strip mining ruins the view; it’s how it ruins the planet.”

Sinclair made a noise, but I couldn’t tell what it meant, so I asked, “What?”

“Nothing.”

I wasn’t convinced that his reply had truly been nothing, but now that I’d started, I wasn’t going to stop. “My dad had no proof of it, but he was certain your father had created some kind of smear campaign against him. At first, it was like no one in town cared what my dad was fighting about, although there were a few people at the college and where he worked who said they cared about the environmental damage and appreciated what he was doing. And there were a couple of others who called him crazy. But everyone else just let him do his thing. After a while, though, sentiment changed. People who worked at the mine began accusing my father of wanting them to lose their jobs. And it got worse. I remember going to the store with my mom one time and her getting in an argument with someone in line behind us. That night, she told my dad it was all his fault because he just couldn’t let it go.”

I was proud of myself, how I was acting like the neutral storyteller, simply relaying the facts as I’d seen and heard them…but I couldn’t stop the emotions that were beginning to well up inside my chest.

“Things like that happened more and more frequently. At first, I didn’t notice it, but as I got older, most kids avoided me, like I had an infectious disease or something. It turned to bullying later on. It wasn’t that I couldn’t fit in; it was that I wasn’t ever allowed to try. I had a few friends, ones who were also at the bottom of the social ladder, kids who came from homes where they were either neglected or abused. I always told myself I at least had the love of my family.

“That changed, though. My mom left one day—just left. She never even said goodbye to me. I know it killed my dad but, for me, he kept a stiff upper lip. As you know, my dad ultimately won his cause, if you could call it that, and your family wasn’t allowed to strip mine in Winchester—but no one in town thanked my father for that. Instead, they blamed him for losing their jobs and ruining Winchester’s economy.”

He stirred beneath my head and I expected him again to say something—but he didn’t.

“And then my dad got sick. It was subtle at first—where he’d feel tired or weak and would go to bed early some nights. There were other things too, things he didn’t tell me about back then, but he finally went to a doctor—and it was still a long time before he was diagnosed…an even longer time before he was able to draw disability.”

Sinclair’s hand again moved over my back, comforting me. “You had a rough childhood.”

I wondered what Sinclair’s had been like, other than what I already knew, but I was certain he wouldn’t have told me. I’d already asked. “Yes, but my father is a good man, loving and caring, and I wouldn’t have survived without him.” I paused for a bit, wondering if I wanted to say more. I made a circle with my index finger on his chest the size of a penny and finally decided it wouldn’t hurt to tell him what else was on my mind. “That’s why I was going to college. I wanted to earn a degree to make myself more employable, and my goal was to move us out of that horrible town.”

At first, he didn’t say anything, but when he did, his voice was soft. “Ironic. Your father tried to save Winchester from being ruined because he loved it, and now it’s become ugly as the people turned against him.”

“I don’t think he hates Winchester. In fact, if you asked him now, I know what he would say: that sometimes you have to sacrifice your personal comfort for a worthy cause. So, no, he doesn’t hate Winchester—but I do.” And, suddenly, I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. I’d told him about my family as I’d promised and maybe that would help him open up sometime in the future. But I did want to shift the focus of our conversation—or, more accurately, I wanted to stop monologuing. “What do you do for your family business?” Turning my head so I could see his face again, I let my chin dig into his chest again until he opened his eyes. “Unless that’s off limits too.”

His eyes flashed and I grinned. “Only if you stop tormenting me with that chin of yours.”

My smile grew wider as I obliged, but I wanted to keep looking at him. The way his face was lit up made my heart sing. “Deal.”

Sitting up a little, he took my face in his hands and kissed me before rolling on his side. There we lay our heads on the silky pillows so we could look in each other’s eyes.

I could get lost here. If I could forget about the whole world outside this room, I thought, it would be easy enough to be the person I knew I could be—the one without the fetters of Winchester, of my childhood. And in that moment, I saw me as that woman through Sinclair’s eyes.

No wonder I’d grown to love him.

He ran a finger along the side of my face. “How much do you know about the Whittier Corporation?”

Everything I thought I knew wasn’t something I wanted to share with him. “Not much.”

“Even I don’t know all the pies we have our fingers in, but it’s a lot. We own hotels and real estate. We have divisions dedicated to textiles, transportation, agriculture…and mining, as you know. But even though I’m a member of this family, there’s lots I’m not privy to.”

Oh, God…I wanted nothing more than to ask why. But I knew deep down that if I asked, it could cause Sinclair to clam up. After all, he hadn’t wanted to talk about his family, and it seemed like it would be difficult to separate family from business in this interest.

“I run the philanthropic division. In fact, I’m the Executive Director of the Whittier Foundation. I’m given a percentage of the entire company’s profits to manage. I have good accountants working for me, grant directors and writers, fundraising staff—”

“Fundraising?”

“Yes. That wasn’t my father’s idea, but it’s allowed me to increase the good we can do. Anyway, at the dinner party, you met most of my senior staff, my right-hand people. It’s thanks to them we’re able to do so much good.”

I understood now exactly why Sinclair had been at WCC and had paid for the simulation lab. His job was to spend money for good causes. That alone assured me that there was something good inside him, which had to be why I’d fallen so hard for him. Something inside me must have known.

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