52 Reasons to Hate My Father (29 page)

“I’ve been telling your father the same thing for years. That you have a right to know. All of you do. But this was his call. And as his lawyer, I can’t—”

“So it’s true?” I interject impatiently. “She was an alcoholic?” I hear myself asking and the conviction in my voice surprises me. It’s as though I’m speaking a truth I’ve known all along.

“Your mother,” Bruce tries, “was a very complicated woman. She had trouble with—”

“Just answer the question.”

Bruce shoots me a heavy look, as though asking if I really want to know. If I really want to open Pandora’s box. Because everyone knows, once it’s opened, it can’t be closed again. I return his gaze with determination, letting him know, without uttering a word, that I’m not afraid. That I came here for the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and I’m not leaving until I get it.

He exhales loudly, his breath signaling his surrender. But I need to hear the word. And he knows it. “Yes,” he finally says.

“The cruises she used to go on?” I prompt.

He struggles. Hesitates. And then, “Your father tried so many times to get her help. But nothing worked. She was in and out of rehab your entire childhood. The moment she would get back, your father would leave on a business trip and she would relapse again.”

I let this sink in. As much as I hate hearing it, it seems to fit. It feels comfortable. Not in that it brings me physical comfort (quite the opposite actually), but in knowing that it’s the truth.
Finally
the truth. Now I can breathe.

“Why did he insist on lying about it?” I ask. “Why not tell us the truth about her? Did he think we couldn’t handle it?”

Bruce shakes his head. “It wasn’t that. He was trying to
protect
you. He was so pained by her sickness and he didn’t want you and your brothers to have to go through that same agony. He thought if he could hide the truth from you and convince you she was someone else, you’d be better off.”

Suddenly it makes perfect sense. In one crushing instant everything is clear. This is why he insists on marrying people he doesn’t love. This is why he thinks you’re better off keeping everyone at arm’s length. If you don’t let anyone in, no one can hurt you. If you never love anyone, no one can die and take a part of you with them.

And then I’m struck with an unsettling thought.

But I almost
did
die.

Nearly five months ago. In a car crash. A car crash that started this whole thing. The fifty-two jobs. The life-rehabilitation program.

I sit frozen in shock. I can’t move any part of my body. Which means I can’t reach up to catch the tears that are spilling forth. Bruce plucks a tissue from a box on his desk and hands it over but I don’t take it.

After a few more blurry seconds, I find my tongue. “That’s why he did this,” I conclude. “That’s why I’m spending a year working these jobs.”

Because if each one of those jobs eventually led to wealth and success for someone else, you would think at least
one
of them would work for me.

Bruce nods. “I wanted to tell you, Lex. I swear I did. Your father blames himself. For all of it. Including her death.”

“But it clearly wasn’t his fault!” I argue.

“Try telling him that.” Bruce removes his glasses and rubs his eyes. “He’s been haunted by it ever since. He thought if only he had caught the problem earlier, he could have stopped it before it got bad. But he didn’t.”

“And then I crashed my car into a convenience store.” I finish the thought.

Bruce nods. “And he wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice.”

*   *   *

I leave Bruce’s office feeling numb. I’ve been bombarded. There’s so much new information to sift through, I don’t even know where to start. Or what to do with it once I’ve finished.

A few lousy words and a single sheet of paper and suddenly my entire life is turned upside down.

All this time I thought my father was out to get me. When really it was the other way around. He didn’t hate me. He wasn’t trying to torture me or set me up to fail. He was trying to
save
me.

And if that’s the case, then there’s only one thing for me to do now.

I’m going to have to save him right back.

I yank out my cell phone and dial Luke’s number.

Skipping the formalities, I bellow into the phone, “We have to talk. Meet me at the Nest in twenty minutes.”

FAKE FRIENDS

“I thought you were leaving,” Luke says grumpily as soon as Horatio leads him into the library. I’m already knee-deep in my preparations, sitting on the floor with my laptop open and contracts and printouts spread out around me.

“I changed my mind,” I say simply.

“What do you want?” Luke asks, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Your help.”

He looks taken aback. “
My
help?”

I nod. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re the only one I can trust right now.”

He thinks about this for a moment and then, after seeming to decide it’s a good enough reason for him, joins me on the floor in the center of the room. “What’s going on?”

Excitedly, I turn the
Fortune
magazine around so that he can see the page it’s open to. “See this guy?” I ask him, pointing to the picture that inspired this whole crazy plan.

He nods. “Sure. It’s Pascal LaFleur. The CEO of LaFleur Media.”

“Well,” I say importantly, “he’s also a liar.”

Luke blinks. “Excuse me?”

“I saw him at the party I was working. I served him a tuna-seviche cucumber cup!”

Luke’s eyes widen with disbelief. “And that makes him a liar?”

I wave my hand. “Listen,” I tell him urgently, “he was speaking to this group of people.” I search through the scattered paperwork around me until I locate a photograph that I printed from the Internet. It shows ten people standing behind a large conference table. I’ve already circled three of their faces in red marker.

“These people,” I say, pointing to the circled heads. “And he was speaking to them in French.”

“Well, he
is
French,” Luke points out.

“I
know
,” I say, growing impatient. “Just
listen
. He said something about a plan to evict the chef.”

Luke looks at me as though I’ve clearly cracked.

I ignore him. “I didn’t think anything of it because I was like, what? Evict the chef? Whatever, crazy Frenchman.”

“Is this going somewhere?” Luke interrupts.

I grit my teeth and try to hold on to my dwindling patience. “Yes!” I take a deep breath and continue. “But it wasn’t until I saw his face in this magazine that I realized I misunderstood him. You see, my French is pretty much limited to talking about fashion and food and celebrity gossip.”

“Really?” Luke jokes. “You don’t say.”

I slap him with the piece of paper in my hand. “Anyway, I totally forgot that
le chef
doesn’t mean ‘the chef.’ It’s a
faux ami
!”

“A what?”

I sigh. “A
faux ami.
It means a false or fake friend. A word that you think would be the same in French and English because it sounds the same in both languages, but it’s not. Like
librairie
. It doesn’t mean library. It means bookstore. Or
napkin.
You would think it means napkin but it’s actually a French word for sanitary pad.”

“Okay, okay!” Luke says, putting up a hand to stop me. “I get it. So if
chef
doesn’t mean chef, what does it mean?”

I inhale deeply and hold his gaze. “It basically means CEO.”

It takes Luke a moment to catch up with my frantic thought process and when he does, I see his expression start to shift. “Evict the CEO?”

I nod eagerly.
“Expulser,”
I explain. “That’s the word he used. It means to evict. But I looked it up and it also means to expel. To oust. To cast out.”

Luke doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to. The look on his face says everything.

“So I started reading about the upcoming merger,” I continue, nodding at all the paperwork around me. “I even found a few corporate e-mails about it in my spam folder.”

He cocks an inquisitive eyebrow at me.

“It’s a long story,” I reply, with a hasty wave. “Anyway, after reading all this stuff, I discovered that once the merger is complete, the plan is for my father to be the CEO of the new entity and this Pascal guy to serve under him. But if you take into account the five new board members that are coming in from LaFleur Media, you would actually only need three additional votes to gain a majority.” I tap again at the three circled heads in the photograph. “
These
three votes.”

Luke regards me in sheer astonishment. I have no idea if it’s the information itself that’s so shocking or the fact that
I’m
the one who discovered it. Perhaps a little of both.

“I don’t believe it,” Luke says finally, after finding his voice again. “LaFleur’s going behind your father’s back to control the whole company?”

I nod. “Apparently
he’s
the
faux ami
here.” Then I spell it out in even simpler terms. “If this deal goes through, my father is out of a job.”

I SPY

Luke is immediately up in arms. He jumps to his feet and starts pacing. “So we call your dad and warn him not to recommend the merger to the shareholders tomorrow,” he thinks aloud.

But I immediately shake my head. “Won’t work.”

“Why not?”

“He won’t believe me! He’ll talk to Caroline and think I’m trying to sabotage him after they exposed me to the press.”

“Wait, what?” Luke stops pacing and stares down at me. “Your
father
was the one who tipped off the press?”

“I told you my family was complicated.”

He ponders this for a moment and then seems to be content to store it away for further reflection later. “Okay, fine, then
I’ll
tell him.”

I shoot him a dubious look. “What will you say?”

“I’ll just tell him he can’t trust LaFleur and not to make the recommendation. If the stockholders don’t vote it through, your father’s job is safe.”

“Sure,” I say sarcastically. “My father is going to call off a billion-dollar business deal because his twenty-year-old
intern
has a hunch.”

He knows I’m right and that’s why he breaks my gaze and continues pacing.

“We need proof,” I tell him. Although I’m sure he doesn’t need to be told. He has to have come to this conclusion himself by now. “My father will only respond to hard evidence.”

Luke throws up his hands. “How the heck are we supposed to get proof? And in only a matter of hours? The vote is tomorrow morning!”

“Don’t worry,” I tell him calmly, scooping up the paperwork around me. I pull everything into my arms and stand up. “I have a plan.”

Grabbing Luke by the elbow, I lead him upstairs, into my room, and close the door behind us.

He glances uneasily around before taking a seat on my chaise longue. Holly yips and jumps up next to him. He cautiously pets her head. Like he’s afraid he’s going to break her. “Uh … nice room,” he says awkwardly.

“Thanks.” I disappear into the closet and start peeling off my clothes.

“So what is this big plan of yours?” he calls anxiously.

There’s a knock on the door and I hear Horatio come in. “What’s this?” Luke asks him.

“A request from Miss Larrabee,” Horatio replies cryptically and bows out of the room.

I poke my head out of the closet to see that Luke is holding a small, unmarked cardboard box, struggling to get the top open.

“What’s this?” He repeats the question to me as he finally manages to remove the lid. Then he reaches into the box and pulls out a black headset with a microphone attached and a tiny earpiece. He holds each item in one hand and stares at them questioningly.

I draw my head back into the closet and scour through the back shelves, behind all my evening gowns, until I find the dress I’m looking for. “It’s our spy gear!” I say excitedly as I pull the frock over my head and push my arms through the sleeves. The fabric feels familiarly uncomfortable and I cringe slightly at the memory of wearing this hideous thing.

God, it feels like
forever
ago!

And staring down at the blue-and-white pinstripes and white collar, I realize how much has changed since this whole thing began. I feel like an entirely different person from the girl who first donned this outfit more than four months ago.

“Our
what
?” Luke’s voice questions skeptically.

I pull the dress taut and slide my feet into my shoes. “LaFleur is renting a house in Palos Verdes,” I call back. “It’s where the party was last night. I noticed an office on the first floor. He’s got to have something in there that proves he’s in cahoots with those board members. So I’m going to sneak into the house and find it.”

“You’re going to do WHAT?” Although I can’t see his face, I can tell from his panicked tone that he’s starting to doubt the efficacy of my plan.

“Relax,” I say, rummaging through my box of wigs until I find the perfect one. The tag calls it
Nikki.
It’s a dark chocolate-brown, asymmetrical, chin-length cut. I tie my hair up in a rubber band, tilt forward, and squeeze the wig onto my head. “I’m going in disguise.”

“Huh?”

With all the elements of my costume now in place, I make a grand, sweeping entrance back into the bedroom and sink into a little curtsey.

He looks me up and down in confusion, taking in every inch of my ensemble. “Is that your Majestic Maids uniform?”

I nod. “Uh-huh. I’m going as the maid.” I strut over to him, grab the small earpiece from his hand, and wedge it into my ear canal. “You’re going to wait outside with this”—I tap on the headset in his other hand—“and tell me what I’m supposed to be looking for.”

He shoots to his feet and starts backing away from me like I have some kind of infectious disease called insanity. “No way,” he vows. “That’s breaking and entering. You’ll be recognized. We’ll totally get busted.”