“The first thing you should know is that—”
Mitchell’s crumpled-paper voice interrupted. “Maybe Truman and I should leave. Let you two go through this first.”
Jordan and Venita exchanged a look. Jordan’s inclination was to have them suffer through the autopsy, but he relented at the recommendation for mercy in Venita’s eyes. The two elderly men stood and shuffled toward the door, leaving behind another round of cheerful welcomes and their bright-eyed optimism for the wonders Jordan could accomplish, now that he was here.
Watching them leave, so defenseless and so rumpled looking, would have broken Jordan’s heart if he hadn’t become so good at steeling himself against such compassion.
At the door, just before it closed behind them, Truman stuck his head back in. “Um, Venita, my dear?”
“Yes?”
“Um, you don’t…That is, will it be necessary…um…?”
“Yes, Truman,” she said softly, her smile apologetic. “I think it will be quite necessary.”
His brow deepened its furrows, but he merely nodded as he backed out the door and closed it at last.
Hurt squeezed Jordan’s heart. He thought perhaps it was merely the bad chicken dinner he’d had at the country-cooking truck stop on the way in from Atlanta. “What will be quite necessary?”
Venita pursed her glossy mahogany lips and sighed deeply. “For you to know about the retirement account.”
Jordan felt uneasy as he heard the words and sensed how deep her distress went. “What about the retirement account?”
She smiled, a sad smile that for the first time made her look all of her fifty-plus years. “I’m afraid we don’t have one anymore.”
Nathan Ratchford scrolled through the E-mail file, hoping against hope that today he would find some sign from his dad.
Zip. Zilch.
Sulking, he pulled his feet up into Venita’s desk chair and made a circle with his legs. He picked at a raveling thread in the seam of his jeans and wondered what a seven-year-old could do to get his big-shot dad to acknowledge his son’s existence.
Nathan thought about sending another E-mail message. Maybe something had happened to the other message. Like maybe his secretary had accidentally, stupidly, moronically killed it out before his dad could see it. Or the humongous mainframe computer that ran the whole, entire bank where his dad was a big shot had crashed, paralyzing the entire banking industry of the Southeast. And if Nathan the Wonder Kid came in and got the computer up and running again, then even his dad would see that…
The tantalizing fantasy momentarily wiped the sullen expression off Nathan’s face. Until he realized that if anyone was being stupid or moronic it was one Nathan Ratchford.
“Yeah, I’ll send you another letter,” he muttered, signing off E-mail to page through the directory of other goodies available on Venita’s computer. “Dear Deadbeat Dad: In case it has slipped your busy, important mind, you have a son, aged seven years and eight-point-two months, who is growing up without the bare essentials—a computer, a pair of purple-and-teal high-top sneakers, or even one measly ticket to a Charlotte Hornets home game. Yours truly, Nathan the Half Orphan.”
The brilliance of his memo cheered him again briefly, and Nathan selected the Encyclopedia option on Venita’s computer directory. He had almost finished the A‘s. The way he had it figured, if he worked hard and kept to the schedule he’d worked out, he could finish the Z’s by the end of the sixth grade and sail right from elementary school to the freshman class at Duke University. Do not pass Go, do not stop at junior-stupid-high, do not collect two hundred dollars.
Azimuth was snore-city, but Nathan figured the Aztecs must be up next, so he plowed ahead. Keeping his mind on due northeasts was hard and he grew impatient with Venita for being late. He kept thinking she’d come out of her stupid meeting soon, but she didn’t. The old geezers had come out a long time ago and Venita was still locked up behind that big old door. Before he knew it, his mom would come after him and Venita wouldn’t even get to help him with his new plan, the way she’d helped him find out about his dad’s E-mail address. Venita knew stuff like that, especially stuff about Charlotte.
Venita knew more about Charlotte, North Carolina, than anybody in both the Carolinas, he supposed. Maybe in the world. Because she went to college there about a million years ago, back in the Paleolithic Era, circa 1965 B.N.
Before Nathan.
He’d taken his glasses off and placed them carefully in the middle of Venita’s big desk calendar and was about to doze off over Azoic Era in the computer encyclopedia when the big old door opened. Nathan’s eyes snapped open, but everything stayed blurry until he remembered his glasses.
He reached for his glasses, but not before a man followed Venita out the big old door. In that fuzzy, glasses-free instant, Nathan’s heart flew to his throat and he thought he might fall right out of Venita’s office chair.
Dad!
He realized it wasn’t so the minute he got his glasses on, of course. Still, the man made him think of his dad, who was also tall and broad shouldered and wore suits the color of number two pencil lead and really, really white shirts and striped neckties, but whose most distinctive characteristic was the grim expression on his face. Intimidating. Nathan had learned that word in a movie and he had always remembered it, because he knew that was exactly what his dad was. Intimidating.
And so was this man Venita seemed to like. She was paying such close attention to him she hadn’t even noticed Nathan. So he cleared his throat and rattled the middle drawer of her desk a little bit.
“Well, Nathan, hello.” She looked, as always, pleased to see him, but she didn’t look at him or talk to him in that cutesy way grown-ups usually did. She always acted as if she thought Nathan was as grown-up as anybody. Which, of course, he was.
“Hey, Venita. You’re late.”
“I know. And I am sorry. But Mr. Scoville and I had a lot of business to talk about today.” She glanced at the man again. They both looked tired. “Nathan, this is Jordan Scoville. Mr. Mitchell’s son. Jordan, this is Nathan Ratchford. He’s the best office assistant I’ve had in…oh, I’d say about twenty-five years.”
Nathan sat up straighter in the chair and offered up his hand for a shake. “Pleased to meet’cha, Mr. Scoville.”
“Same here, Mr. Ratchford.” And the man with the intimidating face took Nathan’s hand, shook it grown-up to grown-up. “I’m always glad to meet anybody who’s managed to impress Venita.”
Nathan wasn’t sure how to take that, and he didn’t have time to think about it because he suddenly remembered who Jordan Scoville was and it kind of shook him up. Jordan Scoville was the man everybody said was coming to town to fire them all and put them out of their homes. Wo! Nathan was excited. A real, live, bad-to-the-bone business tycoon!
“Jordan only says that because I was impressed by him when he was your age,” Venita said with the smile Nathan always thought she reserved just for him. For a minute that made Nathan a little jealous.
Then, he started to wonder if this was Venita’s way of letting him know that what she always said was true. Just because you’re growing up on the mill hill doesn’t mean you can’t make something of yourself, Nathan. If you apply yourself. Maybe Nathan, too, could grow up and be grim-faced and