I gave Danny, the security guard, a little wave as I pulled into the office parking lot. After my crazy rush to be here, I suddenly wished I wasn’t. I pulled into my space, but I didn’t turn off the engine right away.
In my defense, my obsession with work was completely natural. It was a highly stressful time at the company. Rumors had been flying for months that we were about to be sold. I had spent the last twelve weeks doing nothing but churning out reports: sales reports, inventory reports, staffing reports, profit-and-loss statements. When I closed my eyes at night, all I could see were the crowded grid lines of a spreadsheet. That was what awaited me inside the building, but I couldn’t put it off any longer. I turned the engine off, grabbed my laptop case and headed in.
I said hello to Devin, our receptionist. His head was bent studiously over his computer screen, but I knew he was playing solitaire. As I veered right, I could see Devin smirking, but maybe I was just imagining that. The shortest route to my office is to the left, but I no longer went that way. Devin obviously thought that was because Tessa’s desk was to the right. But that was only an added bonus. If I went to the right, I didn’t have to go past Juan’s office. Juan. Damn. I don’t know why I should be bothered so much after all this time. It was only an unused office now. The blinds were up, the desk was clear, the chair was vacant. There were no pictures of Juan’s wife and children on the filing cabinet, no coffee mugs on the credenza, no plaques on the wall. But it was as if the shadow of all those things hovered over the empty spaces.
I slowed my pace as I approached Tessa’s cubicle. Tessa and I had worked together for years. We had always got along well—we shared the same sense of humor. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen with Annisha, but I had to admit that I’d found myself thinking a lot about Tessa since the split.
I caught a glimpse of her dark hair, but she was on the phone. So I kept going.
Almost as soon as I was through my office door, I found myself turning around. I wondered if I should check out the new prototype before I started on more pressing work. I knew the design team would let me know about any developments, but the thought of distracting myself with a few minutes in the lab was tempting.
The design lab was where I’d started out. One of my first jobs was in the development sector of this place—an auto parts manufacturer. It was my dream job. Juan, the technical director, took me under his wing. Juan was my mentor.
But the thing is, even if you love your job, you can’t stay put. That’s a career killer. But no one had to tell me that. I was like a dog wagging my tail so hard that I’d put my back out. The people above noticed. When the next rung of the corporate ladder was offered to me, Juan took me into his office.
“You know,” he said, “if you take this position, you’ll be out of research and design for good. You’ll be selling and managing. Is that what you want?”
“I want to move ahead, Juan,” I said, laughing. “And I’m sure not going to wait for you to retire to do that!”
Juan gave me only a weak smile, but he didn’t say anything else.
After that first step, I moved up through the ranks pretty quickly. Now I was overseeing all our projects and product production for our biggest client.
I picked up my coffee mug, about to head down the hall to the lab. But then I stopped. There was no need for me to be there. I put my coffee cup down and dropped into my chair. I snapped on my computer, opened a file and turned my eyes to the maze of numbers that filled my screen.
A few hours later, I had just finished yet another profit-and-loss statement and was about to return to my overflowing inbox, when the phone rang. It took me a few seconds to recognize my mother’s voice. She sounded upset. Good lord, I thought. Now what? My mother had been inordinately interested in my life in recent months. It was beginning to annoy me.
“Sorry to have bothered you at work, Jonathan, but this is important,” she said. “I’ve just been talking with Cousin Julian, and he needs to see you right away. It’s urgent.”
Me? I thought. Why on earth would Cousin Julian need to see me?
To be frank, I didn’t really know Cousin Julian. He wasn’t my cousin, but my mother’s. She had been close with Julian and his sister Catherine when they were all small, but I grew up on the other side of the country. Far-flung relatives were as interesting to me as last week’s newspaper.
The only time I ever met Julian, I was about ten. We were visiting Cousin Catherine, and she arranged a dinner at her house. I don’t recall whether Julian’s wife was with him, or whether he was already divorced. To tell you the truth, I don’t remember anything at all about the visit, except for one thing: Julian’s bright red Ferrari. I had heard Catherine mention it, so I was waiting on the front steps when he peeled up the driveway. The car was even more fabulous than I had pictured. Julian saw my face (my chin must have been scraping the top of my shoes), and he invited me for a ride. I had never been in a car that moved so fast. It felt as if, at any moment, the wheels might leave the pavement, and we would be airborne. I don’t think I said a word the whole ride. When we arrived back at the house, Julian got out of the car, but I didn’t move.
“You want to hang around in the car for a while?” he asked.
I nodded. He turned to leave but before he could go, I stopped him.
“Cousin Julian?”
“Yes,” he said.
“How did you get this car?” I asked. “I mean … does it cost a lot of money?”
“It sure does,” he said. “So if you want one of these yourself, Jonathan, you’re going to have to work really, really hard when you grow up.”
I never forgot that.
As I remember, Julian didn’t stick around long after dinner—Mom and Cousin Catherine seemed disappointed, maybe a little annoyed. Although I was only ten, I could imagine that Julian had much more exciting places to be. He was clearly living the kind of life that I wanted when I got older. I watched with envy as Julian’s fabulous sports car tore down the street.
After years of saying nothing about the man, Mom had begun to invoke Julian’s name every time we got together. She had recently told me the Ferrari was long gone. Cousin Julian had, apparently, gone through some sort of life-changing experience. He’d quit his extremely lucrative job as a high-powered litigator, sold the Ferrari and embraced a “simple” existence. Mom said he had studied with a little-known group of monks who lived deep in the Himalayas and that he now often went around in a crimson robe. She said he was an utterly different man. I wasn’t sure why she seemed to think this was such a good thing.
And she had been trying to get the two of us together. She had suggested that I make time to visit with him when I was in his city on business. But frankly, if I didn’t have enough time for Annisha or Adam, why would I take a day off to spend with a man I hardly knew? Besides, if he’d still been a phenomenally successful lawyer with a glamorous lifestyle and a flashy sports car, I might have seen the point. But why did I need to spend time with an unemployed old man with no Ferrari? There were plenty of guys like him hanging around in my local bar.
“Mom,” I said, “what are you talking about? Why does Julian need to see me?”
Mom didn’t have details. She said Julian needed to talk with me. He needed my help with something.
“That’s nuts,” I said. “I haven’t seen Cousin Julian in years. I don’t know the guy. There has to be someone else who can help.”
Mom didn’t say anything, but I thought I could hear her crying softly. The last couple of years since my dad died had been tough on