Private Disclosures

by Raleigh Davis

  She unwinds her arms, then sits in a chair. “Logan asked what we were doing in Poland.”

  “What did he say when you told him?”

  “I didn’t.” She’s not happy about it. Every part of her is tense.

  But she didn’t tell him. I… I have no idea what to make of that. I just assumed Anjelica would tell them we were looking for Fuchs, then come up with some explanation for why. And I wouldn’t have to do anything.

  But she didn’t. She chose to keep my secrets.

  “What did you tell him?”

  “That he had to talk to you.”

  She punted the problem right back into my lap. I almost smile. “And what did he say?”

  “That you know where to find him.”

  That sounds right. They’ve all been keeping their distance from me, their anger at what I’ve done hardening into a chilled wall.

  “So?” she demands. “Are you going to find him and talk to him?”

  “Of course.” I don’t say when that will happen. “Where should we go next to find Fuchs?”

  She arranges her skirt over her knees with short, sharp movements. She’s still upset with me, but she’s holding back. “I don’t know. The family came to Chicago, and he grew up there.”

  I suppose if we’re retracing Fuchs’s life from the beginning, it makes sense to visit Chicago next. But neither of his parents are alive, and I don’t know what his former classmates and neighbors might tell us. Poland wasn’t exactly illuminating.

  “He really got his start at Stanford,” I say. “That’s where he met Hanult.”

  Hanult is probably a bigger piece of Fuchs’s life than even his parents. Every interview or profile of Fuchs mentions him—the professor who saw a spark in the young student and nurtured it. Hanult introduced Fuchs to his first big investors, got him connections in the tech world, and started him on his course to world domination.

  Hanult’s also dead, which complicates things. But there are plenty of people in Silicon Valley who knew him.

  “Not Chicago,” I say. “We can fly there if no other leads work out. Stanford is right around the corner though; I know someone who went to Stanford with Fuchs, was in his class with Hanult.”

  She taps her fingers against her thigh. “I don’t agree. Look at how much we learned in Poland. Ohio might give us even more.”

  “What did we learn in Poland? Besides that Fuchs was born a jerk.”

  Her face is full of exasperated pity. I’m reminded all over again that I don’t react like I ought to. That I don’t know how to act around people still, especially her.

  “We learned a ton.” She starts to tick off on her fingers. “Fuchs has always been over-the-top possessive. He won’t hesitate to steal what isn’t his. And he remembers a slight. Always.”

  That was kind of apparent from our interactions with him in the past year, but she’s right—it’s more clear how deep all that goes with him.

  “I can’t stop thinking about him taking all those pears.” Anjelica’s gaze is unfocused, like she’s staring at a memory. “It would have never even occurred to me to do something like that. And my parents—”

  She shuts her mouth so hard my heart jumps. “You okay?”

  “It’s fine.” She waves her hand, makes herself smile. “I was having some problems with my family back when we met. But we started working them out a few years ago. Things are good, but sometimes bad memories still come up.”

  I can’t formulate a response to that. There’s nothing in my past like that to connect to, to offer up to her as commiseration. “I’m sorry” is the best I can do.

  She seems satisfied with it though. “Don’t be. Things are good now. And my parents would have been so appalled and ashamed if I’d stolen all those pears and sold them. Why didn’t Fuchs’s parents react the same?”

  I can think of a lot of reasons, and I don’t even have parents. “They didn’t care. They wanted the money. They approved. They didn’t know.”

  Anjelica shakes her head. “They had to know. The pears are all gone, he’s suddenly got all this money? Parents always suspect something.”

  Do they? You were always under suspicion in the group home, but it was more of a general blanket accusation. If you’re here, something’s gone wrong. What else is going to go wrong with you?

  “He’s an only child,” Anjelica says. “Maybe they spoiled him.”

  I’d sometimes get asked if I was an only child, which I never knew how to answer. I suppose I was, except that wasn’t what they meant. They wanted to know if I was the sole focus of my parents’ love. If I learned to fight and share and love with my siblings.

  None of those things were true about me.

  “Or maybe they couldn’t stop him.” If Fuchs treated his parents the way he treats the rest of the world, as nothing more than obstacles to his will, I wouldn’t be surprised. “But the spoiling idea also makes sense. Are you an only child?”

  She’s never mentioned siblings, and suddenly I’m curious. I never ask anyone else about their family to avoid questions about my own, but I know Anjelica won’t do that. So I’m free to ask with her. It’s… nice.

  “Um, kind of. It’s hard to explain.” She presses a crease of her skirt between her fingers. “There was a family next door to us with a kid my age. We practically grew up together.”

  “Ah.” I had bunkmates, people I’d even call friends, but no one I’d say grew up with me. “Does your family still live there? And the other family too?”

  This is a world I thought only existed on TV, of tight-knit neighbors and families, of people putting roots in one place and staying there. And Anjelica lived it. Something deeper than fascination burns in my chest.

  She drops her skirt, places her palms flat on her thighs. “Yes, my parents are still in the same house. The other family gave their house to their kid, so I suppose they still live there in a way.”

  She’s too rigid. Something’s wrong about this. “Do you still talk to her?”

  Anjelica’s face settles into a mask. “It’s a he. And no, we lost touch. My parents tell me about him though.”

  This is all wrong. It should be an idyllic story of lifelong childhood friends, but there’s something very painful beneath it. And I haven’t the faintest idea of how to unearth it. Not that I even have the right—Anjelica doesn’t want me poking through her past any more than I want her poking in mine.

  But I also want to understand. This is Anjelica—I want to understand her more deeply than I do myself.

  The realization locks up my chest. I’ve been attracted to her for years—her mind, her body, the innate sparkle of her—but this is more than attraction.

  Maybe this is what they call longing. Real longing.

  I swallow, making my face still, my expression clear. She said no. My longing or whatever it is can’t be her problem. Not until she’s ready to say yes.

  Judging by the pear incident, that might be sooner than she thinks.

  “I see,” I say, putting all my unspoken understanding into it. “I don’t keep up with anyone from my childhood.”

  It’s more than I’ve confessed to anyone except her. The words come off my tongue awkwardly, but once they’re out, they don’t feel so bad.

  “Is there anyone you wanted to keep up with?” Her gaze is gentle but penetrating.

  I try to think of someone. There were so many people, kids and adults, who came and went. Kids with problems that ran deep, adults with too many kids to help and too little time. I search for the bright spots in my dusty memories.

  “Mr. Jarvis was cool.” I stare at the desktop, polished to a high sheen, as I remember. “He was my high school shop teacher.”

  I was good at math—I was a genius at math—but the math teachers didn’t have time for a genius. They encouraged me, but I didn’t need their help, so they spent their time on the kids who did. I never blamed them.

  Mr. Jarvis was different. I was awkward at shop, at taking time and car
e with things. Math was easy, so I breezed through it, and everything else bored me, so I didn’t do it. Shop class was something entirely else. Mr. Jarvis didn’t let me breeze through or quit.

  Anjelica is watching with an expectant look, waiting for me to go on. So I tell her exactly what I just remembered. The words feel less awkward as they keep coming, and it helps that she doesn’t interrupt. By the end I feel… lighter. Not better necessarily, but definitely different.

  “He might still be teaching,” she says. “You could look him up if you want.”

  There’s no pressure in her tone, which I appreciate. I can take or leave her offer.

  “It’s been years,” I say. “He won’t remember me.”

  She lifts one eyebrow in disbelief. “Even if he doesn’t remember you, he’d probably be happy to hear from you. Teachers love to know they’re fondly remembered.”

  Suddenly the lightness is gone and a weight is settling on my chest. If I remember so much about him and he doesn’t remember me at all… I don’t want to know about it. “We need to find someone who knew Professor Hanult, not Mr. Jarvis,” I say. “Fuchs is still out there.”

  Disappointment flickers over her face, but she quickly squashes it. “You said you knew someone. I don’t know anybody at Stanford.”

  There’s a wistfulness there that irritates me. “It’s not everything it’s cracked up to be. The personal connections are more valuable than the education there in my opinion.”

  She shrugs. “A lot of people haven’t heard of USD. At least the Cal States are kind of famous.”

  I snort. “They’re not. Nobody outside California can seem to understand they’re not part of the UC system.”

  We share a smile of sympathy.

  “Did you like college?” she asks.

  The way people talk about their college experiences never really resonated with me. They go on about being independent, doing whatever they want, meeting new people, and partying. I’ve been pretty much independent my entire life, so that wasn’t anything novel, meeting new people wasn’t exciting to me, and since I was paying for the education, there wasn’t time to party.

  “I liked their machine shop,” I say. “It was much nicer than my high school one.”

  She rocks a foot back and forth. “I loved the campus. It was on top of a hill and very beautiful. It was…” Her voice dies as her expression goes sad. Almost unbearably so. “It was nice to look at pretty things at times.”

  I want to reach out to her, to touch her arm or hand, to let her know she’s not alone. It’s what she’d do for anyone else. I also want to know what happened to make her so sad, and I want to make it right.

  I keep my hands where they are. “I’ll call my friend.” My words feel too blunt in the moment, but I can’t take them back. “I’ll see if he can meet this week, and we can ask him about Fuchs.”

  Anjelica squares her shoulders, clears her throat. The sadness is gone as quickly as it came. “Right. We should ask about friends he might be staying with, old girlfriends, or even places he talked about going one day.”

  “And Hanult,” I say. “There may be a clue in their relationship. I think he’s the only person that ever really got close to Fuchs.”

  She gives me an odd look as she gets up. “There are probably other people he was close to even if it doesn’t seem that way.” Before she leaves, she wags a finger at me. “Don’t disappear again. And you need to tell the other guys… something. That’s not my job.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  I’m not planning on telling them everything, but I can come up with something. At least enough to get them to leave Anjelica alone. While I’m touched she kept my secrets, that’s not really her job either.

  Chapter 12

  Even though I won’t have time to go home and change, I arrive early for my Tuesday-night meeting with Dev. It means I’m still in my dance-instructor gear—workout clothes, hair in a ponytail, sneakers on my feet. It’s strange to be without heels, but after an hour of dancing in them, I have to give my feet a break.

  I look perfectly fine, but it feels weird to be dressed like this. What I have to share with him is worth it though.

  Dev’s chosen a coffee cart on the Stanford campus for the meeting. The cart itself is closed up for the night, but the tables and chairs are out, the deep yellow of the streetlamps illuminating the lawns and trees surrounding us. A few students walk by, taking no notice of me.

  People always do a double take when they see me out of my usual clothes, like I’ve switched faces or something. Dev does not do that. His expression is steady, unchanging as I walk up to him.

  My heart goes fluttery. My body can’t help but react to him. Especially my heart. With everything that he’s begun to share with me, it’s gotten even worse.

  I wonder if he contacted his high school teacher. I doubt it. Just the fact that Dev even told me about Mr. Jarvis is a major, major thing… but I want more for him. I’ve always wanted more for him. That he doesn’t want more for himself is the central issue between us.

  “Everything okay?” he asks as he holds out a chair for me. I told him at the last minute that I needed to see him before we met with his friend, so he’s probably worried.

  “It’s fine.” I reach into my workout bag, pull out stacks of paper. “I have a surprise for you.”

  He squints at the long list of addresses, running his finger down them. “What is this?”

  “It’s the address of every property owned by Corvus, its subsidiaries, and Arne Fuchs.”

  There’re well over a thousand addresses on there, and some were tricky to track down, especially the international ones, but the list is more or less complete. Fuchs’s hiding spot has got to be on that list somewhere.

  Dev’s mouth curls up into a slow smile. The pride and pleasure in it makes me glow. “How did you find all these?”

  I shrug. “Elbow grease mostly. The information is all there, somewhere, it just needed to be gathered up.” I point to an address he’s about to flip past. “That one is the tree.”

  Dev frowns at it. “Why would a tree have an address?”

  “Every parcel of land has to be marked off somehow. I guess when he bought it, the tree was given an address.”

  He taps a finger on the stack. “There’re too many to personally, physically check them all.”

  Good Lord, he couldn’t have possibly wanted to do that. “We just have to go through them systematically, using what we know about him. I mean, he’s not going to choose some random office building in Anchorage as a hiding spot.”

  “He owns a building in Anchorage?”

  “He owns buildings everywhere,” I say. “We have to figure out which properties actually have meaning for him.” I gesture to the addresses. “Like the pear tree in Poland.”

  Dev pushes the papers to the side and leans toward me. “Not everyone runs back to their past. This might all be a waste of time.”

  “Fuchs didn’t jump fully formed from business school. His past dictates what he’ll do now. He’s always been a greedy, grasping jerk. So even when he’s hiding, he’s still going to be looking to take something. Or maybe to be reminded of a past victory.” I nod slowly. “Yeah, he’s going to want some kind of trophy while he licks his wounds. And plots his comeback.”

  Dev’s skeptical. “Okay, but how can we get that from these addresses?”

  “Context.” I nod at the man coming toward us.

  Dev rises in one fluid motion, reaching out to shake the man’s hand. “Riley. Thanks for meeting us.”

  Riley shakes my hand next. “My pleasure.” His smile is a touch flirty.

  “Anjelica.” I don’t give him my nickname, and I keep the handshake brief.

  Dev looks at both of us coolly. “Anjelica is the newest partner at Bastard Capital.” There’s a hint of warning there.

  Recognition dawns on Riley’s face, and when he sits down, he leans away from me. Thank goodness.

  “
So, you want to know everything about Arne.” Riley crosses his legs as he sprawls in the chair. “Dude was always kind of odd.”

  “Were you two friends?” I ask.

  Riley ponders that. “Arne never really had close friends. He saw everyone as competition, although he could be friendly. Just as long as he didn’t see you as a threat.”

  “Threats? In college?” Dev raises an eyebrow.

  “Yeah. Like I said, he was competitive. Over grades, internships, everything. Someone else getting an A might have no effect on his grade, but he didn’t see things that way.”

  “Did he see you as a threat?” I ask.

  “No, which is why we were friendly.” Riley smiles. “I had a job waiting for me at Rhodes Partners the entire time, so I didn’t care. I just needed a degree and the connections, you know?”

  Dev’s jaw tightens, but he doesn’t say anything.

  “Did Arne ever talk about places he wanted to go? Things he wanted to see?”

  Riley might be privileged, but he’s not dumb. “Not really. What’s that got to do with breaking up Corvus?”

  “We’re trying to account for all his real estate holdings,” Dev says smoothly. “He put some personal real estate under Corvus’s name, and he was very secretive. There’s a lot to untangle.”

  Riley nods. “Hell yeah, he was always secretive. Like worried you’d steal his ideas for problem sets, accusing people of copying off him. Which is ridiculous. It’s an assignment; we’re all going to do it the same way pretty much.”

  “Was he exceptionally smart or inventive?” I ask.

  Riley ponders that. “He could convince other people he was, which is almost the same thing.”

  We all sit with that for a moment.

  “What about Hanult?” I ask. “Fuchs managed to convince him of his special genius.”

  Riley laughs. “Those two were something. It was like they were both acting out some movie with Hanult as the wise, older mentor and Fuchs the brash kid needing inspiration and direction. Hanult thought Fuchs should be running the world, and Fuchs agreed.”

  “Was Fuchs close with anyone else in school? Students, professors?” Dev asks.