Chief Financial Officer at one of the leading global hospitality companies? Guh. Is he serious? I like to think big, but never in my wildest dreams did I imagine myself in an executive position at that level, certainly not this early in my career. Not that I couldn’t do it. I learn fast and can adapt to any professional environment. But why does Mr. Stanfield want me for this very important job? Shouldn’t he promote from within or steal a seasoned CFO from some other conglomerate?
“I can see the wheels turning in your head. You want to know why I chose you, a company outsider, when I could have been grooming someone here at SHG to take over for Charles.”
Apparently, Mr. Stanfield is a mind reader, or I’ve got a terrible poker face.
“There are a couple of reasons. One, there’s no one here in your age group, with your education, variety of experience working with different corporate entities, or innate business acumen. I want a young CFO, fresh blood if you will, someone who will help bring the company forward with innovation and enthusiasm. Two, SHG has always been a family-run business. My grandfather opened the first Stanfield hotel here in San Francisco a hundred years ago. His son, my father, succeeded him forty-two years later, then it was my turn, along with my sister, when our father passed in ‘94. Penny and I want to make sure that the next generation is ready to take the reins after we’re gone. Her sons are still teenagers, so they have several more years of schooling to get through before they can join the company, but I’m convinced that their cousin is ready to take her place at SHG now.”
I can feel the Forehead Crease of Doom (tm Willa) forming between my brows. “Forgive me, but I’m confused. I thought you told me you didn’t have any children.” And what do his offspring have to do with me anyway? Does he want me to be part of the support system at SHG for his daughter and nephews? Oh, God, what if Stanfield-ette is another Monica McAllister? I just woke up from one nepotistic nightmare; I’m not eager to be dragged into another one.
“Not with my wife. My daughters come from a previous relationship.” Leaning forward on his elbows, he tells me, “One of them is more creatively-inclined, like her mother. The other is gifted with numbers. She’s incredibly sharp and has more chutzpah than anyone I’ve ever known. I like to think she gets all that from me.” His mouth quirks with amusement at his little joke. However, I’m not laughing.
“Your daughter sounds like the perfect candidate for this CFO position, so why are you offering it to . . .” Suddenly, all the cylinders in the usually high-performance engine that is my brain click into place, and I jump up from my chair.
“J.B. Stanfield . . . what does the ‘J’ stand for?”
I think back to all the biographical data I read on this man when I first started working on cases for his company.
“It’s James, isn’t it? James, after your uncle on your mother’s side. And sometimes a nickname for James is . . .”
He stands, opens a desk drawer to his right, and pulls out a photograph, which he reaches across the desk to hand to me. “Jimmy,” he says as I look down at the picture, the same one, the only one I’ve ever seen of my mother and the sperm donor.
Chapter 38
(Sloane)
“I can’t believe this,” I mutter. But here it is, photographic proof right in front of me. And not just that, my father’s been right in front of me for over a year. Why didn’t I recognize him? I know it’s been more than two decades since the last time I looked at this picture and there’ve been some changes in his appearance due to age. (In true ‘80s form, he had a feathered Rick Springfield thing going on with his hair and a little gold hoop in his left ear when he dated my mother.) He’s graying now and has the requisite crow’s feet and laugh lines all middle-aged men do, but his smile hasn’t changed and neither have his eyes – they’re Willa’s eyes, they’re my eyes – the same shape, the same shade of blue. I bet he’s even horribly farsighted like we are!
“Let me explain,” he entreats, moving out from behind his desk.
“No explanations necessary, Dad.” I fling the photo down. “Clearly, the guilt of abandoning your children all those years ago finally caught up with you, so you thought you’d offer me a job to salve your conscience. Well, you can take your CFO position and stick it where the sun don’t shine, as my grandmother, Lovey, used to say. In case you didn’t know, she’s the one who helped raise Willa and me because we had no father.”
“Your temper, something else you inherited from me,” Mr. Stanfield, I mean, the sperm donor, observes.
“ARGH!!!!!!” My hands ball into fists at my sides. “Stop saying we have all these things in common! I don’t want to be like you.”
“But you are, which is why I understand exactly how you’re feeling right now. Hurt, angry, confused, also curious, because you don’t like unsolved mysteries and I’ve always been a big question mark in your life. As much as you’d like to walk out of here right now and prove a point about how much you don’t need me, you can’t because then you’d never get the answers you’ve been looking for these last thirty-two years.”
“Ah, you know my age. So, you are good with numbers, or at least you can count backwards to your fling with my mother in the summer of ‘81.” I lob some snark back at him rather than admit that everything he just said about me and how I’m feeling is spot on. “Fine,” I say, plopping back down in the club chair and crossing my arms over my chest in a defensive posture. “Let me have it, your litany of excuses for why you’ve been a no-show as a parent all these years.”
He takes a seat opposite me in the other club chair. “No excuses, just the truth. Your mother and I were both very young when we met and fell in love. Don’t roll your eyes,” he admonishes me, sounding disturbingly father-like. “What we felt was love. Maybe not a mature and enduring love, but it was love nonetheless. Unfortunately, I had to go back to school in England and we didn’t have things like e-mail and cell phones with international calling plans back in ye olden days, so it was impossible for us to stay in touch, or for your mother to tell me when she found out she was pregnant.”
“Which gets you off the hook for the first six years of our lives, but you did find out that Willa and I existed when you ran into our little family in Union Square.”
“Yes, and it was quite a shock, not an unpleasant one, but still something I wasn’t expecting or at all prepared for.”
“I’m sure your wife was thrilled.” Might as well mention the pink elephant in the room.
He sighs and looks down at his left hand, where his wedding band still sits on his ring finger. “Lesley and I had been married for a few years at that point, and she very much wanted to have children. She’d been unable to get pregnant, so we tried fertility treatments, which took quite a toll on her emotionally, as well as physically. One of them finally resulted in a pregnancy, but she miscarried, just a few days before our encounter with you and your sister. Lesley had been so depressed about losing the baby that I’d taken her out holiday shopping, thinking it might lift her spirits.”
“Merry Christmas, Lesley, no babies for you this year, but here are two kids your husband made with someone else.” I frown, feeling sorry for the woman.
“The timing of that meeting was . . . unfortunate. Under different circumstances, I would have embraced the news that I had two healthy, beautiful daughters, but Lesley was in such a fragile state and when I pulled your mother aside to speak with her about the situation, she seemed frightened that I might try and take you girls away from her. She was always very intimidated by my family and their money, with good reason, because my father was a controlling man who had very strong views about how I, as his only son, should conduct myself. He would have been apoplectic if he learned I’d fathered two Stanfield heirs outside of marriage and they were being raised by a free-spirited artist who made their clothes and sent them to public school.”
“The horror,” I deadpan.
“You joke, but that would have been totally unacceptable to my father and he
would have used his power and money to make life very difficult for your mother. I didn’t want that, and I didn’t want you and Willa to be pulled in different directions your whole childhood. Then, there was Lesley. She’d already been through so much, and I hated the thought of causing her more pain. Taking all those things into consideration, I realized that claiming my role as your father at that time would have been incredibly selfish. I would have hurt my wife, your mother whose happiness still meant very much to me, and probably you and your sister. I could see that the two of you were well taken care of and loved dearly by your mother, so you weren’t suffering from my absence.”
I narrow my eyes at him, not sure if I’m buying what he’s selling. “Funny how in your version of events, you come out sounding all noble and self-sacrificing. For the record, Willa and I suffered plenty because we didn’t have a father in our lives. It sucked every single day, especially when the other kids wanted to know why our dad wasn’t around – Where is he? Do you ever see him? Doesn’t he love you? I was pretty confident the answer to that last one was a big, fat ‘no!’”
“Oh, Sloane.” He shakes his head ruefully. “You couldn’t be more wrong. I can’t tell you how many times I second guessed myself and the decision I made that day. I thought I did what was best for everyone, but that doesn’t mean it was easy. As the years passed, I knew I was missing out on so much with you girls, not just the big stuff like birthdays and opening presents on Christmas morning, but all those precious, little, father-daughter moments like reading you bedtime stories, or teaching you how to ride a bike, or helping you train for your math meets, or having strategy sessions about your presidential campaign when you were a senior.”
“How did you know about all that?”
“Well . . .” He clears his throat self-consciously. “I’m not proud of this, because I kept it from Lesley, but when you and Willa were older, maybe around thirteen, I reached out to your mother and asked if it would be okay for me to call her every once in a while to get updates about what was going on in your lives so that I could feel some kind of connection to the two of you–”
“Without having to actually see us, or take any financial responsibility.”
“I may have failed you and your sister in many ways, but not in that one. I offered your mother money repeatedly through the years, starting that day we saw each other in Union Square. She refused, saying she could provide you girls with everything you needed. I didn’t push, because I knew it was important to her to be self-sufficient, but when your needs exceeded her means . . .”
What’s he talking about? When did my needs ever ex– Well, there was my tuition to Stanford, even with scholarships, financial aid, and me working two part-time jobs, I couldn’t have swung going there if I hadn’t received that inheritance from my grandmo–
“Ohmigod!” I exclaim, jumping to my feet. “That 50K didn’t come from Lovey at all; it was from you! I knew there was something off about that money. My grandmother didn’t have two nickels to rub together while she was alive, but she had a hundred grand to split between Willa and me after she was gone? And we didn’t find out about this supposed ‘inheritance’ until she’d been buried five months. I should have known it was all a ruse! I can’t believe my mother went along with it.” I start pacing back and forth, too pissed off to stay in one place.
“You would have never taken the money if you’d known it was from me . . .,” my father states matter-of-factly as he pushes himself up out of his chair.
And he’s right. I would have considered the money a handout and refused his help on principle and to punish him for waiting so long to show he gave a damn about me.
“. . . and you wouldn’t have been able to go to Stanford without it. You earned a spot at that school with your brains and hard work, and I wasn’t going to let you lose out on such a wonderful opportunity when I could make it happen by simply writing a check.”
Groaning with frustration, I stop my pacing in front of him. I never noticed how tall he was before; I’m wearing three-inch heels and I still have to tilt my head back in order to lock eyes with him. Height – another thing he passed on to Willa and me. “This is infuriating!” I fume. “I’ve been very comfortable hating you and thinking terrible things about you my whole life, but now you’re screwing all that up for me. How can I go on loathing the man who made it possible for me to go to my dream school and get the best education I could?”
“If it makes you feel any better, my ‘donation’ to your college fund wasn’t completely altruistic. There was some vanity involved in that as I’ve always considered you to be a reflection of me, so all your successes have been my successes, and I took great pride in your many accomplishments at Stanford. And while the faux inheritance plot worked out well in regards to you; it backfired on me spectacularly with your sister. She got her trip to Europe, which I thought would be good for her, but she came back married to that mime.”
I crinkle my nose with revulsion at the mention of Willa’s smarmy ex. “Freakin’ Alphonse. Such a loser and a user, but Willa never saw it.”
“Your sister’s very trusting. I, however, am not. I had a background check run on Mr. Giroux and was not surprised to find that he had a history of living off women while he pursued his art. I decided to keep a watchful eye on him while he was here in San Francisco, and according to the reports I received, he spent more time cheating on your sister than he did pretending to be a statue down on the pier. It’s fortunate he received that job offer from Epcot when he did.”
“Yes, it was since his insistence on picking up stakes and moving to Orlando was what finally ended his marriage to Willa.” I eye him thoughtfully for a second as a suspicion starts to take shape. “You know people at Disney, don’t you?”
He doesn’t reply, but brushes his finger against the side of his nose à la Paul Newman in The Sting.
“You’re doing it again.”
“What?” He plays innocent.
“Making it hard for me to hate you.” I give him a little half-smile before turning serious once more. “You can never tell Willa you had anything to do with Alphonse leaving.”
“It’ll be our secret.”
I nod in agreement, feeling a peculiar surge of happiness, because he and I are now sharing the kind of confidences that only dads and daughters do, and camaraderie, because I know I’m no longer alone in being willing to do whatever it takes to protect Willa. I’m not ready to buy Jimmy (J.B.? Pops?) a tie for Father’s Day just yet, though. I still have some questions.
“Why me?” I wonder. “When you decided it was time to reveal yourself as our father . . . I assume this happened after Lesley died and you no longer had to worry about her feelings?” He confirms this supposition by inclining his head. “You had a choice between Willa and me. You had to have known that out of the two of us Willa would be the one more likely to be receptive to a paternal overture from you. Hell, I doubt she would have even asked you for an explanation as to why you stayed away for so many years. She would have just been thrilled to finally have a dad.”
“Probably, but you were right earlier about me feeling guilty. I didn’t think I deserved to be accepted or forgiven so easily, and I knew you’d make me work for a place in your life. That’s what I’ve been trying to do this past year – earn your respect, establish a rapport, connect with you on a professional, as well as a social, level.”
“It was a good plan.” I have to admit. “A smart one. And I appreciate that you didn’t take the path of least resistance. You have a lot of patience – a trait we do not share.”
“Patience can be learned. You should read The Art of War.”
“I tried, but didn’t have the patience to finish it,” I inform him, with a smirk. “I hope that’s not a job requirement to work at SHG.”
He perks up. “You’ll take the CFO position?”
“I didn’t say that. I have to think about it.”
“Of course, of course. Take all the time you ne
ed. Just know how much I want you here, working by my side. SHG is where you belong, Sloane. This company is your birthright.”
The word “birthright” makes me cringe. “Should I decide to join the SHG team, I will earn that CFO position, not have it handed to me on a silver platter because I won the DNA lotto.”
“If you’d like to start at the bottom and work your way up, I’m sure there are openings in the mail room.” I can tell by the glint in his eye he’s teasing me.
“Ha ha.” I scoop my purse up off the floor, where it’s sitting next to the club chair, and prepare to take my leave. After what’s transpired, I’m not exactly sure how to handle this goodbye, so I retreat to my comfort zone, where I act like a professional.
Extending my hand to my host, I say in a very business-like tone, “Good meeting.”
“Yes.” He takes my hand and gives it a firm shake. “I think it went very well.”
I start to retract my hand, but he uses it to pull me forward into his arms, which he wraps around me. Great, he’s a hugger. Why does everyone have to be so touchy feely in my family? I bet Grandpa Stanfield, being the hard ass that he was, hated hugs. The two of us probably would have gotten along like gangbusters.
“Thanks for hearing me out,” he murmurs into the top of my head.
“Sure thing.” I pat him on the back, then extricate myself from his fatherly embrace. Oh, dear, he’s looking misty-eyed, which is appropriate, I suppose, when you’ve been reunited with one of your long-lost children, but he needs to save the mush for Willa. “I’ll be in touch,” I say brusquely, then scurry out the door of his office, anxious to be alone so that I can sort out all my feelings about everything that’s happened.
* * *
I drive around the city aimlessly for a few hours, trying to come to terms with the fact that I now have a father who wants to have a relationship with me, both personally and professionally. Am I happy about this? It does seem almost too good to be true. My dad, whom I’d written off ages ago as being a self-centered, irresponsible jerk, has turned out to be just the opposite. It’s very disconcerting, especially when I’ve more or less built my life on the precept that men are not to be trusted, relied upon, or loved because they will only end up letting you down. My distrustful nature is what’s made me so good at my job all these years. If I lose that and start giving people the benefit of the doubt because I was wrong about the sperm donor, how will I function in the corporate world? I won’t be a go-for-the-jugular tiger anymore; I’ll be a fluffy, ineffectual kitten who’ll care more about whether people are having a nice day than if they’re screwing me over in a business deal. If that happens, if I lose my edge, I’m done in big business. I’ll have to go work for . . . It makes me gag to even think about it . . . a non-profit. SHUDDER Okay, Sloane, get a grip. That’s not going to happen. You are who you are. A little bit of positive news on the father front isn’t going to change your core being. It’s not going to make you soft, or sweet, or less percep–
Twin Piques Page 37