Bittersweet
Page 3
“Zoe,” Adam said, suddenly too close again, right at her ear. She could hear him clearly, despite Logan's wails. “Zoe, I’m not trying to take his company. I’m trying to protect it.”
She whirled around to confront him, so close she could see the little lines at the corners of his eyes and the slight sheen of sweat on his forehead. “How exactly are you protecting it?”
“The company can’t survive as it is without Josh.”
“Michael—”
“Michael is good at management. At details.” His voice held more texture than normal. “He doesn’t have the vision, and he doesn’t have Josh’s skills. He knows this as well as I do. He can’t run Byte Tech on his own. If you want to try to take it on yourself and hire some more talent to do the technical work, I’ll do what I can to help.”
She didn’t want that. She wasn't remotely fit by training or by nature to run a company like that, and she had no idea what to do. Josh should have left her more guidance, but he hadn’t wanted to admit the cancer was going to defeat him.
Zoe stood speechlessly, torn between Logan’s screaming and the intensity of Adam’s eyes and voice.
He continued, “If this company is Josh’s legacy, Zoe, then please let me make sure his legacy is preserved for when Logan is old enough to claim it.”
To her dismay, a tear streamed out of Zoe’s eye and down her cheek.
For the first time, Adam’s calm broke. His features tensed up—almost like a wince—and he looked away from her with a jerk of his head.
Zoe hugged Logan, who was still crying loudly, although the deafening wails had lessened a bit. She managed to say, “I need to think about it.”
“Of course. If you’d like, I could flesh out several options of how we could handle it. Then you and your lawyer can discuss it, or you could get advice from someone else.”
She nodded, hating the idea of having to make a decision like this. Josh had tried so hard to remain independent, to not cling to Adam’s coattails, but she couldn’t insist on independence if it meant destroying everything Josh had worked for.
“Is that all?” Zoe asked, looking over at the file of paperwork on the conference table. “I should get Logan home.”
“Yes. That’s all we need to do today.” Adam’s eyes scanned over Zoe from her tousled hair to her worn shoes and settled on Logan crying in her arms. “I’ll get a car to take you home.”
Zoe’s spine immediately stiffened. “I don’t need—”
Adam just ignored her objections. He walked over to pick up his phone and instructed his assistant to have his car service have someone come by to pick her up.
“I don’t appreciate being pushed around like this,” she said stiffly, feeling like she wasn’t at her best to wage this particular battle. “If I say I don’t need your help, then I mean it.”
“You mean you don’t want my help. Not that you don’t need it.” His tone was matter-of-fact. Not angry or defensive at all.
“I don’t need—”
“You’ve had a hard day and a hard conversation, and Logan is very unhappy. Why shouldn’t you accept a ride home instead of trying to find a cab?”
Zoe didn’t have a good answer to that question. Because the answer was simply that she didn’t like to accept help from Adam. “I don’t like feeling like a charity case.”
“Zoe, you’re my cousin’s wife. There’s no charity here.”
She stared at him for a long moment, breathless and still on the edge of tears. For some reason, his words reassured her.
She finally nodded. “All right.”
“So can my car take you and Logan home?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
* * *
The next day Zoe was determined to accomplish yet another difficult task. She needed to start going through Josh’s things.
She hadn’t touched anything yet, but she was determined not to be one of those people who kept their dead loved one's belongings untouched as a sort of permanent shrine in the house.
She was just steeling herself to start on Josh’s desk when an old high school friend called. She appreciated the gesture, but the stilted conversation and attempts at consolation only made her feel worse.
She couldn’t take another call like that today, so she turned off the ringer on her phone, set Logan down on a blanket on the floor with his favorite felt blocks, and started to work on the desk.
Josh had been a bit of a packrat, so it took a long time for her to go through it. Most of what filled the drawers was junk—newspaper clippings, old shopping lists, scrawled notes about possible projects, dog-eared magazines, pens that no longer worked, and hundreds and hundreds of rubber bands. She put aside everything that looked important or work related so Michael could go through it, and she filled up most of a garbage bag with what remained.
The only really hard part was when she found a little leather box—one she’d never known Josh possessed—filled with cards and notes she’d given him, ticket stubs from shows they’d seen, the receipt from her engagement ring, the brochure from the hotel in St. Lucia where they’d spent their honeymoon, and other random items that held only sentimental value.
She had a good cry over that box, until Logan needed his diaper changed.
After lunch, Zoe and Logan both took a nap. She surprised herself by sleeping almost three hours. Feeling a new burst of energy, she ran for forty-five minutes on the treadmill in the bedroom and, after a shower, decided it was time to face the closet.
The clothes were much, much harder than the desk.
Josh hadn’t been very neat, so his dresser drawers were a mess. He’d loved graphic t-shirts, and he had a ridiculous number of jeans. After she pulled them out of his drawers, she felt totally surrounded by them. By him.
In the closet, she found the old sport coat she’d tried for years to get him to throw away, and she smelled the aftershave he used to wear.
She ended up sobbing on the floor of her closet, hugging the jacket to her chest.
She had no idea how long she would have cried if she hadn’t been startled by a loud knock on the door. She jumped up and hurried to the door, disoriented and very confused since the doorman hadn’t called up to ask her about letting in a visitor.
“Zoe,” a familiar male voice came from outside the door. “Zoe, open the door.”
She jerked to a stop in the middle of her living room, still holding Josh’s sport coat, unable to process why Adam was here.
“Zoe, let me in,” he called through the door, “or the doorman will unlock it!”
With an indignant gasp, Zoe marched over and threw open the door. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Adam pushed his way into her loft, his face not as composed as usual. It looked tense and damp, as if he’d been sweating, and there was a strange sort of urgency in his eyes. “Are you all right?” he asked, his voice inexplicably thick.
“Yes, I’m all right. What’s wrong with you? And how did you manage to bully my doorman to let you up?”
“Why haven’t you been answering your phone?” Adam sounded every bit as annoyed as she was.
“Oh,” she mumbled, realizing what must have happened. “I silenced the phone so people wouldn’t bug me.”
Adam took a deep breath—so deep she could see the inhale and exhale in his chest. It seemed like he was suppressing something he wanted to say, like he was holding it back by force.
“Now what exactly are you doing here?” she asked, pleased when she sounded mostly calm.
“I’ve been trying to call you all day. This afternoon, when I couldn’t reach you, I contacted Jane to see if she could—since I thought maybe you just didn’t want to talk to me. But she couldn’t reach you either. So I came over. Then you didn’t pick up when the doorman called up, so he let me in.”
As he spoke, Zoe had gone over to pick up her phone. When she glanced at the screen, she saw she’d missed twenty-seven calls in the eight hours her phone had been silenced.
“I know that now.”
She looked at Adam closely and saw the twitching of a muscle in his jaw, the way the collar of his shirt and tie were slightly askew. She realized he’d been genuinely concerned about her. “I’m sorry,” she said—more because he’d been worried than because she’d done anything wrong. “I didn’t realize anyone was trying to reach me.”
Adam opened his mouth to respond but was interrupted when his own phone rang. He answered it with a brief, “Peterson.”
After a moment, he handed the phone to her. “Jane.”
“Hey, Jane,” Zoe said into the phone, rather sheepishly. “Sorry about that.”
“Shit,” Jane said with a loud, gusty exhale, “Why the hell didn’t you answer your phone?”
Now Zoe felt a little defensive. “I’m allowed to turn off the ringer and have some peace and quiet occasionally, aren’t I? I didn’t know everyone would act like there was a national crisis. I mean, really—do you all think I’m about to do myself in or something?”
“No, no,” Jane assured her, sounding rather sheepish now herself. “I wouldn’t have been worried, but Adam sounded worried. And it was so weird to get a call from him at all. So then I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Anyway, glad you’re all right.”
“I’m fine,” Zoe announced—both to Jane and to Adam, who was standing in front of her and blatantly eavesdropping on her phone conversation. “I didn’t mean to worry you.”
When she hung up, she handed the phone back to Adam. “Sorry you made the trip over here.”
He gave a half-shrug. It was hard to tell from his expression what he was feeling now. He didn’t look urgent anymore, but he looked tired and maybe a bit disgruntled. “Just leave your phone on from now on.”
She tensed. “I won’t leave it off for so long—in case people need to get a hold of me. But I have every right to do with my phone what I want.”
His eyes narrowed, but he didn’t object. “Fair enough.”
Zoe stood in front of him for a moment, feeling awkward, expecting him to leave now that he’d ascertained her continued existence. But he didn’t. His gaze moved from her face—which she realized was still probably tear-streaked from crying in the closet earlier—to her unflattering sweats to Josh’s jacket, which she still held.
“What were you doing?” Adam asked at last, as if he had every right to know.
“I was going through some of Josh’s things,” she admitted—not because he needed to know but because there didn’t seem to be any point in withholding the information.
“By yourself?”
“Why shouldn’t I do it by myself?”
Adam slanted a quick, impatient look at her—the one that indicated she’d said something foolish. But all he said was, “Where’s Logan?”
“In the bedroom, playing with his animal table. He may actually have fallen asleep.”
As if her explanation was an invitation, Adam strode back to the bedroom. Logan wasn’t asleep. He was sitting up next to his plastic table top that had bright animals and shapes that he could move around in different configurations. One of his hands clutched the shape of a cow.
When he saw them, he clapped his hands and jabbered something Zoe took to be a greeting.
“Hey,” she said gently, “Have you been playing by yourself all this time?”
When he reached out to her, babbling sounds like, “Da-la-ga-la,” she leaned over to pick him up and pull him into a hug.
“He’s sitting up on his own?” Adam asked.
“Yeah. Didn’t you know that? He’s been sitting up for a few weeks now.”
“Isn’t he kind of young to sit up on his own?”
“No. I think it’s about normal.” Zoe gave Adam a curious look, wondering what had prompted the sudden interest in his sort-of nephew. “Although I’m quite sure he’s a child protégé just the same.”
His eyes warmed slightly. “Naturally.” He glanced around the room then, obviously taking note of the piles of Josh’s clothes she had everywhere. “This can’t be fun,” he murmured at last.
Zoe swallowed, strangely touched by the mild words. “Yeah. It’s horrible. I’m trying to give away as much as I can, but it’s so hard to give things up.” She stroked Josh’s jacket, which was still slung over her arm.
“Do you want some help?”
If he’d just assumed he could help her, she would have refused him. But since he’d asked, and since he’d seemed to be genuinely worried about her before, it seemed silly to say no.
“All right. If you think you can help without being too bossy.”
Adam gave her an odd look—she couldn’t figure out if it was surprise, amusement, or annoyance. “I’ll restrain my bossy tendencies for the greater good.”
To her surprise, Adam actually did help. Not just with the practical matters, sorting and folding the clothes, but with the harder task of deciding what to keep and what to give away.
She kept a few things, like his sport coat, but there was absolutely no reason for her to keep twenty-three pairs of men’s jeans, just because they had been Josh’s.
Adam was surprisingly easy to work with. His attitude was matter-of-fact and neutral, which helped Zoe control her emotions, and he seemed to know what questions to ask in order to determine whether something was worth keeping or not.
They managed to get through most of the clothes before Zoe would have thought it was possible.
At the back of the closet, Zoe pulled out a leather jacket. She recognized it, although Josh hadn’t worn it since they’d been married. It was the jacket he’d worn when he was in high school and college.
She pulled it off the hanger and shook it out, turning around to say something about it to Adam. When she saw his face, she stopped short.
Adam stared at the jacket, his expression almost frozen. There was an ache in his eyes she recognized, an ache she’d felt so often herself.
That was when she realized something she hadn’t known before. Adam grieved for his cousin. He’d cared about him. He was sad that Josh was no longer in the world. The leather jacket, which held little emotional resonance for Zoe, evidently held a lot for Adam.
His expression made her own chest hurt, and she had to swallow over a lump in her throat to say, “Did you…did you want to have this?” She held the jacket out to him hesitantly.
“You’ll want to keep it, won’t you?”
“Not really. This was before my time with him. It doesn’t mean that much to me. But I think it meant a lot to him.” She ran her hands over the soft leather. “And I think he’d like for you to have it.”
This time, Adam accepted the jacket when she extended it to him. “If you’re sure,” he murmured, lowering his brow and studying her carefully.
“Yeah. I’m sure.”
They stood in the closet across from each other for an uncomfortably long time. They weren’t really looking at each other, but Zoe was acutely aware of Adam, like he was more of a person to her now than he’d been even this morning.
Finally, she managed to clear her throat. “Well, I think we’re almost done. Thanks for your help.”
“Of course. Do you want me to carry these down and take them to wherever you’d like to donate them?”
She started to object—more out of habit than anything else—but then she realized that would be ridiculous. “Sure. Thanks.”
Adam actually looked a little surprised before he managed to hide the expression, but he didn’t say anything. In a couple of trips, they managed to get all of the clothes down to his car.
When the last bag had made it into the trunk, Zoe stood in front of Adam on the sidewalk, holding Logan. “Thanks for your help.”
“You’re welcome.”
It felt like he was waiting for something, but she had no idea what it might be. She patted Logan on
the back and felt a little uncertain.
For the last few years, she’d grown used to Adam being professional and distant. But he seemed more like the guy she used to have lunch with just now. And maybe a little lost.
Since Josh had died, she’d been lost herself, so there wasn’t anything she could do about that recognition in Adam. It made her feel kind of strange, though—unsettled and disoriented.
“All right,” she said. “Well…”
“Well,” Adam repeated, “I’ll be in touch with some options for Byte Tech. The decision is entirely yours.”
“Okay. I’ll be around. And I’ll try to keep my ringer on.”
Adam smiled back, his expression almost poignant. “Good.”
When he got into the car and it pulled away, Zoe carried Logan back up to the apartment. It was huge. Vast. And for some reason felt emptier than before.
All of Josh’s clothes were gone.
Josh was gone.
Now she and Logan had to fill this huge space on their own.
Since she didn’t want to spend the evening depressed, she called a couple of friends as she fed Logan. Then she ate and decided to spend the evening reading in bed.
After a while, she started to lose her concentration, thinking about how lonely her big bed was without Josh, but then her phone rang.
“Just checking to see if your ringer was on,” Adam said at her greeting.
“Has anyone ever told you you’re kind of obnoxious?”
He actually chuckled. She almost never heard him laugh anymore. “You might be the first.”
Four
Zoe glanced over into the living area where Logan was playing on the floor with his animal tabletop. When she saw her son was still happily engaged, she shifted her eyes back to Adam, who sat across from her at the table.
“So what do you think, Zoe?” he asked.
She sighed, staring down at the documents laid out on the table in front of her. “I don’t know. I guess it makes sense. My lawyer says it’s the right thing. Michael says it’s the right thing. Everyone says it’s the right thing.”