by Kara Isaac
Silence settled as Louis took another sip of orange juice and gazed out the window, apparently in no hurry to make further conversation.
Was he waiting for Jackson to say something? He knew little about his great-uncle—his grandmother’s brother on his mother’s side. By the time he was born, it had been decades since Louis had fled Iowa and the small stifling community they both had been brought up in. Jackson always felt an intangible sense of kinship with him, though—the two black sheep of the family who didn’t want to spend their lives working the land, slaves to the vagaries of weather and a million other things you couldn’t control.
The family lore centered around Louis’s uncanny ability to buy land in Texas that years later would become highly sought after by oil companies, making him a very rich man. Now Jackson wondered if he also had some sort of law enforcement background or whether he was just a natural at making people squirm.
Jackson tented his fingers in front of him, suddenly aware he had no idea what was expected of him on this trip. The whole bizarre situation had come together at the last minute and his uncle had been vague as to what Jackson’s role would actually entail. The prolonged silence broke him. “So, um, I guess we should talk about what you would like me to do. As your assistant, I mean.”
His uncle picked up his knife and methodically buttered his toast. He then cut the bread into four precise pieces, popped one into his mouth, and chewed at leisure. Almost as if Jackson wasn’t even there, let alone asked a question.
After what felt like an eon, Louis lifted his napkin to his lips, brushed away a few crumbs, and spoke. “Oh, nothing too arduous. I’m pretty self-sufficient for an old codger. I’ll let you know what I need and when I need it.”
A large cup of steaming coffee landed in front of Jackson and he busied himself adding sugar and milk, grateful for something to cover up his confusion. If the old man didn’t need an assistant, then why had he paid all this money for Jackson to come with him? He’d assumed Louis was killing two birds with one stone, but now it appeared one of the birds was already dead, and they could have easily dealt with any questions he had about the business plan via phone or e-mail while he was away.
His uncle peered over the glasses balanced at the end of his pointy nose. “You’re wondering why you’re here.”
Jackson took a tentative sip of his coffee and nodded. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m very grateful for the opportunity, but yes, I guess I am.”
His uncle turned his full attention to him, sliding his glasses back up the bridge of his nose with the tip of his finger. “After we met, I reviewed your business plan and my initial thoughts were favorable.”
Thank you, God. Not that he still believed in one. But if he did, he would be grateful.
This was even better than he’d dared to hope. He had thought he’d be forced to suffer through much more of the tour before he got any sense of which way his uncle was leaning.
Framing his expression to be on the positive side of neutral, he waited for questions, confident he’d be able to answer to Louis’s satisfaction. BabyZen was genius, the business plan solid, his connections impeccable. All he needed was the capital, which now dangled right in front of him.
Nodding his thanks to the waiter who placed a plate of five different types of toast in front of him, he surveyed the preserves selection. He didn’t want his uncle to think he was too eager. Nothing scared investors off faster than appearing desperate to get your hands on their cash.
His uncle picked up his knife. “But you see, son, I believe in investing in people first and ideas second. I realize this is unusual, but it’s worked well for me in the past. So while you have some good ideas, I don’t know enough about you to make a decision yet.”
Jackson managed to keep his expression intact while, internally, his spirits sank. He should’ve known there was going to be a catch. He’d been taken to the bottom of the world to spend three weeks with a bunch of Tolkienites, after all.
Louis picked up a small jar of jam that sat in the center of the table and dipped his knife in. “Obviously we’re family, but let’s face it, we might as well be strangers. I loved my sister, but Iowa and Texas weren’t exactly locations that lent themselves to popping in for a cup of coffee and watching each other’s families grow up.”
It occurred to Jackson he didn’t know anything about his uncle’s family either. He had vague recollections from his youth of a mention of a wife at one point, maybe a couple of kids, but it was all a bit hazy. Louis certainly hadn’t mentioned either.
“So you want to get to know me?” He wasn’t sure whether to be concerned or not. He thought he was a pretty decent guy. His parents had raised him right. Sure, there were a few decisions they might not have approved of, but he was okay with them. He certainly rated himself as a better person than the majority of those he’d crossed paths with during his near decade in California.
His uncle spread some jam from corner to corner on his toast. “Yes, but it’s a little more complicated than that. You’re asking for a lot of money and, at least initially, I would be your sole investor, which I’ve decided requires something a little out of the ordinary.”
Jackson’s stomach clenched. This was not good, coming from a man who thought dressing up like a wizard for public outings was perfectly normal. “Oh?” Somehow he managed to keep his voice from reflecting that his heart pounded.
His uncle placed his knife down in perfect parallel to his toast and turned his focus back to Jackson. “That’s the main reason I asked you to come with me. Being a fellow Tolkien fan was a most prodigious start and did more for your case than any fancy business plan could have. However, I’m a big believer that nothing brings out a man’s true character better than being out of his comfort zone. So, over the next few weeks I’m going to be watching you so I can assess your character. At the end of the tour I’ll make my final decision.”
Good thing Jackson hadn’t started on breakfast because at that, he suddenly lost his appetite.
Across the table, his uncle’s gnarly fingers plucked up the piece of toast and suspended it in midair. “To give you a heads-up, you’ve already got some ground to make up.”
“Oh?” How could that be when they’d barely been in the country for twenty-four hours?
“I’m going to leave you to dwell on that. Figure out what part of your behavior in the last day or so I may have found wanting. Self-reflection is an important part of personal growth.” His uncle finally popped the last meticulously compiled piece of toast into his mouth.
Jackson barely managed to keep his jaw from hanging. He couldn’t believe he’d signed on to try and convince the geriatric version of Tony Robbins to be his only investor. But Louis was his last hope. He’d done everything he could to tap into his contacts back in L.A. for seed funding, but after Xavier went belly-up so spectacularly, it was never going to happen. Most of them hadn’t even returned his calls.
If it hadn’t been mere hours since he’d promised his sister he was going to succeed, he would’ve been on the next plane home. Something told him all the hard work he’d done in the past in an attempt to part investors from their money for his last venture had nothing on being under his uncle’s scrutiny for the next few weeks.
* * *
Allie scanned the lineup of her charges. Their overnight bags were all assembled by the hotel doors, awaiting a porter to take them to their waiting van. The flight to Rotorua, their gateway to Hobbiton, didn’t leave for another hour, and it was only fifteen minutes to the airport so, for once, they were ahead of schedule.
The honeymooners were all snuggled up with arms wrapped around each other, flush from whatever had caused them to miss breakfast and show up for the morning’s walking tour late and flustered.
On the other side of the coin, the spinsters hadn’t stopped squawking complaints all morning. The walking was too much, then it wasn’t
enough. There had been too many stops but not enough. It was too hot, then too windy. Different gourmet treats they’d sampled had variously been too sweet, too sour, too bitter, too soft, too hard, too nutty, too spicy, too bland, too jammy, too chocolatey, too hot, too cold, too moist, and too dry. The one and only thing they hadn’t been able to find fault with was the Leeds Street Bakery’s famous salted caramel cookie. A bite of one of those babies and even their nitpicky little eyes had gotten round: they’d cleaned their plates faster than Gollum caught fish.
Lucky for them, because if they had complained at that point, she wasn’t sure she would have been able to stop herself from banishing them from the rest of the food tour by putting them into a time-out befitting the petulant little children they were behaving like.
Legolas and Arwen, in full regalia again, now bordered on exuberant as they counted down the minutes until they arrived to their next destination. They had undertaken the gourmet tour in good grace, even though it was one of the few things in the itinerary that wasn’t Tolkien related and so was automatically second-class in their world.
The only hiccup had been Esther being nabbed by an eagle-eyed shop assistant who claimed the girl had attempted to steal a Lord of the Rings memorabilia plate. The girl had sworn up, down, and sideways she had just forgotten to pay for it. Which might or might not have been true. Allie would need to keep a closer eye on her until she knew which it was.
Allie’s gaze landed on Mr. Duff, who was chortling away to himself as he poked around in the large bag of gourmet chocolates he had purchased. Now there was the perfect tourist. Polite, unfailingly enthusiastic about everything, not a single complaint even when one would have been valid. He’d even managed to coax smiles out of the Bluesome Twosome.
Finally, Allie let her eyes stray to Jackson, who was standing a couple of feet apart from the others, hands in pockets, staring into the distance. She had no idea what was up with him today. One minute he’d been being an overly obsequious assistant, fawning over Mr. Duff, and the next he’d been so distracted he’d almost walked into a power pole. Twice.
His usual sarcastic, rude streak had definitely been absent, which left her feeling weirdly disconcerted and threw her off-kilter. He hadn’t even so much as passed comment on anywhere they’d been or the foods they’d sampled. It was as though only his physical shell had accompanied them for the morning. It was just strange. Must be jet lag. No doubt his usual obnoxious self would reappear soon enough and she’d be wishing this version back.
Either way, it didn’t matter to her. Her job was to deliver the tour experience the clients had paid good money for and to keep them out of physical danger, not pander to their every mood swing. That was done on a purely voluntary basis. And when it came to Jackson Gregory, he would be getting exactly what his boss had paid for and not one cent more.
Seven
ALLIE WALKED INTO HER ROOM at the farm-cum–boutique B and B they were overnighting at and tossed her small bag onto the bed. Three hours of freedom before dinner lay before her. One hundred and eighty whole minutes of not having to talk Tolkien, think Tolkien, or fake a deep, abiding, and eternal love for his writings.
Exactly what she needed, since by dinner everyone would be so excited by the next day’s private tour of the Hobbiton movie set it would consume every conversation. It had already started. The hour-and-ten-minute flight from Wellington north to Rotorua had never felt so long as Elroy and Esther had grilled her on everything their day at Hobbiton would hold, even occasionally switching to Elvish. Whether they did this for fun or to test her, she wasn’t sure. She’d passed with flying colors, of course. Actually, she’d held back to allow them to retain some pride in their abilities, when the truth was, next to her fluency, their amateur attempts were like a toddler’s first sentences as compared to Shakespeare.
Back in the day, she’d applied to write her PhD thesis in Elvish with an English translation. She would have, too, if the university had been able to find three people willing and able to grade it.
Allie sighed as she tugged her boots off her feet. She was glad her thirteen-year-old self who had fallen in love with Middle-earth as the ultimate escape from her mother’s never-ending disapproval and disappointment couldn’t see what she had become. Who would’ve guessed that a job that required her to sleep, eat, and breathe Tolkien would be her undoing?
Oh, she missed academia. For all its flaws, petty politics, and the change in people’s expressions when they realized she wasn’t a “real” doctor, it had been a good life. Not to mention that having the impeccable timing of studying Tolkien while the Lord of the Rings movies were filming had resulted in the conversion of what her mother had previously deemed to be a “completely useless degree” into something that had made her not insubstantial sums as a consultant. Most of which she currently couldn’t touch, thanks to the guy she’d thought was her Aragorn, but who had turned out to be more like the Dark Lord of Mordor.
The smartest girl in the room had turned out to be the dumbest in terms of the things that really mattered.
Shrugging off her traveling uniform of black pants and Southern Luxury Tours–branded shirt and jacket, she slipped into a pair of jeans and a loose-fitting top. The weather was warm but the clouds rolled above, threatening rain. Hopefully those who had decided to tour the farm would finish before the heavens opened.
Pulling her laptop from her carry-on, she luxuriated in the fact that the biggest task ahead of her was the decision as to whether to catch up on Downton Abbey or go really classy with The Bachelorette.
Flipping open the computer, she eased herself onto the cloud-like king-size bed and cracked open a Pepsi from the minibar. As she was about to select what to watch, her phone rang.
Why? How did her mother always manage to have a sense for the absolute best moments to ruin?
She stared at her phone, doing its little vibratey dance on her bed cover. There was absolutely no doubt that if she answered it, the resulting conversation was going to leave her in a bad mood. The only question was whether it would be a one or a ten on the Veronica scale.
But if she didn’t, she would ring and ring and ring until Allie caved and answered.
Sighing, she swiped her phone on and lifted it to her ear. “Hello, Mother.”
“Hello, Allison. What part of the country are we traipsing around today?”
“Rotorua.”
“Urgh. Horrible smelly place. Don’t know how you can bear it.” Said the woman who had her face plastered weekly with stuff that smelled even worse than Rotorua’s famous sulfurous mud pools.
“Once you get used to it, it’s really not that bad.” She’d take a bit of smell over whatever toxins her mother had bubbling away any day.
“I’m sure.” Her mother’s tone indicated she was sure of anything but. “And how are you, dear?”
Allie’s radar started blaring a big red warning siren. The only time her mother used any kind of endearment was when she wanted something. Combining it with a question about Allie’s general well-being meant it was going to be something truly horrible. “No.”
“No what, dear?”
Double endearment. The last time it had been used was almost two years prior, when she called to “suggest” Allie give the ring her grandmother had bequeathed her to Susannah because her sister really wanted it and Allie “didn’t exactly have use for it anymore.” She didn’t even want to think about what her mother wanted now. “No to whatever it is you’re about to ask me to do.”
She wasn’t usually this abrupt, but her mother had managed to have the impeccable timing to call right when Allie’s well of patience had run dry. If she’d waited until after The Bachelorette, she probably would have found a much nicer daughter at the other end of the line.
“What makes you think I’m about to ask you to do anything? Can’t a mother call her daughter for a chat?”
Norm
al mothers, yes. This one? No. “Sure, what shall we chat about?”
A pause at the other end. No surprises there. Her mother could talk the leaves off the trees at a social event when she thought it was worth the effort, but when it came to her own children, she wouldn’t have a clue where to start. She cleared her throat. “Actually, since you mentioned it, there was something I wanted to ask you.”
Allie braced herself. Don’t react. Whatever it is, don’t react. Breathe. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Whatever she says, you are Zen. You are a leaf floating on a gentle breeze—
“How would you feel about removing your father from the board of your grandmother’s trust? All it would take is a majority vote.”
An expletive slipped out before Allie could stop it.
“Allison Marie!”
Allie clamped her mouth shut and forced herself to breathe through the red mist that had settled around her vision. When she trusted herself to speak, her voice came out clipped, controlled. “Mother, I’m not entirely sure what alternative reality you’ve decided to reside in, but he’s the most competent trustee out of all of us.”
Not that this was even the question. Her father’s big mistake had been to be caught having an affair in such a fashion that her mother couldn’t ignore it and was now punishing him through whatever avenue she could conjure up short of public shaming. And not that Allie was in any way, shape, or form pro-adultery, but she did have some sympathy for him. She imagined he would have found a warmer bed for the past thirty-something years if he’d shared it with the iceberg that sank the Titanic.
Not to mention she knew her mother had engaged in at least one—ahem—“liaison” during their marriage. Like that was something Allie ever wanted to think about. As far as she was concerned, the fact that one child had sprung from her parents’ union, let alone two, was right up there alongside Jesus turning water into wine as far as miracles went.