The Parent Trap

by Jasinda Wilder

  “When’d you have this built?”

  I know it shouldn’t bug me that he would assume I had it built—it’s a normal, natural thing for anyone to assume. But yet, it does. Knee-jerk irritation, just because this is Thai we’re talking about, I suppose.

  “Um, well? I built it myself about three years ago.”

  His head swivels, and his eyes meet mine. Clearly, this is unexpected. “You built it? Like…”

  I laugh, because his confusion and disbelief are comical. “I run a construction company, Thai. I’m not just a secretary, you know. Before I was Vice President or CEO or whatever, I was on-site every day. I, personally, me, Delia McKenna, am a licensed and insured builder in my own right.” I point at the house. “I borrowed the heavy machinery and cleared the trees, leveled, dug and poured the concrete foundation, framed it, hung the drywall, blew the insulation, roofed it, installed the flooring. The only things I outsourced was running the plumbing and electrical from the road, and installing the actual electrical service. But I did the lighting and the outlets and toilets and sinks myself.”

  He grunts in surprise. “Damn.”

  I can’t help a grin of pride. “I’m not just a figurehead.”

  He shakes his head. “No, I know that. But…I dunno. I guess knowing what to do and how to do it is different than being able to actually, you know…do it.”

  I nod and shrug. “Actually, I do know what you mean. And that was part of why I took on the challenge—I wanted to see if I could take what I knew from supervision and management and apply it to actually being able to do it and have it meet code as well as my own standards.”

  “I’d say it looks like you succeeded.”

  You’d think, considering it was a little cabin in the woods, that I’d have built a traditional log cabin, but I’m actually not a fan of log cabins as a rule, so instead I’d built a little Cape Cod style with cedar shakes and a pair of dormers and a nice deep front porch. I like to think it looks like a Thomas Kincaid painting in the evening, when it’s in shadow and the front windows are lit up.

  I hop down from his truck, which considering the lift kit and 35” tires is a considerable drop. He follows, and I focus all my willpower on not being self-conscious about my shorts. They literally cannot get any shorter or tighter without being considered an undergarment, but I only wear them to run, and only early in the morning, and most of my run is off the roads and away from any possible traffic. Meaning, the only reason I feel okay wearing them in the first place is because it’s highly unlikely anyone will ever see me.

  And now Thai Bristow is behind me, watching me walk.

  And I’m deeply, intensely aware that the spandex is so tight it’s a second skin and they’re so short the bottom curve of my ass cheeks is visible. Especially now—they hiked up while I was sitting and I don’t dare pick the wedge out while he’s watching. But then, which is worse: having a wedgie while he’s behind me, or picking it out while he’s watching?

  I can’t let him know how miserably self-conscious I am. He can’t know.

  I’ve worked hard on this body, and I am genuinely proud of it. Of myself. Of how I look.

  But this is Matthais Bristow.

  His very name, in my mind, is a harbinger of torture and torment and misery.

  Don’t let on. I hold my head high and walk as if I don’t have a care in the world. Even put a little swagger in my step, faking a confident pride I don’t really feel.

  I feel him behind me, and ignore him. As if his presence in my home isn’t throwing me for a loop. Thai Bristow is in my house.

  Suddenly, it seems like a small space. Filled with him.

  He looks around while I pull mugs from my open-face cabinets, and I try to see my kitchen from his eyes: white subway tiles, poured concrete countertops, natural oak shelves with industrial pipes for braces. Exposed oak beams overhead—actual antiques sourced from a local two-hundred-year-old barn. Dark, polished walnut floors. There’s a little island in the kitchen, just big enough for three stools. Porcelain farmhouse sink. Mustard yellow Smeg appliances for a pop of color.

  The living room is open to the kitchen, flooring and beams carrying through. Thick white shag rug, overstuffed leather couch, flat-screen TV over a German smear brick fireplace with a floating mantle made from the same antique oak beams as the ceiling.

  “This is…” He spins, taking it all in. “Truly incredible, Delia.”

  My cheeks burn. “Thanks. I’m pretty proud of it.”

  “You should be.”

  I hand him a mug of coffee. I know he drinks it black—he was at our house most mornings, and Dad would offer him coffee, and he always took it straight black. Still does.

  He takes the mug from me, but stares into it suspiciously. Sniffs it.

  I cackle. “It’s not poisoned, Thai.”

  That eyebrow goes up. “How can I be sure?”

  I reach out, take it from him, sip, hand it back. “There.”

  He nods, apparently satisfied. Takes a sip. “Mm. Good coffee.”

  “Life is too short for crappy coffee,” I say.

  Awkward silence.

  It’s weird, being in a room with him and not wanting to verbally eviscerate him. I wonder if this truce will last—if this is actually the real Thai, or if this is some long con he’s pulling on me.

  “Why’d you come back, Thai?”

  He drinks his coffee, considers the question for quite a long time, actually. “The truth is, I’m still not…I’m not entirely sure. Part of it is that I was just…bored. But…this isn’t a dig, truly, but it’s just something I don’t think you can understand. You’ve always had a purpose, a…a raison d’être.” He shrugs. “I haven’t. I honestly went to college only because it was something to do. I got into things and found out I actually enjoyed business—or some aspects of it, I guess. I discovered I had more of a capacity for…” A sigh, which seems more of a self-effacing laugh than anything. “For doing stuff, I guess, then I’d ever really considered. Growing up, Mom and Dad didn’t expect anything of me. I didn’t really try, in school. I was just…I dunno. Salutatorian by virtue of just…not being into sports and it was just easy.”

  “Why didn’t you play football?” I ask, something I’d always wondered about.

  He laughs. “It was too much fuckin’ work. All that running, all that gear to put on and lug around. I was more interested in partying and girls.”

  I cackle. “Well, that’s an honest answer for you.”

  He looks around at my living room again, and his eyes go to my built-in bookshelf stuffed full with books. Stands up, wanders over to the shelf and scans the titles—mostly romances, some thrillers, some murder mysteries. A collection of books from my youth, near the top—battered, dog-eared copies of Twilight and Harry Potter. His gaze goes to the top row, the books that harken back to our shared youth. I have the complete Harry Potter series, there, the original hardcovers I’d bought as they came out. There’s one missing, though.

  “You’re missing one,” he says.

  “Yeah, I know.” I can’t help the way it comes out. “Gee, I wonder how that happened.”

  He happened. Took it and threw it into the mud, and then stepped on it. Just because.

  His expression, as he turns around, is closed off. But I can’t help wondering if I’m imagining the regret I see, just before his face shutters.

  “When Dell first came to me bitching about what your dad did with the will and the business…I sort of realized that I’ve never had a purpose in life. It was kind of a shitty thing to realize, honestly. That I don’t matter. That I’ve never done anything even remotely valuable. And here Dell had this ready-made thing in his lap. All he had to do was try a little. Give a little bit of a shit. It was something to do, you know?”

  He shakes his head and shrugs. “Once I realized how much I hated living in Manhattan and how much I hated the corporate bro atmosphere of big finance and just quit the whole scene, I had nothing. I wasn’t
about to come home and live with Mom and Dad again. But I saw no reason to buy a house anywhere because I had nowhere I belonged. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I can fly into any one of a dozen cities around the world and I’ll know people. I can crash parties on every populated continent on the globe, and shit, I even know someone at a research station in Antarctica. But…down deep? Nowhere was home. I literally was just renting or borrowing condos and going to parties and…” He stares into his coffee. Seems embarrassed. “Honestly, a lot of it was just chasing hookups, if you want the honest truth.”

  “And that led you to buying half of my company…how?”

  He laughed. “It didn’t. I’m sure you’re well aware that I have a, um, let’s just say generous trust fund. Comically so. Plus living expenses provided by my parents that they’ve just never bothered to pull back. So I honestly don’t ever have to work. I could live in ridiculous luxury forever and never lift a finger. But I was bored. And I had all this money and nothing to do with it. I mean, I’ve done all the things. Skydiving. Scuba diving. Sailing. Private jets to private beaches in Tahiti with, like, squadrons of models hanging around in a whole lot of not much. Fast cars. Old cars. New cars. I even bought a fuckin’ yacht once, but then I realized you need a whole crew and a captain and the whole nine yards and that just seemed like way more work than I’d expected, so I sold it.”

  “Poor you,” I quipped, deadpan.

  “Right? Poor me. Talk about first-world problems. This was a one percent of one percent kind of problem. But I was just fucking bored out of my mind. So one day about a year and a half out of Wharton, I was hanging out with some guys from school, the business-y sort of guys with stock portfolios—your kinda guys, actually.” He smirks, and I glare, but it feels kind of cursory, at this point. “And they were talking about this company they’d bought stock in. Sounded cool. I think they make, like, I dunno—some part for Wi-Fi routers, I think. It was a new company that had just done their IPO. So on a whim, I looked into it. Like, I Googled them. Called their receptionist and asked a few questions. Asked my friends for some information. Their IPO had done really well, so I was like, fuck it, let’s do this adult business thing, and I bought stock. A lot of stock. Not quite a controlling interest, but close.”

  “What was the company?”

  “Albion Networking Systems.”

  I’ve heard of them—they’ve been making the rounds trying to sell us some kind of whole smart home system. “You invested in Albion?”

  “Yeah.” He shrugs.

  “How involved are you?”

  “Not very. They have their own thing going. I know they’ve been looking at getting into the whole smart home arena, but I guess they haven’t had much success yet. And this was a few years ago. I’ve done a lot of other deals since. VC and angel investing, mostly.”

  “Albion sends us marketing materials every once in a while, and one of their reps comes by every quarter. But most contractors aren’t really interested in new technology unless it cuts their overhead down or drives their profit margins up. Smart home systems is more overhead and you’re not guaranteed a return on it.”

  “That’s what they’re up against. But I guess the people who know this sort of thing are all saying at some point in the not-so-distant future, all homes are going to be connected, what we call smart, and the builders who get in on it now are the ones who are going to set the standard when it starts to really pick up.”

  I’m a little floored, right now. Because he’s right. It’s something I’ve thought about myself. I just could never get it front of Dad in a way that stood a chance—he just wanted to build houses. He was a traditionalist. But…now I’m in charge. Mostly.

  The other person with controlling decision power is…Thai.

  And he’s talking about something that’s been a secret desire of mine for a long time.

  He notices I’ve gone quiet. “Did I just step in something smelly?”

  I shake my head. “No, not…not really.”

  “Then what?”

  I sigh, clutching my mug with both hands; I’m on the other side of the island from him, yet it feels like he’s filling the kitchen, too close to me, too much, too in my space. “It’s just something I’ve thought about.”

  “What is?”

  “What Albion has been trying to sell us on. Dad always just shut it down cold, but I’ve been thinking for a while that it might be smart to start incorporating that as an option in new builds. Smart switches, bulbs, thermostats, stuff like that.”

  He leans over the island. “Now, I haven’t looked at their package, but I can tell you it’s way more comprehensive than that. It’s built-in Wi-Fi, a central hub controlling the entire house, like…Tony Stark kinda shit. Voice-controlled house. Like, you just say ‘turn on the kitchen lights,’ or turn on the oven to four-fifty, or turn the air conditioning to sixty-eight.’ It’s not just a house with lights and a thermostat on some goofy app on your phone. It’s a truly connected, next-generation house. Built-in, from scratch. They’ve even got AI that will learn your preferences and adjust things automatically.”

  I can’t help but be intrigued. “Really? I’m…that’s…wow.”

  “It’s seriously next-level shit, Delia. And what I learned when I was buying them was that when you buy in, it gets cheaper. If you’re building, like, sixty new homes, the parts and labor is cheaper because it’s in bulk and it’s going in as a new build rather than trying to retrofit one existing structure. The more you buy in, the cheaper it is, so it’s really geared for builders with big numbers. Again, this was a few years ago, so my information is probably a little out of date. I’m sure they’ve upped their game since I invested.”

  I finish my coffee and pour more—offer him some. “Well that’s cool, but don’t think I haven’t noticed that you never answered my original question.”

  “Why did I come back? Why did I buy Dell’s shares of McKenna?”

  I nod. “Yeah. It’s hard to even try to trust you and your motives when I have no clue what your motives even are.”

  He rolls his shoulders, sighs. “Buying Albion put me on a path, of sorts. I saw a pretty immediate positive valuation, so I figured okay, why not? Let’s do it again. So I started sniffing around and found another company. This one was just a baby one, though. No IPO, no stock offerings, just a private company with a good idea, and they needed an investor. So I invested. They were a tech company on the verge of going public with their product…some sort of chip or something that makes Wi-Fi go farther with better signal strength or something. I dunno exactly. Again, not a controlling interest investment, but sizable. My investment put them into manufacturing and they were a hit immediately. Including with Albion, who saw their product as a no-brainer. So that’s nice and symbiotic.” He shrugged, sipped coffee. “So then I bought into a medical supply company, just to diversify. I’ve invested in something like dozens of companies over half a dozen different industries, and I’m seeing great returns. But none of them really interested me. Like, I’m not on the board, I’m not part of running them. It’s all just making me more money, which is nice, but… I don’t need it. I needed something to do, and I honestly enjoy the work, the process. But investing my money in something is not at all the same thing as investing my emotions. My self. My time.”

  “I’m starting to see. But what I don’t get is why McKenna?”

  His eyes went to mine. “Dell didn’t just walk away out of laziness. I’m sure you talked to him. I’m not trying to defend him or make this about him—I know you don’t want to talk about him. My only point is, he had valid reasons. But I was just like, you have something, here, Dell. Something real, something valuable. And I told him, when I agreed to his plan, that if I was going to be all in on McKenna, I was going to finally be part of it. In it.” He huffs, rolls his shoulders. “So, why McKenna? I don’t know, Delia. I really don’t. It was familiar? I don’t know.”

  I frown. “So, it wasn’t…” I don’t want to sa
y what I’m thinking, not in so many words. But I do. “It wasn’t just to fuck with me?”

  He shakes his head. “No, Delia. Not at all.”

  There’s a distance in his eyes, though. ”What? What aren’t you saying?”

  “Just that…I think when Dell first suggested it, I think he assumed I would be looking at it as a prank on you. Like, haha, guess who owns half of your company? This motherfucker, the asshole who made your life a living hell for eighteen years.” He shakes his head again, not looking at me. “I don’t know that I can delineate or…or quantify all my actual reasons for going through with it. I think part of it was that just from a financial standpoint, it was smart business. I know McKenna is successful. I know it’s a good investment, even if I had nothing to do with it. I know you would make it even more successful than it’s ever been. Plus, it does potentially dovetail with the investment I made before this one.”

  “Which is?”

  “They’re an indie startup. They 3D print construction supplies from recycled, sustainable, and recyclable materials. Their initial products are just things like switch plates and screws and braces and brackets and all that kind of piddly shit. But the product that their whole vision was based around was framing sections, printed whole, in bulk.”

  I blink. “3D printed framing sections? Made of plastic?”

  He nods. “Yeah. But, like, superplastic, or something. Special polymers engineered to withstand something like triple the amount of stresses that traditional framing can support, at least in part because the sections are all one piece, no joins, none of that.”

  I gape. “And you’re just now telling me that you own this company that makes this product?”

  “Well, I don’t own it. I’m just an investor.” He arches that eyebrow. “And I wasn’t sure I was quite at a place with you where I could make those kinds of suggestions. I was going to wait until you weren’t ready to knife me in the throat every time you saw me.”

  “I’m not going to knife you in the throat,” I say, with an eye roll.

  “You once told me you hoped my plane crashed.”