Page 135 of These Summer Storms

“It’s hard to believe we were ever young like that here,” Alice replied. They both looked out to the rain. “I wish I remembered.”

Silence, the only sound the rush of water, and then Sam. “Maybe we come back sometime. Maybe I bring the kids. Maybe we make more memories.”

It was a nice idea, but Alice couldn’t shake the thought that it was the kind of thing another family would do. “Yeah. Maybe,” she allowed. And then, “She really left you? Like…left you,left you?”

He nodded. “If she gets her cut, she won’t fight me on seeing the kids.”

“How tidy,” she said.

“The lawyers will find a way to make it messy, I’m sure. Assuming you don’t leave and screw us all.” Alice turned her head and set her cheek to her knee, watching him as he explained the night before, again. “I needed you to stay. I’m sorry I locked you in the vault, but I need the money, Alice. So I’m kind of also not sorry.”

Alice let the words settle, along with her anger. “God, Sam. Sometimes, you’re really decent, and other times…you deserve it.”

He exhaled. “I did it for a good reason.”

“You mean, so Sila can continue to buy new clothes instead of laundering the ones she has? Don’t fret, Sam—if I do leave, she can always get a job as the poster child for conspicuous consumption.”

He ignored her. “I did it for the kids.”

“Oh, please.” Alice wasn’t buying it.

Later she would feel bad about the reply, but in that moment, she was feeling pretty pissed off, and Sam knew it. “Dad cut me off, Alice.”

“I know, you told me. You’ll get another job.”

“No. You don’t understand. I mean, he cut me off. Stopped cutting the checks.”

Her brow furrowed in confusion. “Cut you off how? Weren’t you a senior VP? That’s not exactly below the poverty line, Sam.”

“Do you know how much it costs to have a family in New York City in our circles? The schools, the clubs, the designer clothes, the trips, the drivers, the apartment?” He shrugged one shoulder. “I didn’t make enough, and Dad covered the extra. You know how it is.”

“I don’t, actually.” It had been years since she’d accepted Franklin’s help. “Believe it or not, I live in an apartment that I can mostly afford, thanks to my job, which I do daily. A job which is another reason why I have to leave this place, if you’re keeping score. A bummer, I know. And to think I also make do without a personal driver.”

She could hear his eyes rolling. “You say that like you think it makes you better than us. Being poor isn’t a virtue, Alice, it’s just less fun than being rich.”

“Yep. Being rich has been a real picnic for all of us,” she said, pointedly.

He ignored her. “He told me it was time to make my own way. Just like he had.”

Alice grimaced at the last, knowing the way those words must have come out—no one loved to talk about how hard they worked more than a billionaire.

“And then he fired me.” He fell quiet again, and then he said, “Sometimes I think Sila’s smarter than all of us. I’ve got no job and no wife, and she gets thirty percent of my inheritance.”

“If there is one.”

“Exactly. But that’s not what matters. What matters is that she gets the kids.” At Alice’s shock, he laughed, bleak and humorless. “I know. I was real fucking dumb.”

“That’s crazy. Why do you think she’d get the kids?”

“Because I signed them away at the start. It never occurred to me it would matter. She gets the apartment in New York and full custody. All of it.” His throat worked as he considered his next words. “Turns out, I love my kids more than I expected to.”

Alice winced at the words, like he’d just discovered the truth. “Sam.” It might have been disapproving, or it might have been sympathetic. Sympathetically disapproving?

“God, Dad would be so pissed,” he said. “Yet another reason to be disappointed in me.”

“Well, Dad’s dead,” Alice replied. “What aboutyourson? What about being proud of him?” She paused. “What about giving him something to be proud of?”

He was silent for a long moment, and then said, “What does that even look like?”