Page 34 of Accidentally Mine

A sick feeling settled in my stomach. It would take months, maybe a year to sort all this out.

That was time I didn’t have. But this was my dad’s baby.

Besides me, this business was the only thing that mattered to him on this earth.

I couldn’t just leave it. Maybe I could hire someone to scan the files and have them sent to me electronically so I could go over them from Chicago.

“Well, we need to get a handle on it before we decide whether to sell,” I said, taking a stack of the papers and attempting to sort through it.

“Honey,” Steve said gently, getting up and joining me, leaning close to me to take a look at the papers too. “You’ve had a shock. And you said you’re in a rush. Are you sure you should be doing this?”

“The business is still half mine,” I said, looking up at him. “Who else is going to do it?”

He shrugged and sat back down in my dad’s chair, like he owned the place. “Me. I own the other half, right? This is my bread and butter.”

“But…and I don’t mean to be rude or anything, but where were you while this was happening?”

“Like I said. I handled big-picture financials. From away. I was never into the day-to-day. That was your father’s business.”

“Oh. Right,” I said, gathering some of the papers together.

It still didn’t sound right to me that he would allow things to get this bad and not address it until after my father’s death.

“You know, I still think I ought to take some of this home and go through it myself. Just to get a handle on it.”

He threw up his hands. “You may only make it worse. And it’s crunch time.

We have our lenders and creditors breathing down our back.

I don’t think either of us is interested in running this business as your father has.

So either we sell, or we liquidate. But I need to know what you want to do. Pretty much, yesterday.”

Honestly, I didn’t know what any of that meant. Turned out that helping my father run his spreadsheets a few years in high school hadn’t equipped me to be ready for this. Gnawing on the inside of my cheek, I looked around as Steve stared me down through those big coke-bottle glasses.

I couldn’t concentrate with him looking at me like that.

“All right, all right,” I said, standing.

I found a few banker’s boxes in the corner and started to pile some of the papers inside.

“I understand you want an answer right away, but I can’t do that.

Let me take these home and look them over.

And I promise to give you a call tomorrow. Just give me twenty-four hours. Okay?”

He frowned. I was quickly starting to hate my father’s business partner. I wanted to scream at him, Give me a break, why don’t you? My father just died and I know nothing about his business!

Maybe that meant I should’ve just ceded it all over to Steve and wiped my hands of it. That was clearly what he wanted me to do. But my father had invested so much in this business. His whole life. I couldn’t just let it go like that.

I ended up filling up five boxes with paperwork. Steve helped me drag them out to the front room, all the while telling me we really needed to move and that he wished I’d just trust him. Maybe I should’ve. I had enough to worry about as it was.

When I had all I needed, I ordered an Uber on my phone. A scruffy kid in a Toyota showed up and nearly tore up his car driving up on the curb parallel parking, and I wished I had Ernest.

And then, when I loaded the stuff in the trunk, got settled, and the kid asked me, “Where to?” I almost gave him Brent’s address. But I got real and told him my aunt’s house.

At the house, the kid dumped all the boxes on the curb. Ernest, at least, would’ve helped me bring them inside. Instead, I spent the next fifteen minutes lugging them up the stairs.

When I was done, I made myself a tasteless mac-n-cheese in my aunt’s microwave, then sat in front of the television and started pulling out papers, making stacks to separate things by month. About forty-five minutes in, my eyes started to cross.

I needed to go running.

Back in Long Grove, running was my life.

When I wasn’t writing my stories, I ran.

I had a treadmill in my apartment for the days that the weather didn’t cooperate.

I was devoted, imagining the day I’d have to run from Anthony.

I’d also been signed up for self-defense classes.

I’d write my stories, run, go to self-defense.

Wash, rinse, repeat. I never deviated. I was afraid to deviate.

I threw on my exercise clothes and headed out to Thomas Park, where I went for a five-mile run around the monument at Dorchester Heights.

The park was busy with kids and families, perfectly normal, nothing suspicious.

As I ran, it felt good to be in the sunshine, to get the blood flowing again.

Running always helped to relieve the constant stress I lived with, so that I could think.

I couldn’t let my father’s business go without performing due diligence.

So yes, I would go through those papers tonight, and I would make some sense of them, so I could give Steve an informed decision.

Then, I had an even more important task to complete. I couldn’t leave town without telling Brent why I was leaving. So, I would go and see him and tell him everything, about Anthony and why I ran and why there was no way I could stay here even now.

I only hoped he wouldn’t think that I was abandoning him. Even though I felt like I was. He wasn’t bleeding on the side of the road this time, but the fact was, I’d gotten to know him and care about him. I’d done all that, knowing we could never happen.

As much as I’d like to pretend it was different, it wasn’t.

I was abandoning him, yet again. In fact, this time, it might be worse.