“Didn’t have any to fritter. Didn’t value it. Didn’t think it was important.”
“You mean they didn’t work?”
“They did, in a way. Mainly in exchange for things. Like, neighbors would pay my mom in homegrown vegetables for looking after their kids. Or my dad would fix up someone’s deck, and they’d repair his car in return. Stuff like that. Not a lot of cash changed hands.”
“Sounds like a commune,” I laugh.
He turns his head and looks at me under his dark eyebrows, deadly serious.“It was exactly like a commune.”
Embarrassed, I drop the smile as he continues.
“Seven families all built houses on this piece of land one of them inherited. And they all looked after each other and grew stuff and homeschooled the kids.”
“Wow. Isn’t it harder to get into places like MIT if you’re homeschooled?”
“Back then, maybe. But homeschooling can be great. It did take a hell of a lot of hard work and determination though. And encouragement from Elliot. He was my best friend even though he lived over here and I was in northern California. I’d use the library computer to email him. We planned to go to college together from when we were fourteen.”
“That must have taken some doing.”
“Yup. It’s why I want to start the kids’ tech hubs. Being able to email from the library was a lifeline for me. Well, it changed my life. And I want to be able to change other kids’ lives by giving them access to tech they wouldn’t otherwise have.”
He takes a sip of tea.
“Anyway, my sister and I would sometimes go and stay with my grandparents, my mom’s parents. And my grandma would bake. She taught me the banana bread. And I made it with her so many times the ingredients and measurements stuck in my head.”
So he can bake banana bread from memory. And keep a fire going. Those things might make him the opposite of the person I thought had shown up and shattered my glorious solitude last night.
Maybe he’s right. Maybe I did judge him too soon. But it was kind of hard not to, with all the talk of helicopters and a family riddled with billionaires.
“Were your grandparents typical?”
“Yes, absolutely,” he says with a laugh. “They encouraged me to get educated and get away from all that crap. Well, until my mom found out. She said my gran was turning me and my sister against her, and she never let us visit again.”
My heart aches for the kid trapped in a life he hated. And I can’t imagine being banned from seeing the grandparents who were everything to me.
“How awful.” My voice cracks a little.
“So, whenever my mom couldn’t be bothered to cook, and I was missing my gran, I’d make banana bread to remind me of her. And my sister and I would sit and eat it together.”
He gazes across the kitchen at the loaf cooling on the wire rack.
I look from him, to it, and back again. “Would it be okay if I cut us a slice now?”
“Yeah.” He looks back down into his tea. “Then I have to find a way to get out of here.”
7
OWEN
“Holy fucking hell.”
I grip the edge of the counter with one hand as Summer tweezes a sliver out of my other.
“Got it.” She beams and holds the offending wood fragment aloft, then places it carefully on the counter. “One down, one to go.”
I examine my finger. “It might be less agony to amputate the whole hand.”
I still can’t believe I let myself open up to her about my family. The last person I told about my upbringing was my college girlfriend. Since then, I haven’t felt close enough to anyone to share that part of me with them. Nor have I met anyone I thought was worth spending time away from the company to get to know properly.
