“Come on, Jamison. Or ...”
“Leave him and set up my own business?”
“Or get a job. Or teach. Plenty of people lead good lives passing on their skills. Your degree is in IT, not wealth management, isn’t it? You have vast amounts of freedom, Jamison. To your credit, you’ve been single minded about Capital Plus Investments, and you’ve made it work. I’ve seen you pour every spare minute into creating those systems, and then some more. What that tells me is that you could do that with another new idea, and another, and another.”
Jamison sighs, head in his hands, his food still untouched.
“Nobody’s saying it’s going to be easy, but I can tell you, son – you keep going in this direction and you’ll make yourself sick. I saw it all the time. Trapped people, with big families and farms they couldn’t make pay enough to service their debts. I could be wrong, and I say this with love – but my guess is the only thing trapping you is your pride.”
Jamison snaps his head up and stares into my eyes.
“You wouldn’t be ashamed of me, Dad? Giving up on CPI? You said you were proud of me.”
“I was. I am. Always will be. Sure the place is impressive. Too impressive, in fact. No place for an old doc like me. But you might choose to stay and fight and take your place at the top. All I’m saying is it’s not compulsory. You can make a different choice any time you like, and you’ll have my moral support, but not my financial support. Otherwise what might look like kindness, will just be trapping you somewhere you don’t want to be.”
He sighs again.
“So no, Jamison. I don’t want to buy your car. I don’t want to join CPI, and I don’t want to give or lend you money. It wouldn’t be doing you any favors. You can come stay with me in my new place, but only for a short while if you need a roof over your head; only while you work out what you’re going to do.”
I know my boy, his face still serious, his stomach in knots. He nibbles at a fry, then eats two at once, and another. He asks me about myself and barely listens to my answers.
But by the time we leave, he’s eaten half the hamburger and there’s a new spring in his step.
Back at Brighton Court, I run into Lucy in the hallway. She’s behaving strangely. For the first time, she rushes to get away from me. It hurts. I know I have to sort out my feelings for her, to give her some kind of answer to her proposal. I don’t like this awkwardness between us.
Chapter 39
Lucy
The next time I runinto Dirk in the hallway, he’s all dressed up, on his way out.
He stands there, my great big man, tall in his tailored suit, his legs and arms a tiny bit long for anything off the shelf. He searches my face, those dark eyes everywhere, alert to any trick.
I won’t move. I won’t let him pass, not without touching me.
Oh, he might turn around and go hide in his big, perfect apartment, or he can advance, and leave that cold, lonely old jail and agree to live another life, with me.
