I should throw my fish back. I just wouldn’t mind weighing it first.
Brad loses whatever was stuck on his line, and Brice comes back to my cow. At least it certainly looks big enough.
“Gotta be thirty pounds,” he says as he lifts it onto the scale.
Gotta be.
I watch the needle on the scale as it settles. Thirty-six. My biggest-ever catch. I bite back a grin. I shouldn’t feel as pleased as I do.
“Grab this mother and I’ll take a picture,” Brice says.
Why not? I can always delete it. Maybe Lucy would want to see it. I hand him my phone and take the fish. The feel of it—the smell—reminds me of summers spent out on the boat with my dad.
I hold it and look into the camera.
“We can eat that tonight,” Ed says. “Great catch, Hunter.”
“Nah. We’ve got a chef booked for tonight.” I glance at my watch. It’s just over five minutes since I caught this thing. “I better get him back,” I say.
“If you’re going to do it, do it now,” Brice says.
I launch the bass off the side of the boat, watching as it comes to life after hitting the water. I bet it thought it wasn’t going to get a second chance. I hope it survives.
Before I can second-guess myself, I type out a message to my dad and send him the shot of me with the bass. We haven’t spoken in a few months. That will make his day.
Reluctantly, I retake my spot next to Ed.
“You’re a dark horse,” Ed says. “First you’re secretly dating Lucy, and now you’re a fisherman.”
I can’t help but chuckle. “Not a dark horse. I used to fish with my dad when I was a kid. Haven’t done it in years.” We would go out every weekend. I loved those weekends, just one-on-one with my dad. I wanted so badly to grow up to be exactly like him. It was why I did finance in college. I wanted to take over the family business. I wanted to become the man he was.
And then everything changed.
“Have you spoken to him?” Ed asks.
“My dad? Sure. A few weeks back.” It’s a lie. But a small one.
“That’s not what I mean. Have you spoken to him about the business?”
I gaze out at the ocean. “Nope. What’s the point? He either knew the business was going down and let me take over a sinking ship, or he didn’t know, which makes him an idiot. Either way, there’s no upside to talking to him about it.” Dad finally retired five years after I graduated college. I’d spent those five years learning the business from top to bottom—or so I thought. I knew the clients. I understood the regulatory requirements. I was ready.
Except I wasn’t. Dad had kept the financial performance of the business a secret. He’d told me parts, but I never got enough information to get a full picture. I can’t help but think that was deliberate. He had to know Bain Insurance was in dire financial straits. The lease on our offices was too expensive and so tightly drafted it was impossible to get out of or move and sublet. The salaries of a lot of the people who’d been there long before me were vastly inflated, but too much valuable company history sat with them, so it was impossible to fire them. And there wasn’t any new business coming through.
I tried everything I could to save the business. It was unsalvageable.
“But maybe he has an explanation.”
“He’s had plenty of time to give it to me. It’s been nearly six years since we filed Chapter 7.”
I spent a long time blaming myself. My dad had run Bain Insurance for most of his professional life, and he’d provided our family with a good life. We had a vacation home on the lake. A home in one of the nicest suburbs in Philadelphia. We never wanted for anything. It was an idyllic life. One I wanted to replicate for my own family.
“Maybe he’s embarrassed.”
“So letting his son take the fall is okay?”
“No one thinks Bain failing had anything to do with you.”
I let out a cynical laugh. “Of course they do. They all look at the situation and see that Brian Bain ran a successful business his whole life, and then within a couple of years of his son taking over, it was all gone. And he’s been a coward all these years and never set anyone straight.”
