Her expression shifts, the other eyebrow raising to meet its twin. Curiosity and surprise fill her eyes. “A single man?”
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t think they allowed that.”
“Well, he had plenty of reason to get them to believe that he wanted to help a wayward kid.”
She turns back to the stove to tear open the packet of cheese powder. The brightly colored orange dust falls into the pot. She starts stirring it next. “Why’s that?”
“He’s a CEO…”
“You’re kidding.”
“I don’t kid about things like that.”
“What kind of… wait,” she turns back to me, spoon falling into the pot. “Thornton?”
“Yep.”
“No, I mean, Arthur Thornton? You’re not-”
“I am,” I reaffirm with a nod. “He’s my adopted father.”
The Thornton name isn’t too uncommon in town, let alone in this part of the country. The family had originally settled in the area, then scattered out throughout the Northeastern states. There’s plenty of Thorntons but since the headquarters of my father’s company is in town, it holds more pull here than elsewhere.
My grandfather had started the tech company in the mid-60s, raising my dad to know the inner workings of the company and its products. After leaving for college to get some more headway, he’d returned, taking on a supervisory role of one of the subbranches. But after a year, his parents passed away suddenly in a car crash, leaving Arthur Thornton as the primary owner and sudden CEO of Thornton Technologies.
“Okay,” she says slowly. “So, you went from foster care to… what, penthouses and private schools?”
“Something like that.” It’s what people always assumed about me, but since they’re right, I don’t take it to heart.
“And you chose…” she gestures vaguely at me, “…this?” There’s no judgement in it, just genuine confusion.
“I didn’t choose it in spite of that,” I say. “I chose it because of everything before it.”
She goes quiet, so I continue.
“There were things,” I continue, voice lower now, “things I saw before I got out. Things no one stopped.” My jaw hardens at the memories. Images flicker, ones that I don’t let surface fully. A man’s voice, too close and too loud. A door that didn’t lock.
I shut it down.
“After I got out,” I say, “I decided I wasn’t going to be the guy who looked the other way.”
Her gaze doesn’t leave mine, but the look behind it has changed. She isn’t just watching me anymore; she’s admiring me, for reasons I can only imagine until she tells me. “That’s very noble of you,” she says softly.
“It’s not noble,” I reply. “It’s necessary.”
“You could have had a cushy ‘Chief of Whatever’ kind of job. The kind that pays six figures while you sit on your ass all day.”
“I didn’t want that. I wanted to do something for the world,” I tell her, though I’m sure she already knows and understands. “Besides, I don’t do well with downtime.”
She huffs slightly, nearly a laugh, turning back to the stove to add the milk and stir one more time. She scoops herself a bowl and settles into one of the two barstools. I take the one next to her.
“You ever think,” she starts slowly, scooping a spoonful of cheesy noodles, “that maybe we’re both just… wired for this?”
“For what?”
“Running towards things other people avoid.”
