“Reina! Tell me. What was it? Is he not really a golfer?” But she knows he’s a golfer. She’s seen the photos, the visors, the tournament entries.
“He’s really a golfer. But it’s not his Achilles that’s hurt.”
“What is it?”
“It’s his reputation.” In the dramatic pause that ensues Nicola imagines all sorts of things. A cryptocurrency company gone bad? Public election denial? Racist remarks? Sexual harassment? “There was a cheating charge at a tournament last fall.”
Nicola waits.
“By that I meanJackwas accused of cheating.”
“Really? Wouldn’t that have been a big deal, like something that would have come up whenIgoogled?”
“Not necessarily. I mean at the US Open, sure. One of the majors. There’s like, I don’t know, thirty-nine tournaments on the Tour or something, the big ones you’ve heard of, and then a bunch of smaller ones, but still part of the Tour, and this was at one of the smaller ones. He was accused of removing a leaf from his ball.”
“I’m sorry?” Nicola says. “Did you saya leaf?”
“Yeah. Apparently you can’t remove something that isn’t a loose impediment. And the leaf in question was rooted.”
“Rooted?”
“Yup. And the charge wasn’t proven, but the player who accused him definitely talked like it wasn’t the first time your boy Jack had been suspected of cheating. His people covered up LeafGate, claimed an Achilles injury, and whipped him off the Tour before you could say foooooorrrreeee.”
“Ah,” says Nicola. She takes a minute to absorb this.
“See what I mean? Not dangerous, but definitely unsavory.”
“Yeah,” says Nicola. “That actually all makes sense. I never really heard about him rehabbing that Achilles. I mean, he mentioned it a couple of times, but it’s not like he was always running off to PT.”
“Right,” says Reina.
“I never saw him limp.”
“I’m sure you didn’t.”
You got me, Nicky,he had said.You got me right here.
Taylor’s Version
If you really want to get at the heart of this story, you have to understand a few things about Taylor Buchanan. What you have to understand is that Taylor’s got an old-fashioned heart trapped in a modern-day body and a contemporary career. You have to understand how high her father’s expectations were for her, always. Brice Buchanan wanted a son to take over the business for him one day; at the first sign of his wife’s pregnancy, he began to think about when to transition the name to “Buchanan and Sons.” He was like an old English king from the Tudor era, spending all of his wishes for a male heir.
He got a daughter instead. His wife nearly bled out during the delivery; doctors told her that another pregnancy would put her in grave danger. So what did Old Man Buchanan do? He gave his newborn daughter a name that could be male or female.
Brice and Taylor’s mother, always on two opposite sides of a bitter, contentious relationship, divorced when Taylor was five. In those first years they shared custody, technically and logistically. But Brice gave himself custody of his daughter’s future, and by the time Taylor was twelve her mother had decided to live in Europe, handing over most of Taylor’s care to Brice.
This delighted him to no end! Brice had Taylor all to himself.He had her in boardrooms before all of her adult teeth were in. He had boarding school secured, applications ready for the best colleges, business track, please, before she had a chance to think about what else she might want to study. Employment right out of college. Did she need an MBA? Taylor wanted to know. No, said Brice. She’d learn on the job.
And you know what? She did. She was good. Sharp as a (insert your favorite simile here... whip? tack? pin?). She was good at all of it. She was every bit as good at the negotiating and the spotting of a deal and the walking away when necessary as her father was. In some ways she was better. She had, for example, a way with people he didn’t have, a politician’s ability to remember spouses’ names and children’s sports and, oh, hey, how was that trip to Scotland and is the seventeenth hole at St. Andrews really as tricky as they say? (Yes, it is!)
But inside, curled up like a shrimp, was this other part of her, the part that still wanted the great love, the fairy tale. The happy ending. The prince.
You have to understand that Taylor wasn’t allowed to watch Disney movies when she was growing up. The ones that were available when she was a little girl were unacceptable to her father, the stories where the princess is inevitably saved by the prince. “You do your own saving,” is what her father told her.Frozen, sure, that would have been better.Moana.Stronger females, relationships not defined by marriage or sexual attraction. But Taylor was in college whenFrozencame out; by the time the world was going crazy overMoanashe was already working for Buchanan Enterprises.
You have to understand that Taylor wasn’t permitted dress-up clothes. If she had been, they would have been tiny business suits. A pint-sized briefcase, a mini travel coffee mug. Her mother would have gotten the dresses for her, but her father was Very Firm on this, and so Taylor’s mother complied with his wishes. (The alimony and child support were Significant; Taylor’s mother complied with nearly all of Taylor’s father’s wishes.)
That’s why Felicity hasso muchof everything. Every princess dress Disney made, the expensive, official, heavy-material ones from the actual Disney Store. Sometimes when she comes home late and Felicity is already asleep (Felicity is almost always asleep when Taylor arrives home in the evening, a fact that breaks Taylor’s heart over and over and over again, even though it’s expected, even though it’s inevitable), Taylor will pull up a chair next to her bed and watch her and wonder what her future holds. Taylor wants to set out all the dreams for Felicity: the dresses and the crowns but also the toy calculator and the soccer ball and the child-appropriate medical kit. The American Girl doll that goes hiking but also the one that bakes. Taylor wants Felicity to have choices.
You have to understand this too. Taylor had been told she could be all of it: wife, mother, businessperson, friend. She grew up with that as the message. But the people who delivered the message weren’t always clear. What they really meant when they said that was you could be one of those things at a time, and yes, maybe over the course of a lifetime you could be all of them. But at any given time, you couldn’t be all of them. At any given time, you had to pick.
