Page 88 of Final Proposal

“My brothers are pissed at me,” he says quietly, jolting me back from the beginning stages of sleep.

“I’m listening,” I say.

“The biography about our dad. They want me to support the book. To participate in the promo tour and press junket for it like they are. I don’t want to.”

“Is there a particular reason why you don’t want to?”

His sigh weighs down the room. This is what Ledger was talking about. Ford’s lack of participation and his possible regret.

What the hell do I know about giving advice about this?

“Truth be told, the biography is great,” he says. “The author did an incredible job bringing my dad to life. He was often misconstrued by the public as is often the case when someone finds success like he did. Rumors and gossip and supposition. But the author was able to weave together everything he learned from his interviews with my dad to show him as the man that Callahan, Ledger, and I knew him to be.”

“What an incredible gift to have a piece of your dad alive in a sense.”

He mutters something incoherent, but I get the gist that he’s struggling with something more.

“There are things in the book I never knew about him. Stories about him and my mom that I’m so grateful to know. More about events we only knew bits and pieces of.”

“Then why are you so upset by it? Is it because you’ve lived with him in the public eye your whole life, that you wanted to keep those last, new things you’ve learned about him as private?”

“I never thought about it that way. But no. Our lives under the microscope and in the spotlight is all we’ve ever known. Every success, every failure, has been documented on some society page somewhere. Hell, there are pictures of us at our mom’s funeral out there. It’s a big montage of the grieving triplets that some paparazzo sold for a ridiculous amount of money. Nothing seems to be off limits.”

“I’m sorry. That had to be rough trying to cope and grieve and be in the public eye at the same time.”

“It is what it is. What we didn’t get in privacy we had in privilege. We know that. We’ve come to terms with that.”

“So what is it, then, about the biography that’s upset you so much?”

“There’s a chapter dedicated to our dad talking about us. I’m not a fan of what is and isn’t said. Callahan and Ledger don’t understand why it upsets me. They think I’m being a pussy and should get over it.”

I want to ask so many more questions but don’t. Clearly he’s telling me an abbreviated version of what he wants me to know, of how it’s made him feel. If I were in his shoes, the last thing I’d want is to be given the inquisition over it.

“Your feelings are your feelings regardless of what others think. You don’t need to justify them to anyone. I know for me that when someone tells me I shouldn’t be one way, it only pushes me further the opposite way.”

“You buying this inn is case in point.”

“Very true.” I laugh into the silence as I twirl a piece of his hair with my finger.

I can still recall very vividly Gregory and Joshua’s reactions when I met them after signing the papers at the auction house. The disdain and disbelief that etched in the lines of their faces when they’d learned I’d unexpectedly partnered with Ford, a man they were clearly jealous of.

When I’d taken something for myself, with someone else, and their say would no longer matter. Not that it did anyway, but in their own heads it did.

“It’s laughable if you think that Fordham Sharpe and his egomaniac brothers will accept any of your ideas on that godforsaken inn. He won’t take you seriously, and where will that leave you? Broke and at his mercy? A fucking laughingstock of a failure?”

Being backed in a corner is all I’ve ever felt before I took on this project. Before I took this leap. I know what it feels like to have your back against the wall, knowing the only way to step forward, to be heard, is to come out swinging.

That was my life. Is my life.

And maybe knowing intimately how that feels will allow me to comfort Ford some.

“This disagreement isn’t the same reason you fought the night of the storm when we met, is it?” I ask.

“It is.”

“Then I’ll tell you now, what I told you then, but in simpler terms. Fuck ’em. You have a right to feel how you feel. To be what you want to be. End of story.”

“In theory your advice, your plan, is flawless. Somehow, I don’t think it’s going to work, though.” He chuckles, sleep audibly edging closer. “And why is it that we’re always talking about me, Celery Ellery? Why do you always get off the hook?”