was sitting at a desk that looked older and more distinguished than he was. He wore an off-white linen jacket and a pastel pink shirt, à la Sonny Crockett from Miami Vice. His hair was longish and styled just right, meant to dazzle all the women and show the men he was on top of the trends.
He sat back and waved her in. ‘Hi, come on in, Meg. I’m Brian Hamilton.’
She took three small steps and stopped. His office smelled of old leather and young ambition, embodied by an expensive cologne she would forever associate with him. She took one more step and stopped.
Brian folded his hands behind his head. ‘Welcome. We’re glad to have you as part of the Hamilton team. Eileen tells me you’re a rising senior at North Marion High?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Good in math?’
She nodded. She did her best to keep eye contact, the way her father had told her she should, but it was hard. Brian kept smiling at her as if he knew that her black polyester skirt and ruffled brown blouse came from a thrift shop. Her shoes, too – though she hoped he couldn’t see them while she stood there in front of his desk. It was the same outfit she’d worn for her interview the week before, and she suspected Ms Guillen had told him everything.
She’d gotten the job out of sympathy, she was sure. Everyone in Ocala seemed to know how tenuous things were for the Powells; her father broadcasted his failures as loudly as his successes, afternoons at the co-op. She had applied for a position with the janitorial staff, the job advertised in the Ocala Star-Banner, but during her interview with Eileen Guillen, director of human resources, she’d talked about her plan to study accounting after she graduated. Because of that, instead of cleaning floors and toilets in the historic building that Adair Hamilton had rebuilt right after the 1883 fire, Meg would become a part-time teller. ‘We like to give our people the best possible start,’ Eileen had told her. ‘’Specially those who need it most.’
Brian said, ‘I like math a lot, myself. My degree’s in economics, and I’ll have my MBA soon. Do you plan to go to college?’
‘I hope to.’
‘Terrific.’ He clapped his hands, an exclamation point. ‘We like our people to be motivated beyond all this marble and brass.’ He stood and offered his hand. ‘It’s great to have you here. I know Belinda’s waiting for me to turn you back over to her, so I’d better let you go.’
At first Meg thought she’d rather be cleaning toilets; working as a teller meant being visible, presentable, and this was a challenge for a girl whose best clothes were jeans and T-shirts without patches or stains. She and her mother scoured the thrift stores for decent professional wear with some success, but being dressed up in skirts and heels every afternoon was like wearing a costume. A costume that wasn’t quite as nice as the ones the other tellers wore. Brian went out of his way, though, to help her feel like she was a valuable part of the Hamilton team – that’s how he always talked about the tellers, as a team. If her white blouse was dingy because they’d run out of detergent, he overlooked it. If the fake leather on the heels of her shoes was peeling away, he overlooked that too. Was she good with people? Was she careful with procedures and funds? Those were the things that mattered. By the time school started again, her senior year, she’d been converted to permanent employee status, which Belinda said was ‘super high praise’.
Brian made a point to befriend her. He would find her during her breaks, ask the occasional question about their farm or her family, her boyfriend, her aspirations in life. She thought he did this with everyone – they all talked about what a hands-on manager he was, how he was destined to be a big success – and only learned later that he’d singled her out. Sometimes he joined her and a few of the other employees at the Trough, after work – a treat she allowed herself only every other Friday. Carson never went. ‘Too many guys with ties,’ he joked. She went anyway, wanting to fit in if she could. They all talked about their career goals, and once, she admitted that her dream job wasn’t in finance at all, but in medicine. Maybe veterinary, maybe human, she wasn’t sure. ‘I’m used to doctoring everyone and everything already,’ she’d said. ‘My sisters, the horses, our cats … I’ve helped with foaling – and I even gave our pony stitches once.’
Brian slapped the tabletop. ‘Then do it,’ he said, surprising her. ‘Figure out what you want and how to make it happen, and do it.’
But surely he knew how impossible that was for her, for any Powell girl. Every paycheck she earned went to her parents, to help pay for groceries. Trying for medical school of either type was as futile as trying to use her arms to fly.
Brian. He’d known so well how to play her, when the time came.
At their Nettle Bay villa, Carson watched Val and Marie-Louise, the ambitious French real estate agent Val had picked, pore over photos and property fact sheets on the patio’s café table. He knew he should be as immersed in the activity as Val, knew by the way she kept looking over at him, sitting on the rattan chair to her right, that she thought the same thing. And he wanted to be. He wanted to be fully focused on ideal elevation, proximity to the best surf, amenities such as built-in pools and spas and breeze-catching screened rooms. But his seditious mind kept moseying back in time, to the evenings when he and his father had sat at their square kitchen table and sketched out plans for a very different new residence, one he’d share with a very different girl.
He could see it, as clear as if it happened last week instead of twenty years ago: his dad looking young and capable in the heavy twill pants and cotton button-up shirt he always wore to work in the groves; the kitchen light, a cone-shaped pendant, hanging above the table’s center, its circle of golden light on their outspread papers; his mother singing some ’60s tune while she updated the books at the desk nearby – the Carpenters, he thought, hearing her contralto in his memory. And Meg, sitting close at his left, pushing her long hair off her shoulders and smiling at him, at the future they were drawing with a wooden ruler and pencils sharpened with a knife.
How different a scene that was from what came later.
He remembered his twenty-second birthday, long after the breakup, months after Meg’s wedding in ’89. George Pappas, his good friend and would-be guitarist, had taken him out for lunch and a few beers. They were waiting at a red light in George’s faded brown Chevelle, Pearl Jam blasting on the aftermarket stereo. He didn’t notice the glossy red sports car pulled up alongside the left of them at first. Four or five – or six? – beers since lunch had made him almost oblivious, to his surroundings and to the fact that he was spending another birthday without Meg. It was the first since her marriage, but who was counting?
‘Hey,’ George said, tapping his window. ‘Isn’t that Meg?’
Carson turned at the same moment she looked over, her hand pressed to the glass; they stared at each other as if George wasn’t seated between them, as if they weren’t passengers in two different cars, separated by window glass and harsh words and wedding vows.
George started to roll down his window. What did he think, that they’d all just have a nice little chat? That she’d wish him a happy birthday and throw a kiss? But then the arrow turned green, and the Porsche pulled out, turning left.
George whistled. ‘Nice wheels, eh, bro?’ he said, as the car moved farther and farther away from them, disappearing into the Ocala twilight. ‘She did pretty well for herself.’
‘Fuck you,’ Carson said.
He was jarred back to the present when Val elbowed him. ‘Carson! I think this is the one!’
He cleared his mind of the memories of Meg so that he could be, instead, with the woman he was reasonably sure would marry him. Sitting up straighter, he leaned in to see what Val was looking at. ‘Yeah? Let’s see.’
Val passed him a fact sheet for a charming blue-roofed house, its