Page 32 of The Night We Lost Him

She rubs her hands together, as if considering how she wants to handle this. Then she turns to her colleagues.

“Can you give us a few minutes?”

They stand up to leave and Sam and I each take a seat across from her. Cece reaches for the wine bottle in the middle of the table. She uncorks it herself, a waiter appearing with fresh glasses, Cece pouring for each of us.

She slides one of the glasses toward me. “You know… we almost met last year, you and I,” she says.

“Is that right?”

She nods. “It is. I’m a big fan of your work. I know quite a bit about you.”

I don’t respond, trying to stay neutral, when what I want to say is Really? Because my father told me nothing about you.

“I was very impressed with your build-out on Joanna Harrington’s property in Taos,” she said. “She’s an old friend.”

Joanna Harrington owns a large family ranch just outside of Taos, New Mexico. I helped her reimagine the property as a community-focused equestrian center.

“I was so impressed with your work for Joanna that when I moved here, I wanted to hire you to do my house,” Cece continues. “I even had Joanna inquire about your availability. You had none apparently.”

She offers a smile.

“Sorry about that.”

“Don’t be. When I mentioned it to your father, he put the kibosh on all that anyway. You know how he was about holding firm to his boundaries.”

Holding firm to his boundaries. That was certainly one way to put it. And yet, I feel as though she is baiting me—isn’t she baiting me a little? Isn’t that the purpose of this anecdote? She wants me to know what she understands about my father, disarming me with that familiarity. With their familiarity.

“Sam hasn’t actually filled me in on all of this,” I say. “How do you and my father know each other?”

“I grew up not too far from him. We went to school together,” she says. “I’m close with your uncle Joe too.”

Too.

She looks back and forth between us. “I feel like I owe you guys an apology for the runaround tonight,” she says. “To be honest with you, your uncle Joe called and I decided it was best not to get in the middle of anything.”

“We weren’t aware that there were opposite sides,” Sam says. “So thank you for that further clarification—”

“I wouldn’t say opposite sides.”

“What would you say?” Sam asks.

“For starters, I’d say that it’s a little hard to even look at you, Sam,” she says. “Too much like your father.”

Sam flinches. And I recognize it immediately on his face, how it feels to hear that, now that our father’s gone. That twist of pride and sadness—the grief switch being turned on. It’s exactly what happens to me when someone comments on how much I remind them of my mother.

I jump in, feeling something that surprises me—something like protectiveness.

“Look, Cece, we don’t want to take up your time—”

“You just want to take up my time?”

I force a smile. “We found documentation at Windbreak that suggested our father was going to sell you the company,” I say.

She takes a sip of her wine. “Until he wasn’t.”

“My understanding was that he had no intention of ever selling the company,” Sam says. “We’re just looking for any insight into what changed there?”

“Well, I’m not sure I can be all that helpful on that front. I would never aim to guess what motivated your father to do anything. But it was my understanding from what I was told that he was done running the company and I happened to reach out at the right moment. After reaching out at many wrong moments.”

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