Page 21 of Between the Lines

“Okay, so what’s up then?” She leans back in the chair, a wide smile on her face. “Let me play therapist.”

She’s six years younger than me, and that had been abundantly obvious when we were growing up. When I was sixteen and she was only ten, when our interests were worlds apart, when I felt like an adult and she was just a kid. But that was then, and now is now, and over the years… we’d grown closer. Learned how to be adult siblings.

“I told you about the memoir. Right?”

“You’re going through with it?”

“I have to.”

Mandy’s eyebrows pinch together. “You don’t have to do anything.”

“The Board demands it in exchange for approving my expansion plans.” I tap my fingers against the desk. “So, I kind of do.”

“Who’s writing it? You?”

“No. The Board approved the executive team to vet and hire a ghostwriter. I met her yesterday.”

“I’m not sure I like this,” Mandy says.

I sigh. “Yeah. Me, neither. Ergo, mood.”

“I mean, memoirs are usually written about people who havedonea ton of things. Like, incredible athletes, war veterans, or former presidents. What have you done?”

I give her another withering glare. “Mandy.”

She continues, her voice tinged with amusement. “You inherited a company in distress, sure, but so have a lot of other people. You’re not particularly athleticanymore, even if you surf every now and then. You’re not a president of anything, and you certainly haven’t?—”

“I get it, I get it. I’m an incredibly unimpressive person.”

She shrugs. “Well, you’re not, but you know it’s my job to keep you grounded. Are your feet firmly on the ground?”

“We’re on the thirteenth floor.”

“So that’s a no. I will keep going.” She lifts her hand, like she’s about to count on her fingers. “You’ve got no sense of?—”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“And you’re in a better mood than when I arrived,” she says smugly. “So what’s bothering you? That the Board wants you to… relive things?”

“They want the memoir to be a clickbait. An excuse for me to be invited to interviews, profiled in magazines. It’s an attempt to dredge up the past while controlling the narrative.”

“They’ve said that?”

“They didn’t have to. It’s clear.”

She digs her teeth into her lower lip. “That sounds… Aiden, I don’t think I want that.”

“I know. I don’t, either.”

“How will you avoid it?”

The look in her eyes is exactly why I need to thread this needle. My family has come a long way in the past year. Healing has been an odd process, coming in sudden lurches and then long periods of standstill. But we’ve somehow gotten there. Into a new reality, a fragile truce with the past, and a father we seldom mention.

“I’ve given the Board my word to help with the memoir process. That’s it. That’s as far as I’ve committed. I’ll play the rest by ear. And the memoirist can’t write about Dad if I don’t give them everything, now can they?”

Mandy nods, but there’s a furrow between her brows. “Yes. That’s true. Besides, maybe there is a point to… acknowledging it publicly. We never really did. Well,younever really did.”

No. I took over a company that was on the brink of bankruptcy, a company that was my grandparents’ crowning achievement, a company that employed thousands of people.

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