Page 11 of Tributary

CHAPTER TEN

Asa

“HEY, ANDREA?” I frown looking over the stack of papers she slid across my desk. “What the hell is all this?”

She raises her eyebrows at me over the top of her computer screen, but doesn’t look away from her work as she says, “That’s the dossier on the botanist. Dr. Diana Crawford. I figured you were interested in investing, so I pulled up her whole back story.”

There’s not much here. Print outs of articles Diana co-authored when she was a graduate student…a newspaper clipping of her opening the Houseplant Haven. I look down at the stack to see Andrea has highlighted something in bright red. Jay Buford. I hate that slimy jerk. He’s listed as the co-author on several of the papers along with Diana. They must have been at Princeton together.

He pushed me to invest in some quasi-pot drug a few years back, and it ended up being a cash cow, but something has always rubbed me the wrong way about him. It’s hard for me to imagine Diana collaborating with him on an article about…botanical treatments for unilateral cerebellar damage in focal epilepsy. Shit, I can’t even pronounce these words, and she can sling them around in a meaningful way. She’s actually out there doing things, finding answers to people’s problems. Like her brother.

My family legacy is asking people to sign away a portion of their dream so we can ride the coat tails of their success. My stomach turns, thinking of Jay Buford again, and I decide to go take a walk. “Andrea, hold my calls,” I grunt, and I don’t look back as I stride toward the elevator.

I walk along the reservoir in Central Park, remembering how, as a kid, I always thought this was as wild as nature got. I can’t remember leaving Manhattan until I was a teenager—my parents didn’t bring us along with them on their European vacations. When I took my Birthright trip to Israel and stood in the darkness in the Negev Desert…then I knew how very small my view of the world had been.

Ever since then, though, my parents began pushing, insisting I needed to do my Wexler duty and step into my role at the head of Wexler Holdings. Sometimes, today especially, I feel like a fraud. Spending my family’s accumulated wealth, trying to make the dragon’s hoard even bigger. My father was not pleased when I decided to invest in Hunter Crawford’s work. I’m not going to see a return on that investment for a long time…but damn it, he’s working to figure out answers to problems that matter to society.

I kick gravel on the path thinking of Diana’s face as she talked to me about plants. That whole family is so inspired. So interested in the world. I think that’s why I never balk about staying in the Crawford’s house in Oak Creek. Everywhere else I have to stay overnight, I just have Andrea buy property and staff it for when I’m in town. But Rose Mitchell and her family just feel, somehow, like coming home. I try to imagine my mother serving homemade anything to a guest of honor, let alone beaming with obvious pride at her daughter’s beer.

I sigh, realizing there’s no reason for me to go back to Oak Creek for business for at least a few months. I can’t stop thinking about Diana Crawford, and I pull up the courier’s picture of her in my phone to see if I can notice something else new about the curve of her cheek or the way her hair glints in the late afternoon sun.

As I’m staring at my screen, I walk out of what must have been a dead zone for cell reception, because my phone erupts in missed messages from Andrea. “Shit.” I tap out a hasty apology and walk back to reality, where I pull the lever on people’s dreams, and have to make decisions that affect people’s livelihoods.

My team is waiting for me as I exit the elevator, holding out pens and contracts requiring signatures, waiting for the green light to launch new initiatives or move ahead with calculated mergers.

With the flick of a pen, I launch a new fleet of passenger jets, fund solar energy production, and liquidate a coal mining operation. Mine isn’t a life that can slow down and search for wild witch hazel.

“Asa, we need to talk about the cancer people in Pittsburgh,” Andrea says. She’s got a folder, so I know this is a sit-down situation.

“Hit me,” I tell her, gesturing for her to enter my office. “What have we got?”

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