The Ultimate Gift Read online

  Bill looked to be contemplating this. He nodded slightly. “Unfortunately, you’re right.”

  The conversation continued, but Alexia’s attention was torn away from it by Ruth, Jason’s aunt. Her accent said “sweet Southern girl,” but something told Alexia she wasn’t about to ask for a pie recipe. “And what sort of business does your family come from, Alexia?”

  Alexia hesitated, looking at Jason, who assured her through his calm eyes that Ruth was probably harmless. “Um . . . health care.”

  “Oh, how wonderful!” Ruth exclaimed. Everyone looked in their direction. “We have a wing in the hospital downtown. A couple of wings, I think. Or is it a couple of hospitals? I always forget.” She tossed out a careless laugh.

  “My daughter is receiving great care thanks to your father.”

  Ruth’s laugh faded into a polite smile.

  “Great sector, health care.” Bill’s voice boomed with authority. “A little flat in the third quarter, but poised to rocket.”

  Jason took his fork and tapped it against his crystal water glass. He looked determined. “I’d like to propose a toast.”

  “Yes!” declared Bill as he raised his glass. “To each other, for suffering through a year of . . .” Bill chose his words carefully. “. . . great adjustment.”

  Mischief twinkled in Jack’s eyes. “Excuse me, but does anyone else seem to notice it smells a little like cowhide in here?”

  “And how are those sin stocks of yours doing, Jack?” Ruth asked, her southern accent giving way to the snideness in her voice.

  Bill grabbed Jack’s shoulder and with a wide smile said, “And what’s wrong with a little investment in alcohol, tobacco, and firearms?”

  “Over the stench of oil,” Ruth inserted.

  “And what’s wrong with oil, thank you very much?” Bill said. Ruth raised an eyebrow at her brother. “My money’s just as green in Manhattan as anywhere else.”

  “So,” Bill said, his gaze scanning the table, “who does get the rest of the estate? Sarah?”

  Jason’s mother, who had disengaged from the conversation awhile back, snapped upright. “I don’t know anything about that.” Her puffy lips smiled mildly.

  “Well, you were the last one in there,” Jack pointed out. The room suddenly grew uncomfortably quiet.

  “No, I wasn’t,” Sarah said definitively, tossing her hair over her shoulder.

  Bill’s wife—Alexia couldn’t remember her name, but she was stunningly beautiful, with dark hair and porcelain skin—spoke up. “Well, that’s just ridiculous, darling. When we left, you were the only one there.”

  Sarah put a gentle hand on Jason’s shoulder. “Well, Jason was also there.”

  Alexia watched Bill’s eyes narrow and focus on Jason. “Ah,” he said without a hint of warmth. “Jason.”

  “So,” Jack said, “enlighten us, Jason. You certainly could not have been the one to receive the bulk of Red’s estate.”

  “Or are you?” Ruth chimed in.

  Bill’s voice was full of tempered fury. “Is that why you insisted we get together for Thanksgiving? So you could reveal your newly enhanced trust fund to us?”

  Alexia watched Jason, fearful he was about to explode. But instead, he looked very much in control. In a calm voice he said, “It’s Thanksgiving. I was hoping maybe we could all go around the table and each say something that we’re most thankful for.”

  Alexia smiled. She couldn’t think of anything better— Suddenly the room exploded with laughter, and it wasn’t the nice kind.

  “Are you on crack, Jason?” Jack roared.

  “Again?” Ruth chortled.

  “Well,” Jack said, raising his glass to Bill, “here’s a thanks: we don’t have to put up with Dad’s endless litany of cliché quotes this season.”

  “Or hand-spun, cornpone wisdom,” Bill mocked.

  “Here, here!” someone said from the end of the table. Everyone turned and looked at Sarah’s grinning boyfriend, who immediately stopped grinning.

  “Who is that?” Bill asked quietly.

  “I think he works down at the video store,” Jack replied.

  Alexia laughed to herself. Jason was right. This dysfunction went deep. She glanced up to find Jack’s attention on her, his eyes less than friendly.

  “Well, Jason will tell you all you need to know about this man, this dearly departed,” Jack said, his eyes shifting to Jason. “I mean, he, more than anyone here, has a bone to pick with the late, great Red Stevens.”

  Jason only looked at his plate, apparently trying to restrain himself.

  Suddenly a voice broke through the tension. “Jason, I can only imagine what you’ve just been through . . .”

  Someone gasped. Someone else asked, “Is that . . . Red?”

  The voice sounded like it was coming from a television or a radio. “I could never get them to be thankful for anything, either. But I have a good idea that along the way you’ll realize what it means to be family.”

  “What in the world is that?” Bill asked, glancing up at the ceiling like he expected something to be hovering there.

  Everyone started murmuring. Then Jason leaped suddenly from the table, rushing over to the small kids’ table in the corner of the room.

  “Give me that!” he barked to one boy, but the kid tossed whatever it was across the table to another kid, who tossed it again as Jason tried to grab it.

  The voice continued. “Jason, if you do succeed, you’ll be one step closer to all I have for you.”

  Jason finally snatched it back. It looked like a small toy or a GameBoy.

  “What’s ‘all I have for you’?” Jack asked, his face beginning to glow with anger.

  “It’s between him and me,” Jason said. “It’s none of your business.”

  “It has everything to do with us!” Bill shouted. “It’s our money!” Alexia watched Jack try to settle his brother down before he turned back to Jason. “So,” he said smoothly, “he’s making you work for your inheritance?”

  “Not anymore,” Jason replied, “because I don’t think I could ever win at this one. Alexia, let’s go.”

  Alexia quickly rose, her napkin dropping to the table. She could feel herself trembling as she followed Jason out into the marble foyer, where their footsteps echoed off the wall.

  “Jason!” his mother called after him. “Wait. Wait!”

  “Don’t,” he said as he stopped and turned, glaring at her.

  “Honey,” she said, “just tell them what they want to hear.”

  “I don’t have to tell them anything.”

  Alexia moved closer to Jason as Bill made his way out. “Jason, you’re gonna hear from my attorney Monday morning.”

  “Ditto,” said Jack from behind him.

  “Shut up, Jack,” Bill said.

  Alexia watched Jason make eye contact with each of them, fully taking in their attempt to look like a force to be reckoned with.

  “You’re pathetic,” Jason said, then turned and walked through the enormous front doors. Alexia nearly had to run to keep up with him.

  “Wait. Jason, slow down!”

  He didn’t. Instead, he gestured toward the house. “I put up with that for years! I was a part of that.”

  Alexia had nearly caught up with him. “What happened to your dad?” she asked breathlessly.

  “He’s dead. What else do you want to know?”

  “How’d he die?”

  “The only person who really knows just took it to his grave.”

  Alexia trailed Jason down the aisle of the bus, hanging on to the loops for balance.

  “Jason,” she said as he plopped himself down into a seat. She looked at him with gentle eyes, trying to convey what maybe her words couldn’t. “There’s something I always want you to remember. When I met you, you were a . . .” She smiled a little as she took the seat in front of him. “A homeless person. You made friends with my daughter. We shared peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. All this without me knowin
g anything about your background.”

  He sighed heavily. “Yeah, well, the problem is that’s me back there.”

  “Yeah, but you can walk away from all that.” Alexia felt the words prick her own heart. What she wouldn’t give to be able to walk away from the “all that” of her life. Just take Emily and go. Start walking and never stop. She smiled at him. “You already have.”

  “Look, I appreciate what you’re saying, but money changes things. It gets you stuff. It’s a way to live life worry free. Money takes away the worry.”

  “Yeah, I saw what money can do.” Alexia heard the harshness in her own voice, but she didn’t care. “And your worries, or whatever you want to call them—they’re not life or death, Jason.”

  “Okay, I’m sorry. But my getting this inheritance is a matter of life or death, and I know when I say that I sound like I’m being a Stevens, and being a Stevens is all about money. But it’s not. It’s more.”

  He seemed to transform right in front of her. Moments before he’d been a man who wanted to toast the blessings in his life. Now he looked consumed by what he didn’t have and what now looked to be out of his reach. Alexia turned from him, and they didn’t speak for the rest of the bus ride.

  How could she have let herself get tangled up with him? She knew better! She had known men like him her whole life. Why hadn’t she kept her guard up and written him off to be just like the others?

  The bus stopped in front of the hospital, and Alexia didn’t wait to see if he was coming. She de-boarded the bus and walked toward the front doors without looking back. But soon enough he was beside her again. Wordlessly they strolled as Alexia tried to get a grip on her emotions before going back in. She didn’t want Emily to see disappointment in her face. Her little girl had wanted her to have a good time, and that’s what she was going to see—that Alexia had had the time of her life.

  “So, I’ll pay you back as soon as possible,” she said abruptly.

  Jason stopped walking as she continued on. “What?” he asked. “The money I owe you. The sixteen hundred.”

  Jason just stared at her.

  “Happy Thanksgiving,” she said.

  “Jason.”

  “Hamilton. Can I come in?” Jason looked at his shoes. “I know it’s late.”

  Hamilton opened the door wider. “I thought you might come by today.”

  Jason gave him a curious look but walked in. He stood in the foyer a moment and glanced around, but his mind seemed to be far away.

  “Come into my study.”

  Jason followed Hamilton. He wasn’t saying much, which was a first. That kid usually didn’t know when to shut up. Hamilton went to the wet bar and poured a snifter of cognac. He watched Jason make his way around the room until he stopped at the mantel. He stood considered thoughtfully as he contemplated the photograph on top. Hamilton smiled to himself. It was a small victory, but getting the kid to be quiet and think was a step in the right direction nonetheless.

  “Marietta Ruby,” Hamilton said, approaching Jason from behind. Handing him the cognac, he studied the picture, as he did every single morning. He never got tired of looking at it and his heart never stopped hurting when he did. “From the time I met her in the seventh grade, that was my sweetheart.”

  Jason studied the photograph more intently.

  “She didn’t make it easy, though. Took me all the way till the eighth grade to catch up with her.”

  Jason smiled. “She’s beautiful.”

  “Yeah. She passed away shortly after we were married.” Hamilton could barely get the words out. It still seemed impossible that she was gone.

  “I’m really sorry.” The kid looked it too. Huh.

  “The greatest gift she gave me was the will to move on, to overcome.”

  “You know,” Jason said, “I may have met someone myself.”

  Hamilton stared at the photo in front of them. “Then cherish her. And become the man she deserves.”

  For a moment the two men stood in silence. Then Hamilton gestured toward a chair. “Have a seat.”

  Jason did, cupping his cognac as he got comfortable.

  “Now, as I said, I had a feeling you were going to stop by.”

  Hamilton reached for the remote. Dread filled his expression, but he kept silent, so Hamilton switched on the video. Jason turned toward it and looked resigned to taking in whatever Red was going to say.

  “That university you attended, what was it rated? Number three? Number three party school in the country.”

  Jason cut his eyes sideways. Hamilton could only shrug. Red had a way with words.

  “Do you truly know how to learn?” Red continued. “Jason, any process worth going through will get tougher before it gets easier. That’s what makes learning a gift. Even if pain is your teacher.”

  At the word pain, Jason flinched, then stared with steely eyes at the envelope Hamilton handed him. It was almost as if he knew what was coming next, but he reached out and took it anyway. Opening it, he carefully pulled out the papers. He drew in a breath as if to prepare himself. When he opened the papers, his eyes grew wide. He stood.

  “No! There’s no way. Anywhere but there.” He threw the papers on the table and headed for the door, then turned back to Hamilton. “I know what he’s trying to do, and it’s not gonna work. He can take his millions to his grave. I don’t care.”

  “What he’s trying to do is for your benefit, Jason, not your destruction.”

  “You know, Hamilton, you sound just like him. But guess what. You’re not him.”

  “I don’t know, son,” Hamilton said. “I do have one of his kidneys.”

  chapter 11

  emily watched Jason from her hospital room, where she and her mom peered down below. He’d been walking around and around and around that stupid fountain for what seemed like forever.

  “He’s been out there for hours,” Emily said with a long sigh. “Yep. He’s got some big decisions to make,” her mother replied.

  Emily knew her mom stayed neutral for her sake. She’d learned a long time ago about staying neutral. That’s what all of her doctors did. They wouldn’t say yes and they wouldn’t say no. They would just stay right in the middle. She hated that. She would rather they just tell her it was over and be done with it. Or tell her all this stupid chemotherapy was going to do something other than make her hair fall out. She wished they would tell it like it was. Just once.

  “Do you think he’ll come in or go home?” Emily asked.

  Her mother tried a smile. “He doesn’t have a home.”

  Well, that was one way to get out of answering the question. Emily turned and grabbed her coat and umbrella.

  “Hey, what are you doing?”

  Emily walked out of her room. She could hear her mother hurrying behind her.

  “Emily! Stop! Wait! What are you doing?”

  Emily arrived at the elevator and pushed the down arrow. To her delight, it dinged and the doors opened. She stepped in while her mother scrambled to catch up.

  “Emily, listen to me.” Her mother tried her calm voice, the one she used when she was getting upset but didn’t want to show it because Emily was sick and mothers of sick children don’t yell at them, no matter what they’ve done. That was one perk in this whole thing: she could get away with just about anything.

  Downstairs, the doors swished open, and Emily walked out, but this time her mother grabbed her arm. “Emily, you stop it right now!”

  Okay . . . so there was a line. Interesting. Emily turned to her mother and put her hands on her hips. “I need to talk to him.” “No, you don’t.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  Her mother sighed and stood upright, shaking her head. “Look, Emily, I know there seems like there should be an easy solution to this, but there’s not, okay?”

  “It all depends on how you look at it.”

  “Whatever the case, you’re not going out there.”
/>   Emily tried a different angle. “Mom . . .” she said, her voice going tender. “There are just some things I need to say.”

  That worked. Her mother’s expression softened. “What things?”

  Emily lowered her eyes. “He might not ever be back. I want to tell him some things.”

  Her mother knelt and grabbed her hands. “You just want to say good-bye?”

  Emily nodded and pulled her lips down into a sad smile. “Yeah. That.”

  Her mother rose and looked to be contemplating this. “Okay, well, I’m going with you.”

  “No. I need to do this on my own. You can stay here by the front doors. You can see me.”

  “But I—”

  “You don’t even have your coat. And the rule is that you have to have your coat to go outside.” Ha. That was a good one. Using one of her silly rules against her.

  “Fine.” Her mother gestured toward the door. “But make it quick, okay? Are you sure you’re going to be all right? I don’t want you to get upset.”

  “I’ll be fine.” Emily smiled, then turned and walked out the front door. Putting the umbrella over her head, she marched straight toward Jason. Before she was even close, she knew he could hear her boots coming. They were coming to do some serious stomping.

  “You’re right,” she said. Jason stopped and turned to her. “She hates you.”

  “I know.” He looked as pathetic as he sounded.

  “Then why are you here?”

  Jason searched for words. “I have to leave the country for a while. I’m reluctant to go because of what I’m leaving behind.” “What are you leaving behind?”

  The idiot just stood there. He had his chance and he was just standing there like a stupid person. Her mother might be good at controlling her temper, but Emily was not. In a quivering voice she said, “Then you have to go. Now get out of here!”

  Jason looked surprised, but he stepped off the fountain and started walking toward the street. The weakling! He couldn’t even stand up to her? Fight for what he wanted? “You screwed up big time, you know!” she shouted at him. “I had to eat rubbery hospital turkey for Thanksgiving!”

  Emily turned to walk back to the hospital, but she wasn’t done yet. “You better be back by Christmas!” she yelled at him. And this time she didn’t look back. She didn’t want to see him go. She didn’t want to see him not turn around. She only wanted to see her mother, who was standing at the glass door looking worried as usual.