Chapter 5
As they stepped out of the car, the rain had slowed to a heavy, persistent mist. Leo hurried past them, letting himself in through the heavy oak front door and disappearing up the floating glass staircase without a single word. Arthur stood in the cavernous entryway, mechanically slipping off his ruined suit jacket and draping it over the sculptural bronze coat rack that cost more than a small car.
Julian walked in behind him, tapping his cane against the polished concrete floor. "Don't just stand there posing for a ghost, Arthur. Go upstairs and talk to your son."
"What am I supposed to say, Dad?" Arthur snapped, his repressed frustration finally spilling over in a sharp, defensive whisper. "I’m a disaster. My company’s stock is going to take a nosedive tomorrow morning when the board sees that video. My reputation is in tatters. And you want me to go play loving father of the year?"
"Your reputation was a fiction you constructed to keep people from seeing that you're just a scared little boy who lost his mother too young," Julian replied, his voice dropping to a harsh, gravelly whisper. "Your mother didn't love this house, Arthur. She loved the little studio behind the old carriage house where we used to get our hands covered in charcoal and clay. You tore that down to build this sterile tomb because it reminded you of pain. But pain is proof you're alive."
Julian turned and walked toward his study, leaving Arthur standing alone in the vast, echoing foyer. For the first time, Arthur looked around the house not through the eyes of an architectural critic, but through the eyes of a child. The white walls felt like padded cells. The modern furniture felt like cold steel.
Slowly, almost against his will, Arthur climbed the floating staircase. The upstairs hallway was quiet, lined with closed doors behind which his life had quietly disintegrated. He stopped in front of Leo’s bedroom door. A faint light spilled out from underneath the crack, accompanied by the scratching sound of a pencil moving across heavy paper.
May you like
Arthur raised his hand to knock, but his knuckles hovered inches from the wood. He was terrified. For all his bravdeos in boardrooms, facing a room full of hostile shareholders was nothing compared to facing the quiet disappointment of a twelve-year-old boy. He took a deep, shaky breath—the kind of natural, unscripted breath he hadn't taken in years—and gently pushed the door open.
Leo was sitting at his drafting desk, surrounded by a fresh pile of paper. He wasn't crying. Instead, he was methodically taping together the torn fragments of a single green sheet that had survived Arthur’s destructive outburst in the hallway.
