I don’t know whose idea it was to keep his health issues from me, but when I found out he’d been in the hospital a few months after the fact, I was more than a little pissed. I know Cal. I know he likes to downplay the severity of his health issues—especially when said issues could potentially take his focus away from his work—but had I known, I would have been on the first flight back to Georgia. I would have come home sooner.
He dips his head into the kitchen and asks Ava to fix me a plate. Then he turns and takes his place at the head of the table. “All I’m going to say is that I have a team of doctors chirping around me nonstop. A nurse comes up here every day to take my blood pressure and hound Ava about what my diet looks like. I have her lie, of course. There’s no one more loyal than Ava, but like I told Whitney, a man has to live. A little salt here, some wine there—it won’t kill me, and if it does, I’ll die a happy man.”
“I’m happy to hear you’re taking your health seriously.”
My dry tone makes him roll his eyes to the ceiling. “I tell you what, when you get to be my age, you tell me if life is worth living without a nice glass of wine at the end of the day.”
On cue, Ava walks in with two half-filled glasses of merlot and sets them down on the table. She’s an older woman with an attractive face and shy nature. More often than not, she wears floral dresses and a stained apron. I’ve always had a soft spot for her.
Cal thanks her and she smiles warmly in my direction. I round the table to embrace her. It’s been too long since I’ve seen her. I invite her to stay and eat with us, but she assures me she has too much to do.
Once she’s back in the kitchen, preparing my food, there’s a silent standoff between my grandfather and me as he lifts his glass to his mouth and takes a long sip. I know he has a point. It’s not my place to hound him. It sounds like there are enough people doing that already.
With a sigh, I pull back the chair beside him and take a seat. I sat in this spot for dinner nearly every night growing up. Nothing about the dining room has changed since I’ve been away. Glossy dark blue paneled walls. Artwork neatly arranged beneath brass library lights. The antique French dining table is still inlaid with scrolling vines in maple and walnut interrupted by the water marks I left as a kid that Cal never cared much about.
Ava returns a few minutes later with a spread worthy of a king, and I waste no time digging in.
I eat while Cal inquires about the London park. There’s not a single detail too small. He wants to know it all.
A few of the board members have tried unsuccessfully to seize control of the Knightley Company from Cal over the years, but their efforts are always in vain. The majority of our board and executive team know there is no way Cal will walk away from the Knightley Company as long as he lives. There is no retirement in his future. He built all of this. In the ’70s, Cal was running his family’s theme park in New York. It was small and they wanted to expand, but the surrounding land was too expensive to purchase. When his father passed away, Cal sold the park and headed down to Georgia, bringing every dime to his name with him. He wanted to build the largest theme park in the world, and to do that he needed a lot of cheap land. He took a big risk. This region was known for its low coastal grasslands and swamps, and even though there were deep pockets of pine forests, loggers were more interested in harvesting timber in north Georgia. The area was officially declared wasteland by the state. Cal jumped on the opportunity. He started to buy up property for $80 an acre through small private transactions, keeping suspicion and costs down. He’d amassed 18,000 acres before an enterprising journalist put the clues together and outed him in a local paper.
New York Businessman Set to Build Theme Park in the Marsh