Sophie looked at him and waited.
Ryan glanced at Stacy, who offered no help at all, though she seemed to be holding back a smile and that made him happy—to see a blush of color returning to her cheeks.
“’Course you can.” He shrugged. “Not every day I get to have pizza with a feather-boa’d pirate.”
“Can I bring my new purple rainboots?”
“They’re in the hall closet. I’ll get them.” Stacy rose from her chair.
“I can find them,” Ryan offered.
“Not in that closet, you can’t.” Stacy smiled, her mood improved. “Seriously, it’s enough that you’re taking her to lunch. Make it a long lunch and bring me something back. Nothing would make me happier.”
“We should go to the shore for the summer,” Ryan said impulsively. If a little thing like taking Sophie to lunch made his wife happy, he would spend the whole summer doing just that. Stacy paused at the doorway, so he continued. “As long as I have my laptop and a good internet connection, I can work from anywhere.”
“Don’t you have partner meetings coming up? You can’t miss them.”
“I can drive back if I need to—fly out to Seattle if something comes up Todd’s not my boss, Stace. He doesn’t get to dictate the schedule,” Ryan finished, with more vehemence than he’d intended. “As long as we’re meeting the targets in our original contract, we’re fine.”
Ryan was the one partner who had been against accepting outside funding. He had predicted they’d lose control of their company if they let the money guys in, and he’d been right. The changes came even before the ink on the contracts was dry. Now, there didn’t seem to be anything Ryan could do about it. So he’d given up, staying only to look out for the people on his team, to make sure they were taken care of.
A summer at the shore would be a good opportunity to get away and clear his head. Figure out what to do next.
“You sure about this?” Stacy asked again. “The kids have been looking forward to their camps.”
“Trading soccer camp with Chad for time at the shore?” Ryan snorted, feeling as if the weight that had been pressing against his shoulders had lifted, just a bit. “I’m pretty sure the kids’ll be okay with it.”
“My mother wants us to drive down next Saturday. All of us.”
Ryan approached his wife and kissed her forehead. “Fine with me.”
Three
From his armchair in the den, Chase Bennett could hear the hiss of tires on wet pavement as cars traveled down the tree-lined street outside his Princeton home. It had been raining all weekend, beginning shortly after Kaye had left to ready the shore house for the summer, and it had only just started to let up now, on Monday morning. He’d been able to convince her that until the shore house was ready, his time was better spent here, out of her way. His reward had been the Princeton house to himself for four whole days.
As soon as she left, Chase dug out the business reports and newspapers he’d hidden away, industry news Kaye had discouraged him from reading because she said it elevated his blood pressure. He settled in, poured himself a Scotch—another forbidden delicacy—and spread the papers across his desk, just like old times. But he found that jumping back into his profession wasn’t as easy as he’d imagined. The columns of numbers in the reports looked muddled. Simple valuations that he could have calculated on the train into the city just three years ago seemed to take much longer just to understand.
By Saturday afternoon, he’d lowered his expectations considerably. His research was basic—simple internet searches for general industry news that any first-year business-school kid would understand. Even that was challenging.
On Sunday, a wave of apprehension set in, sparked by the idea that he might never find his way back to where he was before. That this was to be his new normal. He scrambled for the phone to call Kaye because for the past three years, she always knew what to say. But then he realized he’d have to disclose what he was reading, explain the business journals he’d been hiding and she wouldn’t understand. So he didn’t call. He spent the afternoon in front of the television, watching the Phillies play the Nationals, completely uninvested in the outcome.
By early Monday morning, he’d convinced himself that what he really needed was a change of location. He’d been cooped up in this house for three years and he was