Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 72765 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72765 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
But I get nothing.
The man remains a mystery … an infuriating, enigmatic mystery man with a story begging to be unraveled so I can make sense of what happened tonight.
* * *
Two hours later, I’m lying in bed, phone in hand, searching in vain for something, a clue, a lead, anything, but all I manage to uncover is that his first name is Bennett and he runs the Schoenbach Corporation.
Everything else is a shrouded.
Even the biography on his company’s website is two lines long: Bennett Schoenbach is a lifelong resident of Worthington Heights. Succeeding his father and grandfather, Bennett assumed ownership of the Schoenbach Corporation in 2014.
Growing up, I had a foster mom that used to tell me everyone had a story, that I shouldn’t judge anyone without knowing it. As I got older, I learned that it’s human nature to judge. In college, one professor theorized that it goes to our Neanderthal ancestry, when survival depended on sizing up the intentions and capabilities of those around us.
I reach for my remote and pull up the Turner Classic Movies channel, dialing the volume down until I can barely hear the comforting lilt of Rita Hayworth’s voice in the background, lulling me to sleep.
Maybe I’m tired and overthinking, maybe I’m still trying to wrap my head around tonight’s events, but I want to know his story.
I’m going to know his story.
One way or another.
I don’t know how, but I will.
And I’m sure it’ll explain everything.
4
Bennett
“The Alcott expense report.” I startle my assistant, Margaux, Friday morning. She damn near spills her coffee down her eyelet blouse, eyes wide as they lock onto me.
She wasn’t expecting to see me today, which is a shame.
All these years working together and the woman doesn’t know me at all. I’d have fired her early on, but her loyalty to my father during his tenure here has kept me from pulling the trigger.
My grandfather was always huge on loyalty. He believed it should be handsomely rewarded and never taken for granted. Besides, if she can handle him, she can handle me. And that counts for something.
“You said you’d send it last night,” I refresh her memory, my finger rapping on the edge of her unorganized desk.
Last Christmas I gave her an extra week of paid vacation and when she was gone, I brought in a professional organizer to give her area a “makeover,” thinking I was doing her (and the rest of us who have to walk past this hot mess on a daily basis) a service—only the spic-and-span tidiness lasted a mere six weeks before she had completely reverted to her old ways.
I tried.
“H … hi, Mr. Schoenbach.” She stutters when I make her nervous. My father had a soft-spot for her. Now I’m wondering if he had a hard-on for her too. She’s completely incapable of doing this job. “I … I was just finishing up …”
I check my timepiece. It’s a quarter ‘til eight. Her coffee is filled to the brim and her computer monitor is pitch black. Her orchid-colored lipstick is faded, like she’s been engaging in recent idle chit-chat.
Liar.
She follows my gaze, her lips teetering as she searches for a response, but I walk away before she has the chance.
On the way to my office, I count four people whispering, six people staring, and one sad sap from accounting who dares to make conversation with me at this ungodly hour.
I’m sure they’re all wondering why the hell I’m here on the heels of a family tragedy.
Unfortunately for them, it’s none of their fucking business.
I shut my office door and take a seat at my desk, turning to face the cityscape outside my windows. The Chicago skyline is surprisingly in clear sight today, the sky behind it a surreal shade of vanilla-orange dreamsicle.
If I were a mawkish man, I’d be drowning in a puddle of tears over the fact that the sun rose this morning without Larissa.
But I’m practical.
And I’m well aware that life carries on with or without us.
We’re nothing in the scheme of things.
And this is just another January sunrise.
Another Friday.
And I’m just another Schoenbach, ready to bury myself in meetings and paperwork until it’s the appropriate hour in which a man can enjoy two fingers of Scotch, and then I’ll show myself out—taking the back stairs so I don’t have to make awkward, have-a-good-weekend small talk with the suits and skirts on my payroll.
I’m certain the majority of my staff despises me, never mind that I anonymously cover Yuri’s daughter’s private school tuition, privately donated a Toyota Camry to our most tenured maintenance man when his Pinto could no longer reliably get him to work. Never mind that I make donations in all of their names to the Halbrook Heart Disease Foundation every January. Forget that I secretly paid off Margaux’s mortgage the first year I took over, when her husband lost his job (and his battle with lung cancer six months later).