Here was the thing that you needed to know about my family. My childhood had been tumultuous since my parents didn’t really know what to do with a kid. They’d wanted one, but when they got me, they seemed to flounder. They were never outright unkind to me; they also never provided me with any real affection, beyond whatever they gave to anyone else. Their philosophy was to let me find my way, believing it would make me a freer, more independent person. They also didn’t believe in grudges or arguments. So when I was bullied in the seventh grade, they told me to just forgive Amanda Pointer for pushing me facedown in the dirt until I almost passed out, and get over it.
I could have been out smoking dope and stealing cars, and they would have shrugged it off as me “trying to find myself.” They knew very little about my personality, never taking the time to get to know me, and the only compliments they ever gave me were on my physical appearance.
One bright light in my upbringing was my uncle David, my mom’s big brother. He was totally different from my mom, and he disapproved of the way they brought me up. I’d heard him attempting to say so to my mom when he visited, and my mom would tell him they didn’t invite negativity into the house. I knew she and my dad frustrated my uncle to the point of real anger, but he still visited whenever he could to check up on me.
He even sent me money when I attended Savannah College of Art and Design. With his support, and with Nick and Gem only a few hours away studying at Georgia State, college had been the happiest time in my life. A year after graduation, however, after I’d been convinced to move back to Phoenix, the two people I trusted the most destroyed my faith and broke my heart. It was my uncle who stepped in to help me pick up the pieces. He insisted I move out to Boston to stay with him and his wife while I got on my feet. I’d been working as an intern with an interior design company, so my hope was to find a new position with another company. My uncle was a successful accountant and I convinced him to let me redo his office so I could add it to my small portfolio. Instead, Stella Larson noted the changes on her next visit to my uncle’s office and inquired about it. Being the super supportive guy he was, my uncle waxed poetic about me to her and got me an interview. Seven years later the rest was history.
It wasn’t the only time my uncle David had come through for me. He was also the reason Harper got a chance at Canterbury. Jason Luton was not only his client, but they’d become friends, and I asked him to ask Jason to give Harper a shot as an apprentice chef when she was nineteen.
My uncle was semiretired and lived in a beautiful house in Hyde Park. One they didn’t stay in that often because his wife liked to travel. Still, Uncle David stayed in touch as much as possible. And I knew he’d been worried about me after the news broke of Gem’s passing.
“I’m fine,” I replied, strolling past Stella’s office and waving to her as she looked up from her computer. My office was just as I’d left it—spic and span. All my work put away and organized. It didn’t look like that normally. It was the one personal space of mine that was usually covered in drawings, fabrics, photographs, and papers. “I’m just glad to be home.”
“I would have dropped by, but we’re in New York. When we get back, let’s have dinner.”
“I’d like that.”
“And how is my sister?” he asked, almost reluctantly.
“The same.”
He grunted. “Okay. Well, I’ll let you get back to work. Call me if you need anything.”
“I will. Love you.”
“Love you too, sweetheart.”
We hung up and I slumped into my chair, looking around my office, preparing myself. First coffee. Leaving my bag and phone at my desk, I headed back toward reception and to the fancy coffee machine that had taken me months to figure out how to use correctly.
“Welcome back.”
I glanced over my shoulder and spotted Stella leaning against the doorway to reception with her arms crossed over her chest. She wore a white blouse with balloon sleeves tucked into an oyster pink pencil skirt. On her feet, nude patent Louboutins. I could admit I may have modeled my own style on hers, because I thought she was pure class.
Her dark brown hair was cut short and blunt so that the shiny ends touched her chin. She had it tucked behind her right ear, revealing a large diamond stud. Her dark eyes were filled with concern.
“I’m fine,” I said, without her having to ask.
“You should have taken today off.”
“And what would have been the point?” I approached her with my coffee. “What I need is to get back to normal. I have a ton of work to catch up on. You know, as my boss you should actually be pressuring me to do that.”
Stella snorted. “I like to think I’m a human being as well as a boss.”
I laughed as she walked back to my office with me. “You’re an anomaly among your kind.”
“Since you aren’t taking me up on my offer for time off … is there anything I can do to help?” She gestured to my office, thus indicating my work. “And by help, I mean off-load some of your work to Gabe.”
As our newest and youngest employee, Gabe worked with only one client at a time, so he technically had more availability than me, Stella, or Paul, the other senior designer.
“I’m really okay. And you know I would never off-load work to someone else. The thought makes my chest hurt,” I joked. But it was true. I was maybe too much of a control freak sometimes, but that was just who I was.
“Fine.” Stella regarded me seriously. “I want to know, however, if you can’t handle things. Not just out of the kindness of my heart either. We can’t afford for any screwups on your current projects. Both are longtime clients.”
“I know that. I’m good,” I promised her.
My boss left me to it and I booted up my computer to start working my way through e-mails. Patrice Danby, the forty-eight-year-old daughter of an oil baron and wife to a high-powered attorney, had been using Stella Larson Designs for the past six years. It seemed she had a new project for us to do every six months, whether it was personal or part of her philanthropic work. We found ourselves designing space for hospital common rooms, retirement homes, free clinics, and once even a charity-run veterinary hospital. I liked Patrice. She didn’t seem like some bored housewife who needed something to do and so turned to charity work. She genuinely appeared to care about her philanthropic projects, and while some people might be of the opinion that it was silly to put so much work into making a space look pretty, Patrice believed in the power of beautiful things. She believed the perfect space could help healing or provide comfort to people and animals. And Stella was more than happy to work with her on that.
For the past three years Patrice had worked exclusively with me after enjoying my collaboration on a retirement home.
I was also working with Roxanne Sutton aka the Shrew. This was my first time working on a project with Roxanne, because her usual designer had said he was too busy to work on her latest project. It became clear to me quite quickly that that was an excuse, and Paul had landed me with Roxanne for a reason. She was rude, demanding, and interfering. However, she had been a client for ten years, and as the young wife of Marcus Sutton, of the New England Suttons, she had more money than God. That family had their fingers in all kinds of different pies, and their wealth had accumulated for generations. They were the kind of wealthy that was difficult to wrap your head around.
My latest project with Roxanne was redecorating not one room, but the entirety of their summer home in Nantucket.
After making a few calls to the tradesman I was collaborating with on the project to see where things stood, I called Roxanne. She lambasted me for a while about being unavailable for the last few days, and although I tried to explain the situation once again, she pretended like she couldn’t hear me. Once I’d promised to send over the latest photos I’d received from the work on the house, and resend samples and drawings I’d already sent her, I managed to get off the phone.
Then I called Patrice. I was redesigning the guesthouse at the back of their property in Wellesley Farms. They had family from Europe coming to stay with them over the summer, and Patrice wanted them to feel like they had privacy, but the guesthouse hadn’t been redecorated in ten years.