A Family Divided Read online

  A

  Family

  Divided

  Tom Berreman

  Copyright © 2019 by Tom Berreman.

  Excerpt from Succession of Power copyright © 2019 by Tom Berreman.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.

  Tom Berreman

  6018 Pinetree Avenue

  Panama City Beach, Florida 32408

  [email protected]

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Book Layout & Design ©2013 - BookDesignTemplates.com

  Cover Design by James, GoOnWrite.com

  A Family Divided / Tom Berreman -- 1st ed.

  ISBN 978-0-9977698-3-8

  Chapter 1.

  The Ferrari 488 Spider’s odometer just passed twelve hundred miles and Curt Jennings, ignoring the recommended break-in period, downshifted to third and accelerated. The 660 horsepower engine’s throaty rumble echoing off the roadside cliff exhilarated him as did the G forces pushing him back into the plush, calfskin leather seat.

  His beautiful passenger’s amorous stare caught his attention as she massaged the inside of his right thigh. Her blonde mane scattered into a tangled mess by air rushing over the convertible traveling ninety miles per hour on the curvy, Pacific Coast Highway north of Ventura.

  The ocean, just beyond the highway’s right shoulder, was basking in the late summer sunset’s red and orange glow diffused by a cloud bank camped over the Channel Islands. Waves breaking on the rocky shoreline sprayed seawater twenty feet into the air causing the sunshine to blossom into a rainbow spectrum in the mist. A light offshore breeze blanketed the coast with a subtle saline scent.

  * * *

  “They just left the restaurant. Head north in three minutes.”

  * * *

  As he up shifted he again glanced at Laura, his wife of just three months, and all was right with his world. But her frantic shout interrupted the euphoria.

  “Curt, look out!”

  A motorcycle in his lane passing oncoming traffic startled him.

  His instinct was to swerve right to avoid the inevitable collision, sending the Ferrari onto the shoulder. Approaching a sharp left curve he had to slow the car. At the high speed the loose gravel provided little for the race track designed tires to grip and the car became unwieldy. Small rocks dinged the car’s wheel wells and under carriage as a dust cloud behind the car drifted across the highway.

  Tire squeals echoed off the roadside cliff as oncoming drivers, losing their view of the narrow, treacherous road, panicked and braked hard. The driver of the fourth car in line, distracted reading a text, rear-ended a minivan, causing a minor, chain reaction accident.

  The motorcycle disappeared through the dust cloud as it sped from the commotion.

  Curt remained calm, relying on the lessons he learned at the Ferrari Driving School, a dealer incentive to purchase the expensive, powerful Italian automobile. But when he pushed the brake pedal to the floor with no response, his calm turned to panic.

  He downshifted to slow the car as it entered the curve, but it fishtailed hard to the right.

  An eerie silence replaced gravel pinging the wheel wells after the car left the shoulder, crashed through the guardrail and plummeted toward the rocky shore.

  Chapter 2.

  Three Months Earlier

  “Here you are gentlemen,” said the attractive cocktail waitress, presenting a display of her ample cleavage as she bent forward to set a twelve-year-old scotch on the rocks and a dry martini on the table in front of Brent Jennings and Joe Taggart, his business colleague. They had just arrived for late night happy hour at the Bull and Bear Tavern after a fourteen hour day advising a large bank financing a client’s leveraged buyout. The barroom, filled with Wall Street minions in three thousand dollar suits unwinding from another long day in the office, was loud with conversations comparing war stories of big deals their firms were closing.

  “Nice rack,” Brent said after the waitress left their table. Joe smiled and nodded in agreement.

  “So, I hear you’re leaving the firm to move to California and run your dad’s company,” Joe said.

  * * *

  Brent, Curt Jennings’ oldest son, graduated cum laude from Stanford with a business degree and earned his MBA in finance at Harvard. He elected to remain on the east coast when Wolfowitz and Lange, a well-respected Wall Street consulting firm, offered him a position. Most of his Harvard classmates would envy his mid six-figure salary, but he had ambitious plans to further enhance his wealth.

  Someday he would run the company his father built from scratch, and would do whatever it took to achieve his goal.

  * * *

  “It’s not quite that simple,” Brent said. “My dad’s still a hands-on CEO, but he’s not getting any younger. And he’s marrying a young trophy wife next week, so I’m sure he’ll be looking to wind down. And as his oldest son, I’m the obvious heir apparent to step in and run the company.”

  “What about your siblings?”

  “Hah,” Brent replied, almost chocking on his scotch. “My brother’s an HIV-positive gay advertising tech in San Francisco with as much business sense as…, oh…, I don’t know…, maybe our waitress.”

  Joe chuckled at the derogatory comment as he sipped his martini.

  Their demeaning attitude might have changed if they knew she was a Columbia Phi Beta Kappa graduate, graduated first in her class at Wharton Business School and just left a successful three-year stint at a large Wall Street investment bank. She was waitressing part time to earn extra spending money before entering Yale Law School in the fall.

  “And his twin sister’s a naïve, suburban soccer mom with three kids under six who knows even less about running a business,” he continued. “I’m sure when my dad dies he’ll leave the company to his kids, and it’ll be clear I’m the one to run it. So, it’s only logical he will groom me to be CEO.”

  “So, you going to the wedding?”

  “It’s the last thing I want to do, I was in California six weeks ago for my mom’s funeral. And even worse…, I’ll have to hang with my twin siblings.”

  “You sound like you don’t love the old man, you just love his money…, and his company.”

  “That’s not what I’m saying, we’ve just never been close.”

  “But you’re going to the wedding anyway?”

  “Yeah, I have no choice. I need to suck up to my dad if I’m ever to run his company.”

  “And your new stepmom?”

  “Don’t fucking say that,” Brent said. “She’ll never be my stepmother.”

  “But what if she inherits the company? You might end up working for her.”

  “No way, my dad wouldn’t fucking do that. He built his company from scratch. And besides…, she’s nothing but a goddamn secretary.”

  Both men nodded an affirmative response as the well-built, well-educated waitress walked by their table, smiled and held up two fingers.

  Chapter 3.

  Joshua Jennings held a Bic lighter over the pipe’s bowl and took a deep inhale bef
ore handing it to Benjamin, his partner of eight years. They sat on an old, threadbare couch in the small San Francisco loft they shared, the best they could afford on Joshua’s modest salary as an advertising agency graphic designer. The Grateful Dead’s Sugar Magnolia played in the background on the Bose Wave CD player Joshua received as a birthday gift from his father. It was the only real extravagance in their loft.

  Joshua’s partaking of the pipe’s contents was illegal as it contained medical marijuana prescribed by Benjamin’s doctor to ease his suffering from the late stages of HIV/AIDS.

  “Are you going to be all right while I’m gone?” Joshua asked as he reached to grasp his partner’s hand. “It should only be a day or two.”

  “I’ll be fine, you can’t miss your dad’s wedding,” he said as he returned the light squeeze.

  “Yeah, you’re right. I’m just glad he’s marrying the woman he loves.”

  “But he’s not your real dad, is he?”

  Joshua had been estranged from his mother and siblings for years, and despite their long-term relationship, he and Benjamin rarely spoke about his family.

  “No, my biological father was an LA cop, killed in the line of duty shortly after Jess and I were born. Curt married my mom a couple years later, when Brent was four and we were two. He adopted the three of us and raised us as his own. After my mom and I had our falling out I considered him my only real parent.”

  * * *

  Joshua loved his mother and recalled his early youth with fondness. On a typical morning, after homemade blueberry pancakes, she would take him and his twin sister to the park and spend hours pushing them, side by side, on the swings. After a lunch of grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup she would sit with them as they spent the afternoon coloring pictures and reading books. She never relied on the television as a babysitter.

  But the fond memories changed the day she found him combing his sister’s Barbie doll’s hair.

  “Put that down this minute,” she said in a stern voice reserved for the discipline she rarely dispensed. “Boys don’t play with dolls, and I won’t raise a sissy!”

  That was the first time he knew she could not accept him for who he was, that he was not the person she wanted him to be. His natural response was to hide his true feelings, and he remained in the closet through his formative years.

  At nineteen, after he left home and moved into his first San Francisco apartment, he could no longer live a lie, and confided in his mother he was gay and prepared to live an openly gay lifestyle. He expected her disappointment but didn’t expect her draconian reaction to the truth hidden all those years.

  The truth she knew but couldn’t accept.

  “Get out of my house…, now!” she screamed. “The sight of you makes me sick. I no longer consider you my son.”

  As he walked down the sidewalk toward the bus stop, dazed from the emotional onslaught he had just endured, his adoptive father followed him. He overheard their conversation.

  “Joshua, please wait a minute,” Curt said.

  Joshua stopped, but didn’t turn back to look at him. Curt placed his hand on his son’s shoulder and turned him so they were face to face. He said nothing, but embraced him in a tight hug he held for a full minute.

  Joshua’s tears soaked his dad’s golf shirt.

  From that day forward he loved Curt Jennings as though he were his biological father.

  * * *

  “Your dad’s rich, isn’t he?”

  “Yeah, a self-made millionaire. He quit high school to support his family and built his company from the ground up. But honestly…, I really don’t care about his money…, and don’t plan on getting rich when he dies. I just love the man for who he is and hope he lives a long life and enjoys every dollar he ever earned. But I’m sure my siblings are counting down the days to read his will.”

  “Are they going to be at the wedding?”

  “I’m afraid so, I guess we’ll just have to put up with one another. We’re a pretty dysfunctional bunch, and I’m sure avoiding conflict will be the major theme of our reunion.”

  “How’s the saying go? You can pick your nose--”

  “But you can’t pick your family, right?”

  “Yup.”

  Chapter 4.

  “I can’t believe he’s marrying her, she’s twenty years younger than him. And Mom’s only been dead for six weeks,” Jessica Jennings-Conrad said as she sat on the living room couch facing her husband in his favorite recliner. She just spent the last hour bathing their three children and fighting the recurring battle over why it was time to go to bed.

  Disgusted by the interruption, he set the Wall Street Journal he was perusing on the end table next to his Heineken, expecting another argument about her father’s impending marriage. Tiring of this, he couldn’t resist the urge to stir the pot.

  “Afraid the gold digger might wipe out your inheritance?”

  “Shut up Tony! That’s not what I’m saying, it’s just a little too quick. I love my father, and if he’s happy, that’s all I care about. So, I’ve decided I’m going to the wedding.”

  “You know I can’t go,” Tony said as he paused, took a drink of beer and put his feet on the recliner’s ottoman obstructing her view of his face. “I can’t just close my office for two or three days, I have patients with standing appointments.”

  “Fine, I’ll go alone,” she said as she abruptly stood from the couch.

  “You mean you and the kids, right?”

  “No, alone. You can deal with the kids for a few days, even if you have to skip your Saturday tee time. It might not hurt for you to see what my days are like.”

  Tony said nothing as his wife stormed out of the room. He shook his head with frustrated indifference as he reached out to retrieve his paper.

  * * *

  Jessica sat at the kitchen table, rested her elbows, put her face into her hands and sobbed. She regretted blowing up at her husband, but he had stretched her patience thin over the last few months. And she struggled with her father’s decision to marry a woman closer to her age than his.

  She and Tony had three children under six and lived a comfortable, upper middle-class lifestyle in a Sacramento suburb. Tony, a dentist, bought out his retiring partner six months before and hired a new dental school graduate to help with twice his normal patient load. His success made her proud, but raising the buyout money depleted their savings, including their kids’ modest college fund. They also took out a second mortgage.

  To help with expenses, she took a part-time cashier job at a nearby grocery store. Their neighbor, a single mother of two, worked at the same store. To save daycare cost, they alternated shifts and watched each other’s children on their days off. So when she wasn’t working she was the caretaker of five children under six years old.

  Adding to her frustration, Tony rarely came straight home after closing his office, instead spending two or three hours at a local sports bar with his buddies. He golfed every Saturday and spent Sundays glued to the TV watching football, or golf, or whatever sport was in season. His role as the family’s primary breadwinner gave him the right.

  At least in his opinion.

  As her tears subsided she sat straight, licked the salty moisture from her lips and sighed. She looked down at the budget she was working on before she took the kids to bed. The credit card statement highlighted an outstanding balance approaching their credit limit, thanks to a recent sixty-eight hundred dollar charge at the country club pro shop. The charge memo read Taylor Made Irons. A red line on the worksheet deleted her gym membership and weekly salon appointments.

  She stood from the table. The reflection in the sliding glass door leading to the backyard patio was a plain woman she barely recognized. Unkempt hair. A blotchy complexion void of makeup. A frumpy body ten pounds heavier than the last time she stepped on the scale at her gym.

  Being the mother of three young children was challenging yet satisfying, and her efforts were recognized by her fam
ily and friends. She was always proud of her children’s accomplishments, whether it was tying their shoes or passing their swimming lesson test to traverse the deep end for the first time.

  But was she happy? There was a hollowness deep inside her she couldn’t fight, no matter how hard she tried.

  She often pondered divorce but would struggle as a single mother. Their debt left no room to afford two households, not to mention alimony. And she was sure Tony would concede sole custody and become the weekend-only dad who spoiled his children before dropping them off Sunday afternoon.

  Maybe a couple days away would help improve her mood, even if it were to attend her father’s marriage to his young bride.

  Tony’s gold digger comment reverberated in her mind. She couldn’t deny she often considered the wealth she and her siblings would inherit when her father passed away. But he ran marathons, worked out four to five times a week, ate a healthy diet and was in great health for a man in his early sixties.

  She was ashamed whenever she pondered his death.

  And her dreams of financial freedom assumed she and her siblings were the sole beneficiaries of her father’s estate, which would most likely change in the next few days.

  Chapter 5.

  “Hello folks,” Jason Burke said as an elderly couple entered Superior Images Gallery, their entrance announced by the front door antique bell’s tinkle. Seated in his law office, an old desk he bought at the local thrift store setting in a small loft a half flight above the gallery floor, he set aside the will he had just drafted to greet his customers.

  The slow pace and laid-back lifestyle owning a photography gallery and law office in Grand Marais, Minnesota on Lake Superior’s north shore was in sharp contrast to his life only a few months before as a high stakes Washington D.C. litigation attorney.

  “Please look around, and just let me know if you have any questions,” he said as he stepped from behind his desk to join the couple.