That being said, his house was big and lonely and, when given the option, he always chose to stay with me.
I dressed, slathered on some triple antibiotic and big band-aids on my heels, then climbed into bed. It was well on its way to two in the morning and I knew sleep wasn't going to come easy, despite having to get up for work at seven.
My job was another thing my father hated.
See, my dad worked in energy. As in, the not-so-green kinds: coal, oil, gas.
I also worked in energy, but in the green kind: wind and solar.
My father made tens of millions a year. I made the mid-low six figures.
His gripe was not necessarily in the kind of energy I worked in. Even he knew that green was going to be the way of the future. His issue was with the fact that I worked for his competitor. In public, he would just throw an arm around me and claim I had inherited his enterprising spirit. In private, I got lectures.
Yeah, twenty-eight years old and being lectured by my father.
It made it really hard to feel like the adult I was at times.
But, aside from the townhouse, I made my own way in life. My trust fund sat and didn't get touched and I worked to pay for my utilities, my car, my hair, my nights out on occasion, my wardrobe. I took care of myself. Before my mother passed away when I was twelve, she told me that that was what she wanted more than anything for me- independence. She begged me to never let myself be dependent on a man. Being her dying wish, and perhaps an insight into the kind of life my mother lived being dependent on my father, I threw myself into that mission with every bit of determination I possessed. I got good grades at school, never settling for a B when I could get an A. It was the same attitude that got me through college, then got me a good job at a Fortune 250 company despite being one of the youngest and most inexperienced candidates.
I never settled. I got what I set my mind to. I never gave up.
So, even given the minor setback that was being chased by two gang members through the streets of Navesink Bank, I was not done. I was not settling for non-answers. I was not giving up.
I just had to come up with a new strategy.
The problem there being, I was obviously no kind of detective. And, good stamina aside, I had no real skills to help me in this particular mission. I couldn't involve Rome. I didn't want to involve my father. But I obviously needed some kind of help.
Top of the next day's agenda was to go online and find out what kind of PI or whatever I could hire or bend the ear of in the area. Even if all they could do was point me in the right direction, it would be well worth whatever fee I would need to pay. I couldn't keep snooping around and putting my life in jeopardy to find answers.
I needed to find someone who could just... give some to me.ThreeElsieI had two calls out to two different PIs I had come across when I searched around on my lunch break. One, to a man named Sawyer who boasted a resume that made me slightly uncomfortable to even think about, full of information on his time in the military and the extensive training he had done afterward. The second was to someone who, if his website was anything to go by, seemed younger, a bit more in touch with millennial generations and their penchant for broadcasting their lives online. His name was Barrett and he claimed he could find answers to any questions you might have.
Call me crazy, but I was leaning toward the latter of the two. Maybe it was for the sole reason that the Sawyer guy sounded intimidating and I had a tendency to feel nervous around men who reminded me of my father. So the Barrett guy seemed more approachable and, therefore, the more likely candidate for the job.
I drove home feeling productive and hopeful. I needed to get some answers. I needed to know what was really going on. I couldn't just go on with my life and pretend that things weren't seriously messed up and my father and everyone around me was largely ignoring it.
I pulled into my garage and parked, grabbing my purse, closing the garage door, and going up toward my front steps. It was a habit Roman picked on me about, telling me it was safer for me to enter my house from the door through the garage. I tended to call him a worrywart and blow it off. It was stupid to go through the garage when I needed to pick up my mail in the box by my front door.