A Little Too Late (Madigan Mountain)

REED

After a busy twenty-four hours, I pull up to Block’s farmhouse in Penny Ridge and climb out of another rental car into the snow. This time I don’t hide in the shrubberies. I walk right up onto the porch and knock.

It’s not as much fun, to be honest, and I wish I had Ava at my side, but this is something I need to do on my own.

I use the brass door knocker to make my presence known. For a long minute I fear that I’ve miscalculated. Flying all the way here and then showing up unannounced to talk to a man with a grudge against my family? Yeah, this could go wrong in a hundred ways.

But I had to try.

Just when I’m sure that nobody is coming to the door, I hear footsteps. The door swings open to reveal a well-to-do cowboy entrepreneur named Tucker Block.

And he looks confused.

“Hi,” I say quickly. “My name is Reed Madigan.”

“Ah,” he says, and his bushy eyebrows fly up in surprise. “Interesting.”

“Could I come in?” I try.

He hesitates for only a beat, then he swings the door open wide. “Not sure I can help you.”

“I’m not sure you can either,” I admit. “But I had to ask. I know you have a deal to sell the apron land to the Sharpes. I’m here to ask you to reconsider.”

He leads me into a parlor that’s just off the front hall. “Why would you want to do that?” he asks, settling into an antique chair.

I glance around the room and wonder why a bachelor would live alone in this enormous house. Maybe that will be me someday—rattling around in a California mansion, paying people to dust furniture that doesn’t get much use.

“Okay, so, I’m sure you know my father has an offer to sell the ski resort.”

“For a lot of money,” Block adds.

“Right. He wants to retire. But I’m not sure the Sharpes’ development plans are in synch with the character of the town. And I thought we could all do better.”

“Better on price?” Block asks, his bush eyebrows drawing together.

“No,” I admit. “Not on price. Not at first, anyway. My motivations aren’t financial.”

Block sighs. “Well, my motivations are financial. I want to retire too, Reed. I’m ready. And I am disinclined to turn down the pile of cash the Sharpes are offering me.”

“The money is attractive, I’m sure,” I say carefully. “But what if you could have a say in the design? You’d help me secure all the property rights, and then we’d buy the land from you. I bet your deal with Sharpe depends on what they’re able to construct, right? And if they can’t build the massively ambitious project they showed you, then you probably won’t see all that cash, anyway.”

He frowns at me. “How much do you know about this private transaction?”

Honesty seems the best policy here since I’m running out of time. “I saw the plans, but I’m only speculating on your compensation package. If I were the Sharpes, I would have offered you an initial lump sum payment for the land, plus a back-end profit share.”

“Hrmh,” he says in a way that conveys I’m probably right.

“But your long-term profits could vanish if the town planning board shoots down a proposal which would massively reshape the character and traffic pattern of Penny Ridge.”

Block pinches the bridge of his nose. “That thought had occurred to me as well. Although the Sharpes are very persuasive. They have a track record. They were able to triple the size of two other resorts they purchased.”

“They are persuasive, because they don’t care who they harm. They commonly violate their building permits, choosing to pay fines rather than follow the rules. The township where they bought one of their golf resorts is suing them for seventeen million dollars. The Sharpes’ plan is to drag out the lawsuit as long as they can, hoping the township’s legal bills are so crippling that they just give up. These aren’t people that you want to do business with.”

Block’s jaw hardens. “Then why are you here? Why am I getting this speech and not your father?”

That is, of course, the real problem. “He needs to retire. His new wife wants to travel. He doesn’t have the bandwidth to take on a project like this. But I do.”

He regards me for what feels like a long moment. “Do you work in commercial real estate development, Reed?”

“Nope,” I say, going once again with honesty. “But I’m well connected to people who can help me figure it out every step of the way. Raising investor money is my day job.”

He shakes his head. “I never thought I’d say this, but I’m kind of with your father on this one.”

“Explain that to me,” I say before I can think better of it. “Why you and my father never agree on anything.”

He makes a face, and I wonder if I’ve just worn out my welcome.

On the one hand, my mother’s been dead for over a decade. It really doesn’t matter what transpired over thirty years ago, does it?

On the other hand, if Ava left me for another guy, I’d rather punch him in the face than do business with him.

Maybe I just answered my own question. “I know you once dated my mother. But that must have been thirty-five years ago.”

“That’s true,” he says slowly. “But my disagreement with your father only dates back about half as far as that.”

I feel a cold prickle on the back of my neck, and a dozen ugly ideas float through my head. “Why is that?”

“Your mother’s art,” he says. “You know I helped place it in galleries?”

I lean forward in my chair. “Really?”

He nods. “She had several dealers. I used to own a gallery in Denver. Your mother and I had an ongoing business relationship. Nothing fishy about it, though. The fact that we dated once for a couple of weeks wasn’t ever a problem.”

“Oh. I see.” It takes me a minute to wrap my head around that. “So what happened? Did some kind of transaction go wrong?”

“Not exactly.” He tips his head to the side, as if considering what to say. “You must have been in middle school. I wanted her to go to New Mexico to collaborate with another studio artist. I’d introduced the two of them. It would have meant six weeks away from your dad and you boys. But the collaboration would have widened her platform a lot. It could have taken her career from successful local artist to international success.”

Oh. “And she didn’t go.” Of course she didn’t. I would have noticed.

He shakes his head. “She said—and this haunts me—there’ll be plenty of time after the kids are grown. Life is long.”

“Well, shit.”

Block gives me a sad smile. “My thoughts exactly. Your dad resented the hell out of me for pushing her on it. I asked her again when you kids were in high school, too. But then…”

“She got her diagnosis.”

He nods, and his eyes are so sad. “The fucked-up thing is that the price for her art went through the roof when she stopped producing new work. I bought a few pieces for myself at the end, even at those prices. Just to keep the cash flowing to her…” He clears his throat. “Your father probably resents me for a million different reasons by now. I still own several pieces of her best work.”

“Can I see it?” I ask quickly. I’d already planned to ask unless he threw me out before I got the chance.

“Of course.” He stands, and I follow him out of the room. I expect him to head into the dining room, where I already know he’s got those bookends.

But he doesn’t. He climbs an elaborate staircase with a carved-wood banister, and I follow him up to the second floor.

The bronze statue is right there on the landing, and I recognize it immediately, because the clay study she’d made for this work used to sit high up on that shelf in our living room.

But this version is larger, with a beautiful blue-green patina. The figure is seated on the edge of the table where Block has placed her. Her limbs are elongated and rumpled by the suggestion of clothing. Long legs hang down, but they’re tensed together. She clasps her thin arms in front of her chest, as if so overcome by a sudden yearning that she has to contain her heart with both hands.

Her youthful face is tipped toward the sky, and her voluminous hair is lifted as if by the wind, flowing energetically in the breeze.

It’s twenty-four or so inches of pure, flowing emotion, captured in metal.

My hands move unbidden to the metal, just so I can touch something that my mother once held. The mottled metal surface is cool against my fingers.

And just for a second, I feel her presence. Like a spark of warmth on my face. And everything goes still inside me as the bronze warms to my hands.

“She had so much heart,” Block whispers, “and it shows in every piece she ever made.”

He’s right. My mother was special that way. She never hid her emotions. She wasn’t ever afraid to show how much she cared.

Unlike me. It’s been so long since I allowed myself to love anyone that I almost can’t remember how it works. “When she died, we all lost that. I mean—we lost her, but we also lost the ability to show up for each other.”

My words aren’t very polished, but they’re still true. The remaining Madigans are four grown men who’ve spent years trying not to feel a thing.

And poor Ava. She got the worst of my dysfunction.

But right now, in the presence of my mother’s work, I let myself feel every damn thing. It hurts. I’m vaguely aware of the tears in my eyes, and I don’t let go of the sculpture until one of them threatens to break free, and I have to brush it away.

“I’m very sorry for your loss,” Block says softly.

“Thank you.” I step back and take a deep breath. Not to banish the feeling, but to process it. “Thank you for letting me see this. I have very little of her artwork. And my father has none.”

Block stares.

“He didn’t want any memories of her in the house.”

“Jesus.” He looks back at the sculpture. “It had occurred to me that this should be displayed somewhere in town. I could work on that.”

“That’s a nice idea, but I’m just glad to know that it’s safe. I thought about trying to hunt down some of her other work and buying it back.”

I hadn’t done it, though. Maybe I’m more like my father than I thought. And isn’t that an uncomfortable realization.

I look Block square in the eye, and I try to get back to the matter at hand. “Her death blew up my family. But I’m back now, and I’d like to do what I can to keep this a town she’d be proud of. I think she’d want that.”

Block rubs his chin. “I’m sure you’re right. And I’m intrigued by your idea of keeping it local. But I wish you’d had this big revelation a couple weeks ago. I have an offer on the table, and it’s a really good one.”

“It’s not too late,” I argue. “We could put a pause on the Sharpe contracts and spend a week or two exploring our options. The Sharpes aren’t going anywhere. And if they suspect we have another deal on the table, they’ll only be more interested, not less.”

“I hear you,” he says. “But are you sure you have time to wait? I got a message an hour ago that they were flying in early with finished contracts. Pretty sure that was happening today.”

“Today,” I repeat stupidly.

He nods.

I turn around and run down the staircase.