Ride with Me

“Why did you do that stupid Outback ride?”

If the question surprised him, he didn’t show it. Which was interesting, considering how much it surprised her. It wasn’t until it came out of her mouth that she understood how badly she wanted to know the answer—to this question and to all the others she’d kept to herself. She needed desperately for him to open up to her. She couldn’t g

o on with him like this anymore.

Tom dropped his hand from her face and sat back against the fence. “I could give you about a dozen reasons,” he said after a short pause. “But there’s really only one that matters.” He stopped to take a deep breath and let it out slowly with his eyes closed. When he opened them again, he’d clearly steeled himself to tell her the truth.

“You ever hear of Vargas Industries?” he asked.

“Sure.” Everyone in Oregon who followed the news had heard of Vargas Industries. It had once been the largest privately held company in the state, employing thousands of people in lumber and millwork jobs, as well as half a dozen subsidiaries. Several years earlier, the company had run into trouble for violating a bunch of environmental regulations, and after a trial that had been splashed all over the front pages of the papers for the better part of a year, the company president, Tomás Vargas, had negotiated a settlement in which the firm paid a tidy sum to the government. Vargas Industries had subsequently gone under, slowly and painfully, throwing dozens of Oregon cities on hard times.

Tom was watching her with narrowed eyes, and she had the distinct impression he could see all the thoughts running through her head. “That’s where I worked,” he said. “Back when I had a corporate job.”

“You were next in line to run Vargas Industries?” She was trying to piece together the fragments he’d revealed over the past weeks with what he was telling her now, but she knew she wasn’t seeing the whole picture yet. “I thought it was a family-run company.”

“It was. Right before I went to Australia, I changed my name. Geiger is my mother’s maiden name. I was born Tomás Enrique Vargas Jr. Named after my father. Heir apparent to the throne of Vargas Industries.”

That was the fragment she’d needed. Now she understood what Tom had run all the way to Australia to get away from.

“Oh, shit,” she said.

17

“You know about the trial?” he asked.

She knew about the trial. The younger Tomás Vargas—her Tom—had been the key witness for the state, offering testimony that devastated the company’s defense. Ignorant of the environmental offenses while they were taking place, he’d found out about them through contact with a whistle-blower whom his father had fired, and he’d liberated reams of documentation from his father’s records and turned all of it over to the prosecution.

She’d discussed the trial over dinner with her family on more than one occasion. It was such a dramatic Oregon story of corporate irresponsibility and government reaction, the kind of case that really made you think about the legal system and its effects. Who were the good guys and who were the bad guys when slapping a company with a fine for its misdeeds led to devastating job losses and put a huge dent in the state economy? How do we measure the value of the environment against the value of human livelihoods?

They’d seemed like such abstract questions.

In the press and around the Marshall dinner table, Tomás Vargas Jr had been the hero of the story. Until now, it had never occurred to Lexie that Tom Vargas himself might not see it that way.

Sorting through six years of press coverage in her head, she said, “You were never in the papers. I’d have remembered you.”

He nodded. “I tried to stay out of it. There were some courtroom sketches, but I didn’t let them take my picture if I could help it.”

Lexie remembered someone else from the news coverage, and her stomach sank. “Oh, God. Your wife.”

“Yeah. Haylie was head of the legal department. She sat at the defense table throughout the whole trial.” He laughed, a hollow sound. “At least she didn’t cross-examine me.”

“She sided with your father?”

“She didn’t want me to have anything to do with Schram.” Lexie must have looked confused, because Tom clarified, “The whistle-blower. She said it was betraying my father even to look into his allegations. When I turned the evidence over to the state, she moved out. I found out later she was already sleeping with Craig.”

“And after the trial?”

“My father disowned me as soon as he learned I was siding with Schram against him. Mom stood by him, though she didn’t like it. Only Taryn refused to take sides. She’s like the emissary now, shuttling back and forth between them and me, always hoping that someday we’ll kiss and make up.” He frowned. “I don’t see that happening. Poor Taryn. She still thinks I did the right thing, and it kills her that none of the rest of the family can see it.”

Lexie’s chest had been tightening up while he spoke, and now she had to blink back tears. It was a horrible story. He’d lost his job, his wife, his family, his identity—all for the sake of his convictions. And somewhere along the line, he’d lost his convictions, too.

At the same time that she felt for him, though, she struggled to repress her rising indignation. They’d been riding together for more than three thousand miles, and he hadn’t said a word. Tom’s life had fallen apart in a public forum. What did it say about their relationship that he’d chosen to keep it a secret from her?

Shoving her more selfish reaction aside, she said, “I’m with your sister on this one.”

“Thanks. That’s what I went to Australia for, anyway. I needed to get away to think about why I did what I did. Haylie accused me of siding against the company to get back at my father, and I was afraid she was right. I was furious with him when I found out what he’d been up to. You have to understand, in my job, I was responsible for the company’s image. All these greenwashing ads in national magazines bragging about Vargas’s great environmental programs—and the programs themselves—those came out of my office. I believed in them. I thought my contribution to the company was going to be to take it in this new direction, to make it the environmental vanguard of the industry. He made a liar out of me, and I couldn’t stand it.”

“So you went to the woods to live deliberately for a while?” she asked, thinking of Walden, of Tom alone in the Outback trying to work out where his actions fit into the cosmic balance.