"So?"
"I talked to him," I said. "Don't know whether it had the desired effect, but he seemed to have heard me. Nodded his head and everything."
"Be patient with him," Brett said.
"I know. He’s just trying to deal with everything. I just feel rotten that all this happened to him at once. I felt like trash telling him about work at his parents’ funeral, not even a week after he lost them."
"He's going to be okay. He's made it this far. He knows what he has to do, and he isn't going to take it lightly. What he is going to need is support and a lot of it. That is where you and I come in." I knew why he would come in, but I was still at a little bit of a loss as to why I was useful here.
He had told me over the phone yesterday that he would need my help. I should have known that he meant with Cameron by this point, but even having fair warning hadn't prepared me for what I would actually say to him. What was there at this point besides Sorry and You didn't deserve this? I had seen the little change on his face, the shift of his attitude when I had said that I needed to talk to him.
He had seen right through that; I might as well have just told him what the truth was at that point. He probably hated me. I hated myself a little, thinking about it. I didn't really have the choice to back away though. He sure didn't, and if Brett thought I had something useful to offer him, hell, I’d give it a shot.
"So you keep saying," I said, looking over my shoulder and scanning the big hall for him. He was talking to a woman several inches shorter than him who was holding both of his hands in hers. He seemed engaged with her, listening, but from where I was, his stance was stiff and wooden. His placid face must have hidden a storm of emotions running through him on the inside that he had to hide for his parents’ sake. I couldn't imagine having such a public wake. I was going to stop trying to imagine what Cameron Porter had going on behind that mask, because it was insulting to him to even try.
The bodies were being interred in the home's cemetery. The activity in the hall slowed and slowed ‘til it was time. The Porters being the people they were, of course, had tight security for the whole event, because that was what it was: an event. Inevitably, the conspiracy theories had started swirling around the circumstances of the crash and the deaths. People always wanted to make something out of nothing, in this case, something sensational and dark out of a family's horrible tragedy.
Since letting Kasey know about the story, she had been keeping me up to date on the latest bullshit the tin foil hat people had cooked up. It was the usual nonsense; the whole thing being masterminded by the other people who had a stake in Porter Holdings to get the patriarch out of the way so the easier-to-control Cameron would take over. The Porters being a ritual sacrifice orchestrated by the lizard people, all that bullshit. All I saw was their son, alone, with all this sudden responsibility put onto him and virtually nobody in his corner.
The only other times I had to be at a funeral home had been when my grandmother and one of my dad's sisters had died four years ago. The McKenna Funeral Home was family owned and, I didn't want to say beautiful, but was just that. The structure was a stately Georgian revival mansion that had been a home but had been converted; the McKenna’s lived elsewhere on the property. The grounds were beautifully manicured. I could see the procession from where I was back out on the lawn just outside the hall where the wake had taken place. Brett and I had met at the office and come together; we were headed back after this. Once Cameron came out of mourning, Brett wanted everything to be ready for him.
They walked in a procession from the home, to the cemetery, following the caskets. I didn't recognize anybody in the procession beside Cameron and Brett. He didn't have any siblings; the rest of the people I guessed were close family and friends. There had been no filming permit
ted, but most likely, someone without scruples was going to be selling the tackier publication iPhone pictures of the Porter funeral. From where I was, I didn't hear anything, but I could see well enough. Cameron looked like he was carved out of stone, standing there like it wasn't his parents being lowered into the ground.
I had made a lot of pretty unfair judgments about the guy; I could admit that. I didn't know him, but I thought I had a good enough picture from what I'd heard from the people closest to him. It wasn't like I had expected him to fall to the ground weeping, but... I don't know; it wouldn't have shocked me that much if he had. Or maybe, shown up drunk and made a scene, something.
It was over fast. The crowd that had watched the Porters being buried dispersed, leaving Cameron still standing there. He was in a suit under his black trench coat, and it was getting late. He had to have been tired, cold, too, since night was coming, but he didn't move.
"Ready to go?" Brett coming up to me caught my attention. I looked over his shoulder once more at Cameron then nodded at him.
"He isn't leaving?" I asked.
"What do you think?" he replied as we started walking.
"How soon do you think we'll get him back?"
"Hard to say. We can't exactly put a cap on how long he gets to mourn his parents, especially after losing them the way that he did."
"Did you talk to him?"
"I don't think he wants to talk to anybody right now." I looked over my shoulder and saw him, right where he had been the last time I had looked. He was so alone standing there in front of the fresh graves of the people closest to him. A new wave of sympathy for him washed over me. If we had traded places, I would have had an army of siblings behind me to lean on. He had no one. I wanted to tell him something. Yeah, genius, but what? Is that really what he needs, from anyone, much less you? No. We walked to Brett's car and left, heading back to the office.
Chapter Seven
Cameron
I sat in the driver's seat of my car, staring at the steering wheel. I was parked on the street by the building, not my usual parking spot, but I didn't think I was staying long, so it didn’t matter. I didn't want to, but this had to be done. I couldn't bury my head in the sand with the number of people that were depending on me. I looked out of my window up at the building. Porter Holdings—it literally had my name on it. My name and my father's name, and that was the reason I had even bothered getting out of bed today. I didn't have the luxury of moping, not when that building and everyone in it was depending on me to tell them what was next.
Cool, but what was that? What was next? I wasn't sure. Every possible outcome had come to me, even some of the impossible ones. The messages from my dad and Brett about how this had been in the cards for me since the day I had been born had been ringing louder and louder in my ears. This was it. I was taking the wheel at Porter Holdings because the pilot flying my parents’ jet hadn't done a good job of doing that himself. My hands gripped the steering wheel as I felt heat start in my chest. Over and over, I thought about it without wanting to, and it gave me the same reaction each time.
I had just gotten to the office after dropping my parents off at the airport. I had been preparing for the ten-day absence. I might have even been a little excited, getting a taste of what my dad wanted for me once he retired. The first thing I had wanted to do was have a meeting with Brett to discuss things. I hadn’t been able to call him because he had come bursting into my office, telling me he had to tell me something before the phone calls started, and I had to find out that way. The plane went down, Cam. They’re dead.
I closed my eyes and tried to calm down. No one was at fault, and if anyone was, it wouldn't change what had happened. My parents were still dead, and I still had a job to do. The first thing I'd have to do was probably hold a meeting, talk to Brett definitely. He'd know what to do. I'd ask him for help, but sooner or later, I'd have to lose the training wheels. I sighed and got out of my car. The air was getting colder; it would start snowing soon. Just what I needed after what had happened last week.
I got out of my car and slammed the door closed, catching my reflection in the window. I looked like hell, which was fitting since I felt like it too. I hadn't been able to sleep very well or very much since I had heard the news. I hadn't been able to do very much of anything, not work, not eat, not think. It was real now but almost too real. Watching the caskets get lowered into the ground…there had been no running from it. They were gone. It was still fresh, so it stung, a lot. So much it was hard to imagine that I'd get to a point when it didn't hurt.
There weren't that many people on the street; the ones that were were heading to work. I had to ask a couple women crowding the sidewalk to let me by them as I tried to make it into the building. They were two girls, mid- to late-twenties if I had to guess. They had stopped to look at something, so I turned to see what could have distracted them so much. It was a car. Aston Martin DB9, black. Beautiful car, I could concede to that, but they didn't like the car for the beauty of the design or the craftsmanship. I'd bet anything they were more interested in meeting with whoever had pockets deep enough to have afforded it.