Fatherless: A Novel Read online

  PROPOSAL B: ALL TRANSITION BENEFITS TO CHARITY

  “Another significant revenue hit,” Anderson observed. “Only a small fraction of transition volunteers currently use the charity option. Most want to help a partner, child, or significant other by transitioning the estate. If forced to give those assets to charity we could see a significant drop in volunteers.”

  Troy’s eyes met Kevin’s as Anderson finished making his point.

  “Do you have any idea how much we save on entitlement spending with each transition?”

  “About two hundred thousand,” Kevin said with calm confidence. “Plus about thirty thousand from the federal share of each estate.”

  A moment of uncomfortable silence.

  “Will you be writing a personal check in the amount of a quarter trillion to make up the difference?” Anderson mocked. Even those in the For column joined the laugher.

  “You won’t lose one hundred percent of transition volunteers,” Kevin explained in good-natured irritation. “And the increase in charity donations would give the nonprofit sector desperately needed capital to meet the demands our tattered social safety net has created.”

  Several nods around the room confirmed Troy’s earlier advice: “Shifting big-government programs to the private and nonprofit sector plays well with fiscal conservatives.”

  “Again, this is a growth strategy,” Kevin continued. “Seniors in bright spot communities work seven years longer on average than those in high-transition regions. That’s seven more years of tax revenue. They also cost less. We spend half as much on the elderly who are parents as we do on the elderly childless.”

  “Half?” Anderson reacted. “How is that possible?”

  “Partly because those with kids and grandkids stay healthier, probably because they have a greater sense of purpose. But mainly because grown children provide free assistance to their aging parents instead of costly nursing home care.”

  Kevin looked at the rapidly advancing clock.

  “I could go on, but I’ve hit the highlights. I’d like to conclude by saying I think it’s time we found ways to grow our long-term revenue base. Both of these proposals will do just that.”

  His fifteen minutes ended. The time to vote had arrived.

  “If you don’t mind, Mr. Tolbert, I think we should consider your proposals separately rather than as a pair,” Anderson insisted, calling for the first vote before Kevin could react. “By show of hands, who supports forming a subcommittee to explore the first Bright Spots proposal, elder-care tax exemptions for parents?”

  Five hands went up immediately, then a hesitant sixth. One shy of a clear majority.

  “Opposed?”

  The five hands Troy had predicted joined Trisha Sayers’s simmering opposition.

  Troy looked toward the host, who now held the tiebreaking vote. Brent Anderson’s eyes vacillated between Kevin Tolbert’s onscreen summary and the fashion diva’s threatening glower.

  “Approved,” Anderson announced without raising his hand.

  Troy began circling names to serve on a subcommittee as Anderson derailed item two. “Does anyone support the idea of banning transition volunteers from leaving an inheritance to their partners and children?”

  Kevin started to correct Anderson’s phraseology, but stopped when he noticed Troy’s head moving from side to side in a quiet effort to temper his boss’s enthusiasm. As much as both men hated the transition industry, they shouldn’t risk alienating Franklin’s right-hand man. The first proposal had been accepted. The second would not be. Par at the end of round one.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Julia turned sideways to inspect her full-body profile before leaving the ladies’ locker room. Though it had been two weeks since her last workout, the glance boosted her confidence for the stroll past the free-weight room where, as usual, a crew of testosterone-laden guys would conspicuously size her up against every other passing woman. Despite taking offense at the ritual, she was more worried about losing the competition. Today she would score well above average.

  The sounds of whirring elliptical machines and clanking barbells welcomed Julia back to her increasingly sporadic exercise routine: a five-minute stretch, a two-mile treadmill run while watching her custom selection of news topics, and twenty minutes of resistance training to strengthen her upper arms and torso. Just what she needed to push past a growing exhaustion incited by her latest dreams.

  Breathing the musky odor of masculine sweat prompted Julia to look toward her panel of judges, five pairs of eyes already appreciating the view. Before she could relish the moment, however, Julia noticed a sixth man straining to curl his fifty-pound dumbbell. It was Jonathan Sowell who, as during their recent date, seemed indifferent to her presence.

  He probably didn’t see me, she hoped, quickening her pace to avoid reliving her recent humiliation.

  Guylanders! She thought. It was the title of her Pulitzer-winning feature critiquing the dominant male culture. Many considered Julia the foremost authority on modern guys. Not men. Few of those, eager to pursue a long-term relationship, existed anymore. Guys, by contrast, preferred the never-never land of boyhood delights. Fewer and fewer chose the headaches of marriage or the sacrifices of fatherhood, half as many as their parents’ generation. A quarter of their grandparents’. In the 1960s almost 70 percent of men were married with kids by age thirty. Two generations later, less than 20 percent. Julia would lay odds all five of her free-weight oglers worked part-time jobs and shared apartments with fellow gamers, partiers, and bodybuilders. Each of them played the field of willing ladies rather than trying to meet the expectations of a single life partner.

  She knew for certain Jonathan Sowell had no interest in a serious relationship.

  Finding an open mat on the opposite side of the facility, Julia sat down to begin the torture of stretching. Her hand reached toward toes once easily grasped, settling for an ankle. Forcing her head downward, she positioned her nose just above a kneecap despite fierce protests from her lower back.

  “Julia?”

  The masculine voice startled her.

  “I thought that was you.”

  No!

  “Hello, Jonathan.” It was all she intended to say.

  “How are you? You look great.”

  The flattery worked. “You too,” she replied with a slight smile.

  “Great show the other night!”

  Great show? Not great time together?

  “How’s Maria?” he asked. No surprise.

  “She’s fine. What’ve you been up to?”

  “Work mostly,” he responded, eyes momentarily distracted by the tall blonde bouncing on a nearby treadmill. “You?”

  “Been pretty busy working on a new feature for RAP.” It felt good to remind him of her professional stature, even though she felt he was intimidated by her success. Few male egos could handle female strength. At least that’s what she chose to believe over the alternative.

  A moment passed.

  “Well, I’ll let you get back to your workout,” Jonathan said. “It was really good to see you again.”

  Liar!

  “You too. Stay in touch.”

  Not likely.

  Julia consoled herself by abandoning the stretching pad for a stress-crushing run. The only open treadmill stood beside the bouncing blonde. Placing a water bottle in one cup-holder and her phone in the other, Julia hit START while nodding at the stranger. She felt slightly less confident running beside a woman who undoubtedly held the gym’s glamour title.

  Just as Julia reached her usual pace she noticed the illumined vibration of her phone. Glancing up, she saw that the clock on the machine said 12:32 p.m.

  She answered after tapping a tiny wireless speaker in her ear. “Hi, Paul. Can you hear me OK?”

  “Fine,” he replied. “You sound a bit winded. Bad time?”

  “At the gym. Now is fine,” she explained.

  “Staying trim for the gentlemen?”

  �
��Something like that.” If only he knew the joke.

  Paul got right to business. “I’ll make this quick. You can hit pause on the debit story I assigned last Monday.”

  Julia felt a mix of relief and disappointment.

  “I’ll toss that piece to Monica so that you can focus on what has the potential of becoming a major feature.”

  “No need. I’m sure I can handle both.” Monica Garcia was the last person to whom Julia wanted to hand over her notes.

  “I don’t know, Jewel. This one’s pretty big,” Paul countered.

  “Just tell me what you’ve got and I’ll decide.”

  “Suit yourself, love. Do you have access to a tablet?”

  She waved out of the news clip screen embedded in the treadmill to access a search field. “Sure do. What do you want me to find?”

  The neighboring blonde looked toward Julia, clearly impressed by a woman capable of three-way multitasking. Julia nodded casually, claiming superiority on her own turf.

  “Search ‘bright spots’ and ‘Franklin.’”

  “As in Josh Franklin?” Julia asked.

  “None other. I think he’s up to something, but I can’t quite connect the dots.”

  “What dots?”

  “He formed a covert team of young fiscal conservatives,” Paul explained. “They’ve been meeting behind closed doors for a few days now.”

  “Meeting about what?”

  “That’s the problem. I don’t know. But I have a confidential lead that says it has something to do with an upcoming revision from the Congressional Budget Office.”

  “The budget?” Julia protested. “Come on, Paul. You promised a big feature.”

  “Hear me out, Jewel. My sources tell me the trend lines look bad. Very bad.”

  Taking a sip from her water bottle, Julia lowered the pace of her jog to make it easier to type BRIGHT SPOTS into the digital keyboard. Nothing of note surfaced until she added the name Franklin.

  “Got it,” she said as she started to read. Only her accelerated breathing filled the silence on the line. “A short rumor piece about a subcommittee of Franklin’s team researching something they call bright spots. But no details.”

  “I want you to get the details,” Paul explained. “My sources tell me the guy behind this Bright Spots proposal falls in the breeder camp.”

  “Got a name?”

  “Tolbert. A young buck with three kids. Can you believe it? Three!”

  Julia hit the treadmill’s pause button. “Did you say Tolbert?”

  “T-O-L-B…”

  “I know how to spell it. I’m just surprised.”

  “You know him?”

  “Kevin Tolbert. His wife and I were close during high school. We keep in touch, but the friendship drifted.”

  “Get close again, fast,” Paul ordered. “We need inside information on what Franklin plans to do. The editorial board wants us to be proactive on this one. The budget revision has everyone nervous. We think Franklin wants to capitalize on the situation.”

  “To do what?” Julia asked. “I thought he supported the Youth Initiative.”

  “He did. But we don’t yet have access to the revised numbers. If public sentiment turns against the president, I wouldn’t put it past that power-grabbing Franklin to jump ship, even if it requires entering the breeder asylum.”

  Julia vaguely recalled a story in the alternative press predicting growing influence from a block of voters motivated by breeder ideology. After decades disregarding warnings of ecological disaster, these families tended to have more than the sensible one or two kids. A stark contrast to women like Julia or the citizens of Guyland. The story suggested radical fundamentalists were the only people who had been having enough kids to create pockets of population growth. They had become a rather large voting bloc, tilting political clout in their favor. Tens of millions of their kids had reached voting age, most echoing their parents’ quirky politics. The shift was a bewildering nuisance to enlightened progressives like Paul and Julia, not to mention their employer, RAP Syndicate.

  “What do you want me to do?” Julia asked.

  “Find out what this bright spot thing is all about. I don’t want Franklin or his pals catching us flat-footed. We need to be ready to discredit any extreme ideas before they gain traction.”

  “Deadline?”

  “Not sure, but soon. We’ll want to run something before the CBO releases their revised numbers, and we don’t know when that will be.”

  “I’m on it.”

  Julia ended the call to restart her run.

  Glancing at her nubile competitor’s treadmill she noticed the pace, level five. Julia set hers to level six.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Where have you been, girl?” Maria waved her hand to shoo her sister out of range while plugging her nose in mock disgust. “You smell like a ditch digger!”

  Her workout clothes damp with perspiration, Julia still felt the adrenaline high of her vigorous run. Or was it the excitement of a new feature assignment? Either way, she was in a great mood no verbal abuse could alter.

  “They ran out of towels at the gym so I decided to shower at home.” Julia paused. Something was not quite right. “Since when do you fix dinner wearing heels? And what’s with the robe?”

  Maria stopped chopping carrots to look in Julia’s eyes. Her doleful expression said she needed an inconvenient favor.

  Julia cut to the chase. “Let me guess, you’re going out.”

  “Remember the other day when I met with Jared’s teacher?”

  “OK.”

  “OK what?” Maria asked.

  “OK I’ll stay with Jared tonight so you can go out with the professor.” Julia didn’t want to waste part of her evening negotiating.

  Maria leaped in delight. “Thanks, Sis. You’re the best.”

  Julia agreed.

  Fifteen minutes later Julia joined Jared at the table, her wet hair wrapped swami-style in a towel, the foul aroma of sweat replaced by the feminine scent of freshly applied body lotion. Jared picked at the carrots in his salad while Maria danced her way from the kitchen with a pitcher of water to fill Julia’s glass.

  “Don’t worry about me,” Julia insisted. “Go finish getting ready. We’ll be fine. Right, Jared?”

  He said nothing.

  “Up for a chess rematch?”

  He quietly lifted a single leaf to his mouth and nibbled its edge. Not a word.

  “Jared, baby,” Maria pleaded. “Don’t be like that.”

  “Like what?” he huffed.

  “Punishing me by ignoring Julia.”

  Defiantly glaring into his mother’s eyes, Jared placed his fork on the table, got up, and walked to his room. As soon as he closed the door Maria looked at Julia with a shrug.

  “I take it he disapproves of you dating his teacher,” Julia guessed.

  “I think he’d prefer I became a nun.” Both sisters burst into laughter at the suggestion.

  The doorbell rang.

  “That’ll be Fin,” Maria said as she hurried toward her bedroom. “Be a doll and let him know I’ll be right out. I need to put on my dress.”

  “His name is Fin?”

  “Mr. Finelson to Jared. He told me to call him Fin.”

  No first name. It figures!

  Removing her swami towel, Julia opened the door to greet her sister’s latest conquest. He looked at least five years younger than Maria. Possibly more. Did he even shave yet?

  “Hello. You must be Fin.”

  “And you must be Julia,” he replied. “I’m here to pick up your sister.”

  Fin’s boyish face tempted Julia to ask if he wanted Jared to come out and play hide-and-seek. She restrained herself. “She’ll be right out. Please come in.”

  He did, gently sliding his shoes across the mat before entering.

  “Is Jared around?” he asked. “I’d love to say hi while I’m here.”

  “I’m not sure where Jared is at the moment,” she l
ied. “I’ll let him know you asked about him.”

  “Great.” His voice squeaked.

  “Big plans tonight?”

  “I hope so,” he said with a sly grin.

  Julia turned away to roll her eyes at the not-so-subtle implication just in time to see Maria approaching in an even less subtle dress. Julia remembered the outfit from the article she had forwarded to her sister about risqué fashion trends.

  Moments later, Julia waved and wished the eager couple a good time. Returning to the kitchen, she began stacking the dishes in the sink while considering her options. Curl up with a good e-book or coax Jared out of adolescent apathy?

  Jared cast his vote by opening the bedroom door. “She gone?”

  “Like the wind.” Her usual description of Maria’s getaways. “Game of chess?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Don’t do me any favors,” Julia taunted.

  “No, I want to play. I’m just…” Jared seemed thoughtful, searching for the right words. He gave up. “I’m white this time.”

  “I’ll make the popcorn.”

  She did, along with root beer floats capable of frothing away the deepest sorrow.

  The screen taps began, moving 3-D chess pieces in a familiar opening sequence.

  King’s pawn to king’s three.

  Julia’s knight jumped its pawn to queen’s rook three.

  White king’s bishop to queen’s bishop four.

  Anticipating Jared’s favorite speed-game opening, Julia placed a finger on her king’s knight, offering her opponent a false glimmer of hope. Jared’s face fell as she shifted her hand and tapped the queen’s pawn to move it forward, blocking his bishop’s future checkmate move.

  “You really didn’t think I’d fall for that sequence again, did you?”

  A frustrated Jared concentrated to conceive an alternative strategy, stealing a spoonful of melting ice cream from his mug to help him mentally regroup. Julia chose the moment to ease into a conversation her nephew needed but might resent.

  “It bothers you, doesn’t it?”

  “Nope. I’m still gonna win,” Jared responded, a trickle of dark foam escaping the side of his mouth.