Perhaps this is how it all ends.

Maybe I was always meant to drown in Bury.

Two

When I was seventeen, my father showed me a BusinessWeek article about him. It was a profile of his private equity firm, Yates Capital Partners, and the reporter quoted anonymous sources labeling my father “cold-blooded” and “ruthless.” My father considered those terms high praise.

Now as I look at him boxed by the mammoth doorframe, he doesn’t look all that different from his picture in the decades-old magazine. Just as bald, equally wiry and lean. If you asked a stranger what color my father’s eyes were, they’d probably guess wrong, because his eyes are largely hidden within a perpetual squint, the kind that makes the receiver of his gaze anxious. Logan Yates will stare at you in silence with that squint, embracing the tension, and wait until you talk first.

And you will always talk first.

The only signs of his aging are the deepened grooves forged by that squint, the dry riverbeds spider-webbing from the corners of his eyes. Etchings of time, and casualties of practiced, unwavering stares. My father would have made a hell of a professional gambler.

“Hello, Dad.”

“Rosie,” he says.

Only he calls me Rosie. To the rest of the world, I’m just Rose.

“Where’s Abril?” The housekeeper.

“She only works part-time now. I realized I didn’t need someone skulking about the house if there wasn’t enough work to do.”

Skulking is a fifty-cent Logan Yates word.

I haven’t seen my father in nine years. There are no hugs. Hugs are luxuries of the weak, and the Yates family tree is carved from petrified wood.

“Maxwell.”

Max squeezes my hand as if clinging to a flotation device. “Hi, Grandpa.”

The last time Max stood face-to-face with his grandfather, he was two. He’s only known him through phone calls and FaceTime since then. Max used to ask me why we never saw him, and I explained Grandpa didn’t like to travel, and I didn’t like going back to Bury. The answer never satisfied Max, but he eventually stopped asking. Children grow used to routine.

“No more Grandpa,” my father says. “You’re twelve, right?”

“Eleven.”

“Okay, eleven. How about you just call me Logan. I call you your name, you call me mine. Agreed?”

“I go by Max, not Maxwell.”

“Fine, Max.” My father reaches a hand out to his grandson, who hesitantly takes it and gives it a feeble pump. “Son, you shake a hand like that in the real world, and you may as well yank your pants down and bend over.”

“Dad.”

My father looks at me in mock surprise, and still the squint remains.

“What? He’s gotta learn these things.” He turns back to Max, sticks his hand back out. “Take my hand, Max.”

Max hesitates, then does.

“Now squeeze, boy.” My father looks down at their joined hands. “Harder, Max. Come on.”

“Dad, please.”

Max grunts as he puts all his strength into his grip.