Chapter 7.

7.

Sunday morning I drove home to Pennsylvania and found Saturday’s mail waiting on my porch. The highlight was a small cream-colored envelope with my name and address handwritten in elegant black calligraphy. Inside was a card with the following message:

Errol and Catherine Gardner

joyfully invite you to the wedding

of their son, Aidan Gardner, to

Margaret Szatowski,

daughter of Frank and Colleen Szatowski.

Saturday, July 23rd at 3 p.m.

Osprey Cove

1 State Road

Hopps Ferry, New Hampshire

Reception to follow

I had scarcely finished reading the invitation when my cell phone beeped. It was my sister, Tammy, and she was singing in a warbly, off-key voice: “We’re gooooo-ing to the chapel, and she’s gonnnnna get mar-ar-ar-ied! I can’t believe it, Frankie! You must be so excited!”

“Did you get your invitation?”

“Yes, and Maggie just called me. She said you two have patched things up and you’re finally speaking again.”

Tammy wanted to hear all about my dinner in Boston, but I didn’t know where to begin. I was still hung up on the black bag hidden in Aidan’s toilet tank. I couldn’t have looked inside the pouch without destroying it, so I’d just left everything alone, put the porcelain lid back on the toilet, and made a quick exit.

But I spent most of the drive home obsessing over the bag and its contents. I figured it had to be money. I think it’s good common sense to keep a supply of cash on hand, so you’ll be prepared in the event of an emergency. But why in the world would Aidan keep money in his toilet tank? It was so much easier to hide cash inside a book. Or a canister of flour. Or the pocket of an old, never-worn sports coat. A toilet tank didn’t make any sense—unless he was trying to keep it hidden from Maggie. Because if you knew anything about my daughter, you knew she was never going to open a toilet tank and stick her fingers inside it.

“So what’s the verdict?” Tammy asked. “Do we like this guy?”

“Sure, Tam, he seems fine.”

She laughed. “Frankie, a frozen pizza from ShopRite ‘seems fine.’ This is Maggie’s future husband!”

“He calls her Margaret.”

“She likes the name Margaret. It sounds more professional. She works in a very male-dominated industry.”

“I had a hard time getting a read on him. He was polite, but very quiet. I’m not sure I met the real Aidan.”

“Or maybe you did. Maybe the real Aidan is polite but very quiet. You could do a lot worse, Frankie. He’s certainly better than Dr. Cell Phone.”

Dr. Cell Phone (aka Oliver Dingham) was a sore subject for me and my sister because we still couldn’t agree on what that relationship had actually meant to Maggie. “She was never going to marry Oliver Dingham.”

“Exactly! All the more reason to appreciate Aidan. I bet he was just nervous to meet you. Physically, you’re a very intimidating figure—and the poor boy wants to marry your daughter. Put yourself in his shoes.”

“He wasn’t afraid of me, Tammy. He was just… disinterested. I tried to tell him about Maggie’s mother and he couldn’t have cared less.”

“Or you’re just misreading him,” she said.

Tammy married at nineteen and divorced at twenty-one and she’s never had children of her own. But she’s spent the last decade hosting dozens of foster children, so she considers herself an expert on parent-child psychology. None of her placements have ever lasted more than a year or two, and she has certainly never parented a twenty-five-year-old woman. But my sister feels qualified to give me unsolicited advice.

“Frankie, let me tell you something. You’ve always been tough on Maggie’s boyfriends. Ever since she was a teenager, since she started dating. No one’s ever been good enough for your little girl. But I don’t see how we top this guy. He’s handsome, he’s smart, he’s artistic, and he owns eighty thousand shares of Capaciti stock.”

“Maggie told you that?”

“I read it online. I’ve been Google-stalking the whole family. Ask me anything you want about Errol Gardner.”

“She’s marrying Aidan Gardner.”

“But the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. And Errol Gardner looks after his whole family. He’s supporting all his sisters plus ten nieces and nephews. Private high schools, fancy clothes, vacations in the Caribbean. These kids are like Kardashians!”

“You shouldn’t spy on them.”

“They’re all on TikTok.”

“I don’t care what you call it. If you get caught, it’s going to be really embarrassing.”

“Please, Frankie. I have so many aliases I would never get caught. I’m just making sure our girl’s protected. For example, do you know if she’s signing a prenuptial agreement?”

I had to admit, this question had certainly crossed my mind, but I never mustered the courage to bring it up.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, I do know, because I asked her.”

“And?”

“I have a simple rule for living, little brother: if you don’t ask, you don’t get. So when Maggie called me, I put all my cards on the table. I said, ‘Sweetie, I’m sure Aidan’s a great guy, but your interests need to be protected. Are you signing any kind of prenuptial agreement?’”

“And?”

Tammy paused for dramatic effect. There was nothing my sister loved more than a big, fat, tantalizing shred of gossip. She could savor it for hours, pulling apart every detail and examining it from various angles, like a dog working all night on a turkey leg. “Do you want to guess?”

“I’m guessing there isn’t—and that’s why you’re so excited.”

Tammy made a loud buzzing sound, like I’d just lost on a TV quiz show. “Wrong! They did sign a prenup, but it’s the best possible kind of prenup. In the event of a divorce, regardless of the circumstances, they’re splitting all their assets fifty-fifty.”

“That can’t be true, Tammy.” I didn’t know what eighty thousand shares of Capaciti stock were worth, but the value had to be astronomical. “Why would he agree to that?”

“Because he’s in love! Completely smitten! Head over heels!”

She spoke like this was wonderful, fantastic news, but I didn’t like it at all. I reminded her that they’d only been dating for six months. “What’s the big rush to get married?”

“Bite your tongue, Frankie! No father in the history of the world has ever asked that question. She’s getting married at the perfect age to the perfect guy and you don’t even have to pay for the wedding! Do you know how many parents would kill to be in your situation?”

A short while after our call, Tammy sent me a long email with research supporting her claims—links to all kinds of tech websites, newspaper articles, social media posts, and YouTube videos. I read enough about the Gardners to write their family history. Catherine Gardner (née Riggins) was born in Houston, the granddaughter of a prominent Texas oilman. She’d grown up in the white-gloved world of cotillions and debutante balls, then attended Wellesley College to study art history. There she fell in love with Errol Gardner—and New England—and she’d been a prominent Bostonian ever since, showering her inheritance on a variety of philanthropic causes. She sat on the boards of a dozen different charities and nonprofits, everything from Boston Children’s Hospital to the New England Aquarium.

Errol Gardner was born and raised in “blue-collar Lowell, Massachusetts” (according to his bio on the Capaciti website) and spent two years at Harvard before dropping out in 1987 to start Apollo, one of the earliest internet service providers. All his early funding came from his young wife, and within seven years the company was bought by AOL for an undisclosed sum rumored to be $100 million. Errol had been dabbling in new technologies ever since, everything from e-commerce sites to medical devices. Of course, Capaciti was his biggest success by far, and he was now CEO and the company’s largest shareholder.

It was impossible to read all this stuff without feeling intimidated. Clearly Errol and Catherine were very smart and successful people, and I worried they would dismiss me as some kind of freeloader because I wasn’t paying for any part of the reception. There was no way I could afford to host a party for three hundred people—but I felt more and more convinced that I needed to do something , just to arrive at the wedding with my pride intact.

So the next day, I called Maggie and asked for Errol Gardner’s phone number. She was instantly suspicious. “Why do you want his number?”

“I’d like to introduce myself. Since you’re marrying his son. Is that unreasonable?”

“No, but—”

“ And I want to contribute to the wedding. I think I should pay for the alcohol.”

Tammy wasn’t the only one doing internet research. I’d started looking at bridal websites and they all warned that alcohol was the single largest expense of any wedding reception. I found an online calculator that let me input a number of guests (three hundred) and it gave me a predicted budget of $5,600 to $8,000. Which was a real kick in the balls, but I hadn’t taken a vacation in a long time, so I could easily afford it. I knew it would be worth $8,000 to attend my daughter’s wedding with my head held high. Hey, everybody. The drinks are on Frank Szatowski, so let’s give the guy a hand.

“Dad, you can’t pay for the alcohol.”

“I have to pay for something . Traditionally, the father of the bride pays for everything.”

“It’s not the 1800s anymore. Errol Gardner won’t take a dime from you.”

“Why not?”

“Because he knows your financial situation.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Don’t get sensitive. He just knows, when I was growing up, we didn’t have money.”

“I took you to Disney World!”

“Okay, sure—”

“We stayed on Disney property, Maggie. Do you have any idea what those character breakfasts cost?”

“Dad—”

“ And I paid for your college. You don’t have a dime of student debt. Why would you tell him I didn’t have money?”

“Because money is relative, Dad. Compared to Errol Gardner , you don’t have money. That’s all I meant.”

“I do have money, and I want to spend some on this wedding. And now I would like this man’s phone number. Please.”

“Well, see, that’s the other thing. You don’t just call Errol Gardner on the phone. The man is booked 24-7. Even his assistants have assistants. And he’s traveling this week. He’s in Yokohama. He’s meeting with Isuzu.”

I sensed that if I didn’t interrupt her, she would offer another thousand explanations for why contacting Errol Gardner was simply impossible.

“Maggie, I just want ten minutes of the man’s time. Because his son is marrying my daughter. Now, if you don’t give me his number, I’m going to call Capaciti and explain the situation and ask for him myself.”

She sounded terrified by this alternative and promised to have Errol call me within forty-eight hours. The very next night, I was sitting in the dark in my living room, drinking a Coors Light and watching the Phillies lose to the Diamondbacks, when my telephone rang with a private number. Errol Gardner apologized for the late hour; he was calling from an airport in Osaka. Then he must have heard my television in the background, because he asked if Zac Gallen was pitching. I said that he was, but he wasn’t doing his team any favors. Turns out Errol was a baseball fan, so right away we had something in common, and that made me feel more comfortable.

He was very complimentary of “Margaret.” He described her as smart and confident and “a real rising star” at Capaciti. “I keep telling Aidan he hit the jackpot. The girl’s a total catch. I’m sure there were boys knocking on your door all through high school.”

“The worst ones didn’t even knock,” I told him. “They’d just show up in their cars and text her to come outside.”

Errol laughed. “Oh, I would have hated that, Frank! That must have been really hard for you!”

I figured I needed to return all of his compliments and say something nice about my future son-in-law, so I called Aidan a talented artist with a bright future. His father just laughed. “He’s picked a brutal way to make a living, I’ll tell you that much. Name the five most important painters working in America. Hell, name just one.” I confessed that I was the wrong person to ask, that I hadn’t been to an art museum since middle school. “But that’s exactly my point, Frank. If you read the New York Times , you’ll see hundreds of stories about artificial intelligence, gene therapy, nanotech, all these big world-changing innovations. Painting pictures is not one of them. I hate to say this but: nobody cares! It’s a fruitless endeavor. But Aidan calls it his life’s passion, so what can I do?”

I thought Errol was being unnecessarily tough on his son. I pointed out that it was brave of Aidan to blaze his own trail, to pursue a career outside his father’s shadow.

“I’ll tell you the hardest part of having kids, Frank. Eventually they reach an age where you can’t control them anymore. They’re going to take drugs or rob banks or paint weird face portraits and we can’t do a goddamn thing about it. We either accept who they are or there’s not going to be a relationship. Isn’t that true?”

I wondered how much Maggie had told him about our three-year estrangement. I couldn’t tell if Errol was tactfully broaching the subject or if I was simply being paranoid. “How’s Mrs. Gardner feeling? Maggie mentioned some health problems.”

“Most days, she’s fine. But once or twice a month she gets terrible migraines. Feels like she’s been hit by a truck. All she can do is lie down in a dark room and wait for them to pass. But next week we’re seeing a new specialist, at Mount Sinai, and I think she’s going to beat this thing before the big wedding.”

The entire call lasted just fifteen minutes, but it was long enough to give me an impression of the man. Errol was smart, funny, plainspoken, and unfailingly generous. When the conversation turned to the wedding, he encouraged me to invite as many guests as I wanted. He said that Osprey Cove (the name of their camp in New Hampshire) could accommodate about a hundred visitors, and there were motels nearby for everyone else. This seemed like the perfect moment to in troduce my proposal: I said it was very generous of him to host the wedding, but I insisted on contributing to the cost.

“I’d like to cover the bar tab.”

“Oh, no, no, no, Frank, I couldn’t let you. My family’s full of alcoholics. My sisters will bankrupt you.”

“I want to do it, Errol. Beer, wine, Long Island iced teas, anything your sisters want.”

“It’s too much money—”

“I insist—”

“Absolutely not—”

“Please—”

“Never—”

We went around and around like that for a couple of minutes, two middle-aged men with their pride and dignity on the line. Errol argued there was “no way to fathom” how much alcohol might be consumed, so I told him about the calculator I’d found online. I offered to send him the full $8,000 as a deposit and then settle up the difference after the wedding. Eventually we compromised on “eight thousand dollars but not a penny more” and the next morning I mailed a check to his office in Cambridge. It was a huge sum, my biggest purchase in years, and I felt a shiver of pride as I signed my name to the check. I knew it was money well spent. It felt like a sound investment in my daughter’s future.