22. Conrad

CHAPTER 22

CONRAD

I chased Claire down the hall at first, then stopped in my tracks. She was pregnant? She… what? Hadn't we used protection? I bit my tongue hard, relieved I hadn't said that, chased her down just to question her story. If Claire said she was pregnant, that was it. She was pregnant. But what…

It's your choice, if you want to be a father .

But I was, wasn't I? That wasn't a choice. If I kept my distance, I'd still be a father. I'd still have a child out there, wondering?—

"Conrad?"

I turned. Joe was leaning in the door to his office. His brows drew together.

"Everything okay?"

Nothing was okay. I couldn't tell Joe that. We were work friends, not close friends. He didn't know me that way. He didn't know my own dad had walked out, that I barely remembered him beyond his coarse beard. I had one vivid memory of him taking me skating, and me tripping over and busting my nose on the ice. He'd held me and soothed me, and then… that was it. That was my father, there and then gone.

"I, uh… my phone died." I brandished it at him. "I'm meant to be somewhere…"

Joe frowned. "Are you kidding?"

It came to me then, he'd just been in my office, maybe ten minutes before Claire had come in. We'd been talking about me heading to my alma mater. Doing a guest lecture for kids like I'd been. I'd soon be late for that if I didn't hurry.

"I meant after the lecture," I said, to save face. "I've got that, then a meeting?—"

"A call with the London team." Joe shifted, impatient. "Look, if you can't make it, I'm fine taking over. If you want to take more time to talk to those kids?—"

"I'll be there." I turned and made for the elevator, then realized I'd left my laptop behind. Joe watched me narrowly as I went back and got it. I was fine. I was good. I just needed a minute. Some time to work out where I stood on… on babies.

This was huge, life-changing. And what about Claire's life? What was her plan now? I hadn't thought to ask her. My first thoughts had all been chaotic and stupid — But we used a condom. But we're adults. Maybe it's not mine, but who else's would it be? I tried to picture myself holding a baby, a burbling little bundle of warmth and pink. It would grope out, new, blind, and grab on my finger. Hold onto me, trusting, and I'd fall in love.

I blinked the image away. Babies were work. And then they grew up, and they were more work, and school runs. And tossing a baseball, and games in the park. Piano recitals. Scraped knees and fevers. Trips to the zoo and Disney vacations.

"Uh, Conrad?" Joe was back again, leaning into my office.

"On my way," I said, hurrying past him. "Just kind of new to me, dealing with kids."

Walking into the lecture hall was like taking a step back in time. The kids streamed around me, finding their seats, and I flashed back to the times when I'd been one of them. When my life had been ahead of me, a distant dream, and my most pressing concern was finding a seat. I'd argued with Claire in this very room, fought with her over the fine points of economic theory. Then we'd met up and gone for a bagel, or those giant floats that left us buzzing with sugar.

Those had been simple days, but full of hope. I'd mapped out my dreams by then, my path to success. I just had to stick with it, and my future was sure.

I headed up to the lectern and hooked up my laptop, pulling up my first slide. The kids laughed, and I smiled. I had broken the ice.

"Is that you?" someone said.

I grinned. "Sure is. On this very campus, twelve years ago."

I turned to look up at my own dorky face, and I felt the smile curdle and freeze on my lips. There I was, sure enough, ready to take on the world, gripping my laptop like some kind of weapon. And there was Claire, caught in the background, laughing at something outside of the frame. Two thoughts hit me hard, one after the other: she looks so young , and where did the time go? Twelve years, and it felt like if I were to blink, I might wake up and find myself in my place off-campus, listening to my roommate scream at her Xbox. College felt like a room I'd just left for a moment, and I could step back in at any time. But that room was gone now, or not gone, but changed. It had a new tenant. New locks on its doors. I could only go back now in my memories.

I turned back to the class, trying to shake my discomfort.

"I took this class," I said. "And it changed my life." I paused for a moment to let the murmurs die down. " Every class changed my life back then, because I live by one rule: two words, nothing wasted . No moment. No chance."

If Claire had got pregnant twelve years ago, we'd have an almost-teenager. How would those moments have fit with my dreams? Would I have kept to my path and let them slip past me? Arrived at this moment a stranger to my child?

I cleared my throat and kept going with my speech, how I'd seen every experience as a chance to grow. How everything mattered, every step on the way. The kids were all tapping away on their laptops, but I wanted to yell at them, don't listen to me. The words I was saying weren't even my own — it had been my mom who said everything mattered. I'd thought at the time she'd meant with her work. With Dad out of the picture, it had been her life. But she'd said that to me on a trip to the zoo, a rare day together, no phones, no work.

Everything matters, she'd said, and she'd smiled. Pointed out a penguin flapping its wings. You've got to grab every moment, every chance that you get.

I'd thought she meant every chance to get ahead. I'd thought she was telling me, try hard in school. But that didn't make any sense, looking back. She'd been smiling and laughing, watching the penguins. Telling me to seize this , every chance to be happy.

I frowned at my notes and forced myself to focus. These kids were here to learn from my success, not to watch me live out my mid-life crisis. I'd get through my speech and the Q&A after, leave them inspired, then I'd sort out the rest.

"That's the boring part done," I said, when I'd finished. A couple of kids snickered, but most sat up straighter. Several hands shot up, ready with questions. I picked one at random, a boy near the front.

"I wanted to ask about time management, how you plan your days. What does a typical day look like in your life?"

"That's a great question," I said, relieved to start with a softball. "There's no typical day for me, no sort of set schedule. I have meetings with partners and meetings with staff, development workshops, trips out of town. Then, I have networking, social events, and you're completely right. It seems overwhelming. But the rule I live by is, nothing runs over. If you've got a meeting between nine and ten, and it's nine fifty-five with nothing resolved, you don't want to let that meeting slop over. What you want to do is say, here's where we are, and here are the answers I need by tomorrow. Then you head for your next slot, and you don't fall behind. I might have ten different meetings in the course of one morning, then lunch with a client, and now I'm talking to you guys. After this, I've got a call with my London office, a chat with my legal team, then a charity dinner. I'll be home by ten and in bed by eleven, then I'll wake up tomorrow and do it again."

The kid frowned. "What if a meeting has to run over? Like, if there's a deadline and you're going to miss it?"

"You set your deadlines so that's not an issue. The thing with working with people is, they aren't machines. They do run behind, and the trick is to plan for that. You give them one deadline, when you want the work done, but that date should be well before you actually need it."

A girl stuck her hand up, half-rising from her seat. "What about personal time? How do you handle that?"

"Mostly, you'd schedule that, take as much as you need. I keep Saturday mornings free in my planner, and that used to be my laundry day, but now I go running. Physical exercise is a great way to reset."

The girl pulled a face. "What about stuff you can't schedule? Like, what if your friend calls and she's really drunk, and you have to go pick her up from some party?"

Laughter went up at that, but I raised my hands for quiet. "Again, with your deadlines, you give yourself grace. You'd help your friend with her crisis then get back to your day. Redo your next day to squeeze in what you missed."

"But, what if the next day, she calls you again? What if she's going through something bad, and she drinks to deal with it, and you're all she's got?"

I shifted, uncomfortable. "I'd say in that case, you can't take on that burden. It sounds like she needs more help than you can give her. Maybe mental health services, or?—"

"She has a point, though." A woman stood up, around my own age. "You can schedule a lot of things, but I've got two kids. It's hard striking a balance between work and home. Do you have any tips for us on work–life balance?"

"Well, ah, my mother…" I cleared my throat. She hadn't been around much, hard as she'd tried. I remembered one time getting sick at daycare, wanting my mom, but no one could reach her. "I'll be honest," I said. "It's hard striking a balance. There'll be times when you're making hard choices, when it's between family and your career. If your kid's throwing up and you've got a deal closing, you might have to pick one, your deal or being there."

"That sounds kind of bad," said the first boy who'd spoken. "You see all those memes online — Don't live to work. Work to live! So, how do you do that? Do you schedule, like, life?"

I opened my mouth to give my stock answer — yes. Yes, you do. You schedule, like, life. You take the time you need and pencil it in there … but when had I done that? When had I ever done that? I hadn't even been honest about Saturday mornings. I hadn't kept those free since… too long to remember. Did I even have a life, in any meaningful sense?

"Life schedules itself sometimes," I said without thinking.

"What do you mean?"

I wasn't sure what I meant. I kept talking anyway, thinking aloud. "Recently, I took a trip a to The Bahamas. It was planned as an overnight, but a tropical storm hit. Flights out were grounded, so I got stuck there for days. And the thing was — the thing was, I had a full week planned at work. But I also had backups, I, uh…" I swallowed. I'd left Joe in charge, but not really in charge. When he'd offered to close on those two acquisitions, I'd told him to hold off, I'd do it myself. I'd cost myself both those deals, not leaning on Joe. What else had I cost myself, buried neck-deep in work? "Listen, I had the time of my life on that island. I had people I could lean on. I had time to spare. But that's a luxury, and you can't waste it. If you can choose life, do it. Go home to your kid. Take that vacation while the sun's shining. Once you miss out on something, that's it. It's gone. So what you've got to ask yourself is, what can you afford to miss?"

"This lecture," called someone, and that got a laugh. But my head was spinning. I'd been such a fool. I'd let Claire slip away from me, not once but a hundred times. Let a life slip away that we could've had, a life where we did have time. A life where we made time. Living to work. I'd been living to work. I'd been living for meetings and mergers and Joe, lunches with clients, boring golf games. I'd been living half a life without even seeing, without stopping to ask myself what's it all for?

"That's our time," I said, and shut down my laptop. "Don't listen to anyone who claims they have the answers. Our lives are all different, our goals. Our dreams. The best advice I can give you is, picture the life you want, then work back from there and figure out how to get it. Figure out how to balance your needs and your wants — what you need to survive and what will make you happy."

The kids crowded around me, full of more questions, but I told them to email me. I'd get back to them later. All I could think of was how I'd left Claire, pushing her off to get back to my day. That wasn't what I'd meant to do, but I'd done it. Picked work over family. Over life. Over us.

I hurried back to my car, dialing Joe as I went. He answered on the first ring.

"Joe Wells."

"It's Conrad. I need you to take my afternoon."

Silence down the line. Then I heard him grunt. "You mean the London call?"

"I mean the rest of my day. I've got something pressing, I— I can't talk right now. But I want you to know, I heard what you said. I've been micromanaging. You don't need that. I'm going to be, I'm planning a major step back. Do you think you can handle?—"

"I've got your back." Joe paused a moment, then told me "Go get her."

I dialed Claire next, but the call went straight to voicemail. I tried her assistant, then her assistant's assistant. I had to get to her, and get to her now . I'd stuck my foot in it big-time, but this was our life. Somehow, I'd show her we deserved one more shot.