She’d tried to be happy in it. She’d tried her best but there had been no softness. No real...affection. Her father had set a hurdle and she’d done her best to clear it. Then there would be another, and another and she had learned to equate the praise she got for jumping over them with...love.
And she knew he had loved her. But it had been conditional.
She’d been happy to idolize her father’s memory until she’d had to think about what sort of parent she wanted to be, and that had started to erode everything.
Because she would not do this to her child.
The last eight months had been hell. What she’d gone through, what she’d stooped to to try and make her father proud...
She didn’t know herself.
And as she stood there she realized that was one of her problems.
She didn’t know herself.
“What I said to you last night,” she said. “That was honest. I don’t know who I am apart from this corporation. I don’t know who I am if I’m not succeeding. If I’m not chipping away at my own comfort in order to make things happen. It’s the only thing I believe in. And I want a new god, quite frankly. Because this one hasn’t served me very well. It’s given me money. It’s given me...” She shook her head. “All I ever wanted was to make him proud. All I ever wanted was to make it so that he didn’t resent the fact that he had to drag me to all those board meetings and...”
“They could’ve hired nannies. They were billionaires. What your father chose to do with you during the day, had nothing to do with you. Not really. That was what he was doing to try to cultivate you into what he wanted. He could’ve had you back at home, couldn’t he? He could have made sure that you were safe and comfortable, in a playroom with lots of toys. You do not have to be there on your birthday. You could’ve been home with balloons and a pony ride, hell, he could have changed the day of the meeting. Because he is not a nine-to-five worker drone, he owned the company.”
He was rubbing salt in her wounds and while this was certainly the moment for honesty, this hurt, and she wanted to hit back at him.
“And if he would’ve showed that kind of weakness what do you think your father would’ve done?”
“He would’ve exploited it. He would’ve exploited the hell out of it, because you may have noticed that I was not home with nannies either. Nor was I receiving birthday parties of any kind. But still. These were choices that they made. To shape us into a very particular thing. You have nothing to make up to your father for. Nor do I.”
The realization rocked her, because he wasn’t wrong. He was... He spoke the truth. Her father didn’t have to bring her to those meetings. She had this idea, this narrative that she had built in her mind of the single dad who had done his very best and dragged her along because he wanted to spend time with her. But they didn’t spend time together. And it was thoroughly manipulative. They did not spend time together, and what he had been doing was showing her what she needed to value most. What he had been doing was teaching her that there was no such thing as a personal life.
He had been teaching her to erase boundaries. To not respect her need for a break. Leading by example, sure, but his dream didn’t have to be her dream.
Now, standing there in this living room, as far as all of it had taken her, she wasn’t sure what her dream was.
She was twenty-six years old, and the lone female CEO of any of the tech companies. The youngest too.
She didn’t know if she wanted it. And it wasn’t simply that cliché of knowing she was going to have a baby, but it had certainly done something to shake up her priorities.
As had passing out two different times in front of Gunnar. Maybe she was weak because she didn’t have any stores built up. Maybe strength wasn’t about how hard you could push yourself, but the restraint that you could show sometimes too.
Maybe there was a strength in saying no. One that she had certainly never found.
“I’ll marry you,” she said. “On one condition.”
She saw it clearly now. She needed to get off the path her father had put her on.
She needed her own path.
The one that would lead her to herself. To Olive. The best person she could be, the best mother she could be.
“And what is that?”
“I want you to invest in a start-up.”
“What will your start-up be?”
“I don’t know. And maybe it won’t end up being a start-up per se. I have no idea. Not yet. But I want you to invest in me, and what I decide I want. It won’t be until a year after the baby is born, and by then I should have some ideas. I will marry you, as long as I can still figure out who I am. Because all of this is making me realize that I actually don’t know. I don’t feel guilty about the corporate espionage, not really. Because I know why I did it. What makes me feel strange is the fact that you know that’s a hard limit for you, and I don’t know what is for me. I don’t know myself. I’m a hollowed-out vessel that my dad created to carry out his dreams, his ambitions. His wishes. And I don’t want to be that. Not anymore. Because if I do, then I’ll do the same to my child. I will carve them out and make them into something less than a person. Something less than a whole human being. And I cannot have that. I won’t. It’s not right or fair.”
“That’s a pretty speech. And if you wish, of course I will do that.”
“And what will you expect. From a wife. Out of... Having a child.”