The Upward Ripple

Chapter 3

Cynthia had waited a day and a half to meet Nate Duncan, but it felt like she had waited years. Initially, the agreement from the very first and only email that she had exchanged with Nate stated that she was supposed to meet him on Thursday morning at ten. He had asked to meet her at The Spilt Bean, but she had woken up to a message from Nate stating that urgent business had forced him to postpone their meeting to much later in the week when he got back from New York City.

“It is already Thursday. How much later in the week could you possibly mean?” was what Cynthia wanted to type in her reply. “What the hell are you doing in New York anyway?”

She had never been so hungry to list a property. The Duncan Estate reminded her of the very first property she worked on. The first property that saw her make her mark in the Colorado real estate world.

To: Nathaniel Duncan

From: Cynthia Washington

RE: Property Listing

Mr. Duncan,

Thank you for reaching out to me. I am looking forward to hearing from you when you are back in town.

Regards,

Cynthia Washington.

 *****

Nate had managed to work out a plan but even after spending two days thinking long and hard about it, he still was not sure he had made the right choice. The only decision he had made coming into town was that he was definitely going to sell the family home. There was a time that he would have wanted nothing more than to live in that house. To raise his own family in the same house he grew up. To see his own little ones marvel and thrive in the safety of the property’s gardens but having had Elise living in there had robbed him of every single and perfect memory. There was no way he could be in that house and not think of the woman who his mother had entrusted her faith in only to have it betrayed. He felt his nerves on edge as he contemplated the idea of meeting his stepmother again, but he also knew that he could not put it off any longer. The main reason he’d had to put off meeting Elise was the fact that he was not in the right head space, partly due to the fact that his best friend Leon had an emergency that made him stay back in New York, delaying his arrival a little more than Nate would have wanted.

There was no telling what was going through Nate’s mind when he rode to the airport and took a flight headed for New York. The surprise written all over Leon’s face said it all.

“What happened?” were the first words Leon uttered when he saw Nate.

“Nothing but until I woke up this morning and thought of speaking to Elise, I just… I had to get out of there.”

Leon smiled.

“I am sorry for your loss,” he said again. “Nathaniel was a great man.”

Nate nodded.

“Yeah, he was. It is a pity that I didn’t get to make peace with him earlier.” He exhaled loudly. “I think that is why I can’t handle matters of his estate…well, my estate now, without a support system.”

Leon tapped his shoulder reassuringly.

“We are already prepared to travel. We would have travelled within the hour had you not called me to tell me you were on your way here.”

“I was almost turned away from The Duncan Plaza… apparently I do not have the ‘right’ look for the establishment.”

“Did they know who you were?” Leon asked and Nate shook his head.

“But that should not be an excuse for them turning away customers… it’s purely racist.”

Leon nodded.

“I know only too well what you are talking about. I once was supposed to represent my family’s interest in a conference only for one of the delegates to ask me to refill his glass…well, in all fairness, I was partly to blame. I had on a black suit and white shirt.”

Nate forced out a laugh just as a woman walked up to where they were. She was also African American. Her hair held back in a high bun. She smiled as she approached them and that was when Nate saw it. It was the same smile he had seen in many photos in his correspondence with Leon.

“I’m so sorry. I completely got turned around when my car stalled. Triple A had me waiting for a little too long,” she said before Leon kissed her cheek.

“No worries. I’ll have someone deal with that. Deloris, meet Nathaniel Duncan the second. We all call him Nate,” he said.

“Very pleased to finally meet you,” Deloris said. “And Leon should have said, people call me Dee.”

Nate smiled as he shook her hand.

“So, where do we go from here?” Leon asked and Nate shrugged.

“If it is not too much to ask, maybe just go back to Colorado and see this business over and done with.”

Leon raised an eyebrow over the other.

“You just came from an eight-hour flight,” he said flatly.

“Yeah, how about we just have the day and travel back in the evening. You should be good to go for a morning meeting by then,” Deloris suggested.

At the back of his mind, Nate did not really want to travel back. Matter of fact, he wanted to put off the whole thing for as long as he possibly could. The suggestion to go back to Colorado almost immediately was something that had only happened because his mouth did the talking without the backing of his brain. Deloris’ suggestion made a lot of sense and he knew it.

“Fine and maybe while we are at it, I should do something about these locks,” Nate said, smiling at Leon.

“You are getting rid of them? After so long?” Leon asked and Nate nodded.

He stroked a few of his locks and sighed.

“This was Nate Duncan, the biker. I need something that is a little more befitting of my new role.”

“So, something like this?” Deloris gently stroked Leon’s hair.

“Yeah, something exactly like that.”