Eight: Oliver Oswin
1832 Words
Eight:
Oliver Oswin
She was back.
Piper Powell was back. The girl next door. My first love. My former best friend. My biggest regret. She was small, with red hair, and green eyes. The first time I’d met her, she’d been thirteen. Far too young for me to show any interest in her. She’d been adopted by Ransom’s father after the explosion that had happened on the Tanager Inc. building back on New Years Eve so long ago.
The first time I met her, it had been summer. I’d been playing video games with Ransom. She’d come in and she’d been this beautiful, young girl. I’d been completely taken by her. Until Ransom staked his claim. From the time we were young, Ransom had never been very good about sharing. When Piper walked in, I’d introduced myself and tried to be friendly. The whole time, Ransom had glared at me, and made it perfectly clear that Piper wasn’t his sister. In other words, she was his, and off limits.
That said, I still made an effort to befriend her. I was fifteen when we’d met, so I kept my distance. But when I heard that Mr. Tanager had died, the only thing that I could think of was seeing her again. Once she’d graduated high school, she’d gone to college, and I’d never seen her again. I’d spent the past several years traveling, trying to forget her.
But now, she was back. When I saw her at the funeral, it was like I saw nothing but black and white. Then I saw red. Her red hair, her green eyes, and it was as if the colors had come back into my life again.
I talked to her briefly after the funeral, getting territorial vibes from Ransom again. He stood there the entire time, scowling at me. I didn’t think that I was going to see her ever again considering the last time I saw her; she was kissing Ransom.
But then, I saw her storming up the drive of my family’s mansion. I was sitting in my room, staring out the window, when I saw a flash of red. Her hair. I ran quickly from my room, down the stairs, and I opened the door right as she rang the doorbell.
“Oh!” Piper exclaimed.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey,” she said. She was still in her black dress from the funeral. She was also crying; mascara having run down her face.
“Piper, what are you doing?” I asked. “Are you okay?”
“No,” she said, “look, I know we didn’t leave things on the best of terms. I also know that you are dating someone else, but----”
“Come on in,” I said.
I opened the door wider, Piper wiped tears from her eyes, and she stepped inside.
She glanced around the house. “Nothing’s changed. It still feels like William Randolph Hearst is going to come down the stairs.”
“Cold, and impersonal?” I asked.
She laughed. “Yes. Please tell me that your mother isn’t in town.”
I smiled. “It’s okay. Mom’s in Europe. You don’t have to worry about her judging you.”
“Uh-huh. What about your sister?” she asked.
“The house is free of judgmental Oswins,” I told her, “except for me. But I judge others, not you. You----you’re on a pedestal.”
She rolled her eyes. “Please don’t put me on a pedestal. I’ve had enough of that lately. Can we go somewhere and talk?”
“Sure,” I said, “come on.”
I grabbed her hand, and the two of us went up the stairs to my bedroom. She looked around, taking it all in. The last time she’d been in there I’d had posters of The Black Keys and Blake Lively on my wall. Now, it was covered with pictures of my travels, done in shades of blue and grey.
“This place is different,” she said, “you got rid of the Spiderman sheets finally.”
I laughed. “Yeah, well. Not a teenage boy anymore.”
“No, I guess you’re not,” she said. “Um, so I’m sorry to just jump in on you. But…you know, we had the reading of the will….”
“The reading of the will. Did he leave everything to Ransom? I know he adopted you, but that’s kind of how things work in families like ours.”
She shook her head. “No. It’s so much worse.”
“Worse, how?”
Piper bit her lip. “There were certain stipulations in the will. Stipulations that could lead to me getting a company, if I want it. If I work with him for a year, I get to be Vice President, and I get the Vice President’s salary. And if I just stay for a year, Ransom will inherit the company. But if I walk away, the company will go to the Cardinals. And…..”
“What’s the third option?”
She sighed. “Marriage.”
My eyes widened. “Marriage?!”
“Mr. Tanager thought that maybe something would happen between me and Ransom. He was expecting grandchildren from the two of us. As in, grandchildren with the Tanager name.”
“Ah,” I said, “an heir. That’s not so crazy.”
She glared at me. “Why do you think that’s not crazy?”
“Your parents were part of the team that created Tanager Inc. He’s the heir to the Tanager company. It’s not so unusual,” I said, “people used to do stuff like that all the time.”
“Yes, back when women wore corsets and didn’t have the right to vote. It’s crazy!”
“I don’t know. It’s not so crazy. I mean, Ransom’s always had a thing for you.”
She rolled her eyes. “No, he hasn’t. He treats me like dirt. He’s never wanted me to be part of the Tanager family.”
“No, he never wanted you to be considered his sister. He’s always wanted you to be part of the Tanager family. Just not in a sisterly way. Why do you think he always tried to keep the two of us from dating?”
She shook her head. “He kissed me, because he wanted to ruin our relationship. He didn’t want me to marry you, and he found the ring that you were keeping in the jacket that you had.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Ring?”
“Oh, I know I wasn’t supposed to know. I don’t think Ransom would have kissed me if he hadn’t found it and put two and two together. I don’t suppose I can blame him for getting mad. I was eighteen, and you were older than me.”
“I was twenty,” I said, “it wasn’t like I was a sixty-year-old man hitting on a young girl.”
“You might as well have been to Ransom.”
“Well, what are you thinking? Do you trust Ransom with the company?” I asked.
Piper sat down in my desk chair, and I sat down on my bed across from her. “I shouldn’t care about the company. Tanager was the one that owned it, my parents just helped create the products. But….”
“You grew up there,” I said.
“Yeah, I grew up there. But I don’t want to marry Ransom. He’s insufferable. I can’t
believe that was even put into the will as a stipulation. What was he thinking?”
“Well, what do you mean what was he thinking?” I said. “You know that was probably why Tanager adopted you, right? I’m guessing your parents had some things that they hadn’t even finished that he wanted the rights to. Adopting you, making sure that you and Ransom fell in love, well…. it’s actually pretty brilliant.”
“My parents never said anything about their work to me,” Piper said, “and Mr. Tanager knew I wasn’t scientifically inclined.”
“What did your parents leave you, when they died?” I asked.
Piper hesitated. “Well, I got whatever they had left, and there was a…well, I mean, it’s not really important.”
“What is it?”
“A storage shed.”
“Have you looked in the storage shed?”
Piper shook my head. “No, I never thought about looking at it. It was too hard, and I didn’t want to go through everything by myself. I still pay the rent on it though.”
“Well, you might want to go check on it. See what’s there. Tanager didn’t go through the trouble to adopt any of the other orphans from the night that the Tanager building exploded. He even knew that you had an aunt who was willing to adopt you, but he was insistent on scaring her off with lawyers so that you could legally be his ward. His daughter, for all intents and purposes.”
“I always thought he just did it for publicity.”
“Maybe,” I said, “but either way, if you want answers for what Tanager is thinking, I suspect that it’s going to be in that storage shed that your parents have.”
I could see her mulling over everything in her mind. Then, she locked eyes with me. And suddenly, I was fifteen years-old again. And all I wanted was her.
“Will you come with me?” she asked.
I took a deep breath. “Yeah, I’ll come with you. Of course, I’ll come with you.”
“Thank you, Ollie. Thank you so much.” She stood up from the chair and wrapped me in her arms. I felt my heart twinge a little bit. I’d traveled far and wide, but it seemed no matter where I went, Piper was never going to be far from my heart.
- Writer
