Page 43 of Gray Hair Don't Care
“That I don’t agree. I love having him around. He gets me, Lela. And he helps without getting in the way. Do you have any idea how hard that is to find? When JTI first acquired Echo Echo, they sent in all of these corporate idiots who were spouting all sorts of business school BS. They didn’t care about what I was trying to do. They were just there to prop up the bottom line. That isn’t what I wanted. At all.”
“Of course. It means more to you than that.”
“I’m not going to be stupid about something, but I do think there’s something to be said for going with your gut.”
“I completely agree.”
“Well, Dad lets me do that. He lets me run with my ideas, but he also has all of this experience that comes in really handy. Like with the initial reaction to the Lela B campaign. It wasn’t at all what I was expecting. Add in the stress about the wedding, and I was at a total loss. But he helped me see a path forward. One that I might not have been willing or ready to take.”
“Time will tell how it will pan out, but I understand what you’re saying.”
Echo shook her head and confronted Lela with her big, brown, mascara-smudged eyes. “Oh, I think he was right. I think it’s going to take off. It might take a month or two, but it will. We will grow your company. The products are too good.”
Lela smiled. “Thank you. I appreciate that. But we aren’t talking about me. We’re talking about you and your mom and your wedding.”
She sighed. “Yeah, back to my dad, the big thing is that I trust him. I know he wouldn’t do anything I didn’t want him to do. And I know he would never intentionally steer me wrong. But I made the mistake of saying something to my mom about that and she blew her top. She completely freaked out.”
“What did she say?”
“That I was wrong. That I was giving him a free pass. That it wasn’t fair because she’d done all of the heavy lifting.”
“Heavy lifting?”
“When I was little. And a teenager. I was a pain in the ass. I fully admit to that. And I get what she’s saying because Dad wasn’t there much when I was young. But she’s also the one who wanted the divorce, and the person who chose to stay in England. Those decisions impacted me and my dad. It definitely hurt our relationship.”
Lela had always wanted to be a mom, but she could see how tangled the whole thing could become, especially if there was a divorce. Genevieve had done the hard work of raising Echo, then Donovan swept in to build a relationship with Echo when she was an adult. That could cause a lot of resentment. On the flip side was Donovan, who would’ve had to move to London if he’d wanted to see Echo in any regular way. “There are valid points on both sides. I can certainly see what your mom is saying about heavy lifting.”
“Was I wrong to get mad at her?”
“No. There’s no right or wrong in this situation. It’s too complicated for that. I totally understand why you want to defend your father. He’s been there for you during what I’m guessing has been the most exciting and stressful part of your life. Of course you appreciate his help. But I also see how that means your mom was there for the unexciting and sometimes grueling parts.”
“I guess.”
“And here’s the rub. Your wedding? It’s one of the exciting parts. So everything she’s done to make today happen has been for you, but it’s also for her. It’s only natural to want to be a big part of the good times when you were also there for the harder ones. She doesn’t want to feel left out. Nobody does.”
Echo took a breath so deep that her shoulders rose to her ears. “Tell me what to do, Lela. Tell me how all of this is supposed to work. I feel like I can trust you. You don’t have a side in this.”
“All I can suggest is to listen to your mom and acknowledge her feelings. It doesn’t make anyone right or wrong. My guess is that she just wants to be heard and appreciated. Like anyone would want to.” Lela reached out and put a hand on Echo’s shoulder. “But I also want you to know that you can ask your mom to not talk about your dad that way. It’s their divorce, not yours.”
Echo turned to her, eyes full of gratitude. “I wish I could just jump ahead in life to have everything figured out like you do.”
Ah, the bloom of youth. “I really don’t have it all figured out. Not even close. That’s one of the cruel tricks of getting older. You think you should have everything figured out, but you don’t.”
“Really?”
“Really. You still make mistakes. All the time. I think the only difference is that you rebound faster. And you might care less about certain people’s opinions.”
“Was my dad a mistake?”
Lela was a little taken aback by this, especially since she didn’t know exactly what Donovan had told her. “In what regard?”
Echo dropped her head to one side. “Lela. He told me.”
That didn’t necessarily illuminate the situation much. She wouldn’t expect Donovan to tell his daughter that he made a habit of leaving in the middle of the night, but anything was possible. “So you mean romantically?”
“If that’s the way you want to put it, sure.”
“I don’t regret anything that happened between your dad and me. It helped me learn a good life lesson.”
