Silver Lining
"No. It's your turn."
"Are you sure? I thought it was yours."
Mason Nash was five years old and too young to have anything like a crush on her, but she knew he saw her as a best friend or maybe an aunt, so she only smiled and told him he must be right, even though she knew he wasn't.
"Your dad should be getting home soon," she said as she took another turn in which she made an intentional mistake.
"Yeah, he works a lot," the five-year old boy said almost absentmindedly as he took advantage of the error.
"Yes, but you're really lucky to have a dad who loves you. You know that, right?" his babysitter said.
"Yes. And I'm really sorry you don't have a dad," the boy told her.
"Thank you. And I'm just as sorry you don't have a mom, Mason," she told him sincerely as she thought about how grown up he always sounded for a boy who was so young.
At 15, Brianna Grantham lived alone with her mother, Kellie, who owned and managed a triplex she and her husband bought as an investment and did her best to make ends meet from the rent stream it generated. As long as the monthly checks came in on time, and the repair bills stayed low, they did all right. They'd never be rich, but they did okay.
But whenever a tenant proved difficult in terms of paying on time, getting by became a challenge. In order to help out, Brianna started babysitting nearly two years ago. She used the money she earned to buy all of her own clothes and anything else she wanted like makeup or an MP3 player.
She also pitched in by doing well in school which meant one less thing for her mother to worry about. Doing so wasn't hard as Brianna was a smart kid for whom learning was easy, and she genuinely enjoyed going to class.
She also happened to pretty, but because she preferred staying home to hanging out with friends, her popularity had taken a hit just when it should have soared. For Brianna, that was a very small price to pay to help out her mother who also happened to be her best friend.
So while she could attend any party held by anyone at school, or date nearly any boy, she dated no one and preferred spending her time at home reading or listening to music or just hanging out with her mom.
While her friends were out late, sneaking around behind their parents' back, and doing things that still scared her, she was home or with Mason, the two things she enjoyed the most. If her friends wanted to party, they were welcome to it. But that wasn't the life Brianna wanted no matter what the social consequences might be.
She and her mom had always been best friends. But having lost her father to cancer three years earlier, she was even more aware of how important her mother was in her life, and that relationship meant everything to her. She also loved watching Mason Nash, who was as sweet a kid as she'd ever met. And because his dad paid her so well and needed her so often, she was able to sit for him exclusively, and spend time with her favorite five-year old while earning her own money. And she had to admit it was very pleasant being in such a nice home so much of the time.
Brianna already saw quite a bit of herself in Mason in the sense that, in spite of his tender years, he truly appreciated the close relationship he had with his only parent. And while Brianna would never say it out loud, she thought his father, Steve Nash, was about as handsome as any man she'd ever seen. Like her late father, Mason's dad also happened to be the perfect gentleman, and she felt completely safe around him.
He wasn't her father, but he was the only other man who'd ever made her feel that way, so between Mason, the extra money, and the security being in his home gave her, Brianna had been content to block off her calendar for the Nash family, such as it was, exclusively for the last year or so.
Steve Nash was the reluctant owner of a car dealership in his hometown of Albuquerque, New Mexico, and the reason why was the result of another untimely death of a father. Steve's had passed away of a heart attack no one saw coming nearly two years ago. Steve had grown up around the dealership, and until he left for college, he'd worked there since turning 14.
Initially, his father had him help the janitorial crew with cleanup. When he turned 16, his father assigned him the task of detailing used cars. It wasn't that Steve needed a job to earn money as his father was quite well off. It was more his dad's deep-seated belief that every child needed to learn the value of work, and just as important, that money didn't grown on trees.
After graduating from high school and during summer breaks from college, Steve sold used cars, and made enough to provide him with spending money for the entire next school year. Ironically, his father had insisted his son not work during college so he could focus on his education, and Steve had never taken that opportunity for granted. As a result, he'd finished with a grade point average just a shade over 3.7 with a bachelor's degree in business.
He'd gone to work as a junior manager for a casino in Las Vegas less than a month after graduation, and was doing quite well himself when he received the tragic news.
He'd never had any real interest in taking over the dealership, but with the sudden, unexpected loss of his father, his only choices were to run it or sell it. His first inclination had been to get rid of it as fast as he could, but when he went home for his father's funeral, it became clear that wasn't an option.
There were just too many very real people who depended on the jobs they had at Nash Automotive, and were he to sell it, there was no guarantee the new owner would keep them on. So after a week of soul-searching, he came to the realization that it was time to return to the city where he was born and raised and take over the family business.
As difficult as his father's passing had been, it paled in comparison to an ever deeper loss he'd suffered a year prior. Steve had never known his own mother who'd passed away when he was two years old and had been raised by his hard-working father who'd never remarried. The reasons why had gone with him to his grave, as that was one question he'd refused to answer, and Steve had long ago given up asking why.
In a tragic twist of irony, Steve's own wife, Sharon, had also died when their son, Mason, was just two. Having just turned five, Mason now had only one or two dim memories of the amazing, beautiful woman who'd given him life and who'd loved him more than life itself. His father had recently resigned himself to the fact that his beloved wife would forever be a stranger to their only child, known to him only through videos and photos.
Sharon had been Steve's college sweetheart, and they'd married just two days after graduating. She'd happily followed him to Las Vegas, where just ten months later, Mason Michael Nash was born. The married couple was overjoyed with happiness and with the birth of their first child, and that event had given both of them a feeling of completeness. But that sense of security came crashing down the night a drunk driver claimed Sharon's life as she was coming home from visiting her parents in Reno one cold February night.
The dealership demanded a lot of his time, and whatever he had left over went to his son. But work served a very important purpose in Steve's life by providing him a way of sublimating the pain and hurt of having lost his father and his wife into something productive. And thanks to Brianna, he never had to worry about his son.
Steve had recently celebrated his 28th birthday surrounded by his family from the dealership that organized a big surprise party at his house while he was at work that day. Brianna was holding Mason's hand when he walked in around 7pm, and they were the first to shout, "Surprise!" as everyone else joined in the celebration.
It was that kind of love and respect that had brought him back to Albuquerque and also kept him there, and Steve did his best to give it back to the loyal employees who worked so hard to make the business a success. During the last two years, the business had been doing extremely well, so Steve made it a point to tell his 'family' as often as he had the opportunity to do so, that this was a family affair. He made a point of telling them both collectively and individually that it was they who made any modest success he enjoyed possible, and at the end of each year, he paid out as generous a bonus as he could afford to each and every one of them.
It was nearly nine o'clock when he finally pulled in that evening, and his first thought that wasn't business-related that day was how he hoped his son would still be awake. He didn't have school the following morning, so it was possible Mason would still be up.
When he opened the door in the garage that led into the house and heard his son call out, "My dad's home!" he smiled.
When his boy ran through the kitchen, found his dad, and jumped into his arms and hugged him, all of the day's worries faded away.
