Chapter Three: Part One
Boarding the waiting water taxi, a uniformed man met them and made sure they were comfortable before piloting his vessel away from the dock. The small boat rocked slightly in the wake of a barge pushing heavily against the current in the main channel. Watching Dominique slip the paper bag into a cloth satchel that Edison had included in the bag, Kate asked, ‘What if I told you I’m afraid of the water?’
‘I would be very disappointed in Ms Danielle’s powers of recall, Catherine.’
‘Dominique, you have obviously corrupted her totally.’
‘Please, call me Dom.’
Kate nodded. ‘And I’m Kate.’
With a smile, he continued. ‘Kate, your friend is a minor conspirator at worst,’ he said, his eyes smiling. He followed her questioning gaze to their lunch now in the satchel. ‘We will need to climb a ladder shortly, but I assure you that it will be worth it, and that you will understand why I confided my intentions to Ms Danielle.’
Only a few minutes later, they were under one of the largest traffic bridges of the city. Each of its huge steel legs was set into massive, boat-shaped concrete piers like long man-made islands. Kate’s curiosity burned as the water taxi slowed and circled the base of the first leg of the bridge. The Skipper expertly nudged his boat against the concrete cliff and held station with his engine, allowing them to step directly onto a fixed steel ladder straight from the deck. Watching Kate scale the vertical face with an easy confidence, Dom smiled from below. As soon as he was secure on the ladder, he pushed the bow of the boat back into the current with his foot before following Kate up.
Standing on top of the concrete island, the sound of the traffic above was distant on the clean breeze. Kate looked around slowly and saw their water taxi motoring back to the quay.
A small table and two chairs had already been set up on the three metre wide concrete ledge. After taking in the view for a few moments himself, Dom set their lunch down on the table before returning to where she was still gazing up at the structures of the bridge above. They started strolling along the wide ledge. Reaching the end of the pier, they looked down to watch the current swirling off either side of the pier’s sharp leading edge like the bow of a ship, giving them a sense of movement through the water. After a moment, Dom’s face became serious. ‘Catherine… Kate, Thank you. You performed a great service when you were attentive enough to hear, and astute enough to recognise and pass on what you did. Your fast thinking resulted in some works of good occurring, and prevented some greedy individuals profiting from the misfortune of others.’ They paused for a moment to watch a pair of birds racing each other low over the water below them.
‘May I take a guess at how?’
‘Please do,’ he said as they strolled on.
‘The two creeps had bought up as much stock in the other company as they could in anticipation of the contract pushing the stock value up. The chairman didn’t get to vote the proxies, and my guess is that those two now own a large and probably mostly leveraged percentage of a dud company?’
‘My compliments, Kate. You hit all the relevant high notes exactly,’ he said, his eyes sparkling.
‘Can you tell me what it was all about?’
‘The finer details are unimportant and would be uninteresting,’ he said as they paused, already half way along the length of the concrete pier. His eyes shone as he looked at her. ‘Kate, I have something of great personal interest to show you. I believe you know quite a bit of this bridge’s history?’
Kate nodded cautiously. A small part of her wasn’t sure where this was going but she was interested to find out. Dominique leapt onto the hip-high pedestal surrounding the bridge’s steel leg in an easy movement and then turned to offer Kate his hand. She grinned at him and vaulted the height easily, pleased to see him looking a little surprised for once.
He pointed to an area of angled steelwork in deep shadow. At first, there was nothing to see but the wide surfaces of the massive metal leg supporting the bridge above. Her curiosity aroused, Kate walked closer to the area he was indicating. As her eyes adjusted, she saw the writing welded into the living steel of the bridge, each perfectly formed letter painted over many times.
~
This is the first part of
the first of many bridges
built by Nathaniel Jones,
Loving husband of Marjorie,
Proud father of Catherine.
All I ever build, I build for them.
~
Kate read and re-read the words, tears rolling silently down her face. Her father had written these words when she was four. This bridge had been his first major project, a venture upon which he had staked everything he and his family owned and could borrow. Her father’s belief and hard work had realised his dream. She was standing on and beneath it right now. His dream had become their dream, until it had ended with Silvio’s fraud and theft, stealing her family’s legacy from her and stripping nearly forty loyal workers of their employment. More than half of them had worked on this very bridge. Like so much of what her father did, he'd made his tribute to last, but hidden it from view.
‘Proud father of Catherine.’ She knew he'd always meant to say it to her. She had seen it in his eyes and actions hundreds of times, but to read his actual words…
With a light touch at her shoulder, Dom offered her a small packet of tissues whilst looking at her father’s words and not her tears. His own eyes were a little misted as well.
There was nothing for it. She launched herself at him, enclosing him in a fierce and slightly soggy hug. Kate wanted to say and express so much, but it came out as a snuffly and muffled, ‘Thank you.’
They leaned back, examining each other’s eyes for a highly charged moment. Dominique hugged her tightly again before he broke away, smiling brightly. He said, ‘I believe it’s lunch time. Are you hungry?’
Kate was grateful for the deflection, especially because she knew that with the emotion of that moment, if he had tried to kiss her, she would probably have kissed him back. Do I want him to kiss me? she asked herself. She recognised that she was in no fit state to answer her own question, and was thankful he’d not tried. Dom dropped lightly back to the wide lower ledge and he took her hand as she let herself back down to join him. He offered her his arm and they walked to their waiting table and lunch.
Sitting high above the water, and only a few strides away from a declaration of love and pride from her father, she was feeling more than a little overwhelmed. He was looking at her with deep compassion in his eyes. His gaze did not burn aggressively into her like so many alpha-male types tried to do, but instead, he gently seemed to invite her disclosure, offering her a safe space. She felt like she was letting him read her mind.
Dominique smiled cheekily before opening the brown paper bag and taking out two neatly wrapped sandwiches. Passing one to her, he said, ‘Corned beef, horseradish cream, Swiss cheese, tomato, grated carrot, cucumber and lettuce with just a little pepper and salt.’
‘Dee!’
‘Of course, Kate. I’m not psychic, but I do pay attention. Events and evidence suggest that so too, do you.’
He opened two bottles of sparkling apple juice for them before unwrapping his sandwich. He finished his first mouthful and looked back at her. ‘It’s a delicious combination, Kate.’
She was reeling and trying to catch up with the rules as they applied to Dominique and this odd lunch meeting. Edison’s words came back to her and she decided on the straightforward approach. ‘Why did you ask me here today, Dom?’
He smiled, pleased at her directness. ‘You saved a project by displaying atypical initiative and intelligence, and I wanted to say thank you by way of showing you something that I knew about, but suspected that you did not. I am glad you saw your father’s words. That he loved you both deeply is plain to see in the care he took with every letter. I feel honoured to have shared that moment with you.’
Damn! she thought, feeling her eyes prickle.
‘His generation was not one which comfortably expressed praise and love openly. You knew how he felt though, didn’t you?’
‘Will you please stop doing that?’ Kate said, far more sharply than she’d wanted to or intended to. She just wanted to change the course of the conversation and now she had snapped at him. His words mirrored the thoughts running through her mind, and at that moment, she was feeling piqued at her father’s inability to express himself more openly. Expecting anger or annoyance at her outburst, she saw compassion and understanding instead.
Seeing the expressions parading across her face, he smiled. ‘Kate, I apologise if I have intruded. I can see you are uncomfortable with our topic of conversation, so we should change it. May we talk a little business over lunch?’
Will you stop being so bloody perfect and stay on topic for more than a millisecond? her mind pleaded. Feeling like a pinball bouncing from spring to spring, Kate took a deep breath and shifted mental gears. ‘Yes, please.’ After a pause, she added, ‘Dominique, I am very grateful that you showed me his words. Thank you. You were completely right, of course, and my frustration wasn’t aimed at you. I did not mean to snap like I did; I’m sorry.’
Dominique’s smile showed that he recognised and accepted every level of her apology. He bowed his head slightly in acknowledgement before looking back up at her with a grin and pouncing on his sandwich, taking a huge bite and moaning with exaggerated joy and gusto. Kate found herself caught in his moment and laughed freely at his childish antics. Her laughter stopped him in mid-chew for a moment before he blinked and smiled, his mouth still over-full.