I grimace. “Nothing sinister. I swear. The Adams family just owns an intellectual property firm. That’s all.”
She screws up her face. “Meaning …?”
“Meaning patents, mostly. In the tech world. And medicine. Aerospace.” I hitch my shoulders. “Boring stuff that makes them an obscene amount of money.”
“Them.” She tips her chin. “Not you?”
I bob my head. “I tried joining the family business for about a minute, when I got out of college the first time. Butbeing gifted a seat on some board just because of my last name felt … kind of hollow. And let’s just say the powers that be had no interest in me making any decisions of my own.”
“Powers that be?”
“Exactly.” I decide to let that hang there for a moment. Move on to why I’m here now. “Anyway, you already know I’m a science guy.”
Her lip quirks. “Bill Nye.”
“Yeah, well, that started way back when I was a little kid. And throughout school. The subjects just came easy to me, you know? Chem. Bio. Physics. Physiology. All of it.”
She smirks. “Cannot relate.”
“The thing is, I was lucky to have some amazing teachers. And I really wanted to pay that forward. Educate the next generation. Help shape the future, not own it, you know?”
“Yeah, that I get. But what happened, then?” She shrugs. “You … you just went back to school, got your credential, and opted out of the family fortune?”
“That’s the Scooby Doo version. Pretty much.”
“Hmm.” She pauses, processing. “You must still have access to the money, though, right? Or else you couldn’t have arranged that anonymous donation.”
“A trust.” I nod. “Set up when I was eighteen.”
“Wow.” She exhales, shaking her head. “So Bill Nye is actually Richie Rich.”
“In a nutshell.” I blow out a breath. Not exactly the reputation of my dreams. “I hadn’t touched the trust in years,” I explain. “Not until after the storm last fall. I saw a chance to fix things at Stony Peak. And that felt pretty good. Especially when Superintendent Dewey agreed to keep my identity a secret.”
“Yeah.” She shakes her head, frowning. “That’s the part I still don’t understand. Why stay anonymous?”
I take a beat, calculating how to word this withoutsounding like I’m looking for sympathy, because I’m definitely not. But thewholetruth is that a certain level of wealth means never knowing anyone’s true intentions.
Does your prom date like your sense of humor, or your AmEx Black Card?
Did you really make the team laugh, or are they just hoping you’ll pay the tab?
Still, Loren’s never gonna hear any financial complaints from me.
Ever.
So I land on this: “Money changes people,” I say. Slowly. Deliberately. “At least theirperceptionsof you change. I learned that early.”
“Right.” She quirks a brow. “Guess I’ll have to take your word for it.”
“Either way, I just wanted to be me, you know? The guy you hang out with at the football games. The one wearing a lab coat in the cadaver lab.”
Her lip curves up. “I kinda like that guy,” she says.
“Good,” I manage, but man, my throat is thick.
“So if giving money to Stony Peak felt so good, why stop the recurring donation?”
The question makes me flinch. “Sorry about that.” I drag a hand through my hair. “I had no idea you’d end up out of a summer job.”