People see the Whitmore estate from the highway and assume it’s where wild parties happen. Huge stone mansion on the cliffs of Santa Barbara, terraced gardens, a view of the Pacific that most people only see in magazine spreads.
They imagine champagne fountains and servants running around with trays and a private orchestra playing on the lawn.
They never saw how it really was.
Inside, the house was quiet.
Precise.
Rooted.
There were staff, yes—cooks, a groundskeeper, a housekeeper who’d been with my grandfather longer than my parents had—but they moved through the space like part of its bones, not like frantic extras in a movie.
Every morning at six, there was a gentle knock on my door.
“Up, Emma,” Grandpa would call. “The world doesn’t wait for those who linger.”
I’d shuffle into the kitchen in oversized pajamas and find him exactly where he always was: sitting at the worn oak table, black coffee steaming, the Los Angeles Times spread open.
“Read this,” he’d say, tapping a headline.
I’d squint at the words, too big at first.
Then, as I grew, the exercise changed.
“Now tell me what they’re not saying,” he’d say.
At ten, I rolled my eyes and tried to give him what I thought he wanted.
At twelve, I realized he actually expected an answer.
At fifteen, I finally understood: he was teaching me to see what was underneath, not just what was printed.
“Never believe a story just because it’s in ink,” he said. “People can decorate lies as easily as they decorate houses. Truth hides beneath the surface. It waits for the ones willing to dig.”
My grandfather was the founder of Whitmore Industries, a shipping and logistics company so sprawling that its shipping containers dotted harbors all over the world. Half the goods moving across the Pacific did it on his ships.
But he didn’t talk about money like other people.
“Money is like salt water,” he’d say, eyes on the ocean. “The more you drink, the thirstier you get. So make sure what you crave is worth the thirst.”
He ruled his world with quiet authority. Politicians came to him. Lawyers sought his counsel. Employees feared disappointing him more than they feared losing their jobs—but it wasn’t because he shouted.
He almost never raised his voice.
But when Henry Whitmore said, “I’m disappointed,” grown men looked like rugrats who’d knocked over the good vase.
When I turned ten, he took me to his downtown office for the first time. The Whitmore Industries headquarters was a sleek glass tower that erased the clouds on a clear day.
Inside, people moved quickly, efficiently. Every person greeted him with respect tinged with something like affection—a rare thing in corporate lobbies.
“This is my granddaughter,” he told them proudly, one hand warm on my shoulder. “Someday she’ll ask tougher questions than any of you.”
They laughed, but I could see the calculation in some of their eyes.
He wasn’t preparing me to inherit his wealth.
He was preparing me to see through it.
On Saturdays, when other executives were playing golf, he took me downtown to a different building.
The community center bore his name on the outside. You wouldn’t know he’d paid for every brick by the way he moved inside it. No speeches. No choreographed photo ops.
He kneeled beside kids practicing reading, his big hands carefully turning pages. He showed teenagers how compound interest worked on a whiteboard, his eyes lighting up as their faces did. He listened to single mothers talk about budgets and daycare like they were board presentations.
“Power means nothing,” he’d whisper as we left, “if you only use it to stand above people instead of beside them.”
The Journal
When I was sixteen, I saw my parents again.
Not in person.
On TV.
I was in the den, flipping through channels, when a familiar jawline caught my eye. My thumb froze on the remote.
Onscreen, my mother and father walked arm-in-arm down a red carpet. Victoria tossed her glossy hair and laughed at something a reporter said. Charles looked dashing and slightly bored, exactly the way he’d always looked in candid photos.
The chyron at the bottom read: “Charles & Victoria Witmore Launch New Reality Show: ‘Second Chances.’”
I stared.
There they were, my genetic donors, talking into microphones about redemption and rebuilding broken relationships.
They looked radiant.
They looked whole.
They looked like they’d never missed me at all.
My fingers tightened around the remote until my knuckles turned white.
“You can change it,” Grandpa said softly from the doorway.
I hadn’t heard him come in.
He followed my gaze to the TV.
“Do you miss them?” he asked.
Did I?
Once upon a time, I’d fantasized about them pulling into the driveway, their car—maybe not the same silver convertible, but something similar—coasting up the hill, my mother stepping out with tears in her eyes, my father scooping me up and apologizing.
At sixteen, watching them pose for cameras and talk about “second chances” like they invented the concept… whatever lingering longing I had shriveled.
“Not anymore,” I said.
Grandpa nodded slowly.
“Good,” he said. “Missing those who left is like staring at closed doors. You’ll miss all the ones still open.”
That night, he handed me a small, worn leather journal. The cover was scratched from years of handling. The pages inside were blank.
“For your truth,” he said, pressing it into my palms. “One day the world will try to tell you what to believe. Write down what you know. Don’t let them change it for you.”
I didn’t understand then how important that journal would become.
How the words we both wrote inside it would someday stand between me and the people who tried to erase me.
The Day the Pen Stopped
See more on the next page
Advertisement
<
See more on the next page
Advertisement
