Chapter 5: RED SPIDER LILIES

"Why spend your money on poisonous flowers?" the woman scolded Ms. LaFleur at the sight of the red spider lilies. "You know, those flowers are used on graves – historically they were buried with corpses to prevent animals from digging them up."

Ms. LaFleur smiled gently and said they were her favorite. Moreover, the flowers were also symbolic of love and courage. But the woman insisted it was a bad omen to bring them into the house. Ms. LaFleur reminded the woman that all flowers, even poisonous ones, have value.

"Hell Flowers" spat the bitter woman as if it were a curse. 

Chez opened his eyes, losing the last threads of the dream, and realized he was sprawled across the sofa of a lavish sitting room. A damp cloth covered his forehead.

"I believe he's waking up," said a voice.

There was movement from the other end of the sitting room. Mac knelt beside the sofa. His brows pinched in worry. He asked if Chez was still feeling ill and protested when the patient moved to sit up.

"I'm fine now." Chez removed the cloth from his head. It had a sweet floral smell to it. Feeling embarrassed he looked sheepishly around the room.

A third figure leaned against a writing desk in the other corner. He could have been a movie star with his refined looks and distinguished features. At that moment, however, a deep scowl adorned them and, with both his arms and ankles crossed, he seemed a most unfriendly man. But that was understandable as it was his father's funeral.

Shepard uncrossed and pushed away from his post to stand beside Mac. He leaned over curiously and gripped Mac's shoulder with friendly familiarity. "He seems alright now." Turning to Chez, he added, "You did give him a scare though."

Grinning warmly, he waited until Chez stood to introduce himself. Chez apologized for the scene and causing him to leave his guests, to which Shepard rolled his eyes. With an overly dramatic flourish, he gestured to the less than solemn guests loitering on the grounds and said the reception was really an excuse to devour his father's fine food and expensive drinks.

Blunt as always, Chez remarked that he didn't seem all that grieved by his father's passing. Surprisingly, the sophisticated gentleman threw back his head and hollered. With tears of mirth, he replied that no one would be grieving Lonny Redding: the man had been a terrible person and a worse father.

Shepard and Mac shared a look as if both recalling unpleasant memories. Brushing that aside, their host invited them to partake of his father's best whiskey which he hoped would be thoroughly consumed by the evening.

All three drank a round before Shepard finally confessed that he had asked the two of them there for a reason. He sighed heavily as if the strain of the past few days was starting to drain him. Even if he hadn't liked his father, surely there were unresolved feelings that were weighing on him.

"It's no secret my father was a conniving devil," he began. "Father managed to burn many bridges in his lifetime. Some of those bridges I hope to mend." He turned to Mac and gave him a pleading look.

Mac grumbled that his falling out with Lonny had nothing to do with Shepard. Nevertheless, Shepard insisted he felt the trauma of the severed relationship all the same. Growing up, the two of them had been good friends. Shepard recalled an amusing incident from their boyhood when he and Mac had stolen a rowboat and decided to sail it out to sea.

Mac chuckled. "We were gonna be pirates." He recalled fondly. "We were," Shepard agreed with a nod. "We were. We just couldn't decide who should be Captain."

Mac and Shepard continued to share memories of their past together, and after several stories and several glasses, all three of the men were laughing.

"God," breathed Shepard gesturing to himself and Mac, "I missed this. You always managed to make this place more tolerable." He swallowed the last of his drink and said apathetically that he was planning to sell the estate.

Cynically, Shepard admitted that he'd invited several guests to the reception in a covert attempt to showcase his father's estate. And once the place sold, Shepard said firmly, he intended to invest every penny from the sale into Mac's company.

Mac immediately protested but Shepard was adamant. He insisted that, not only was it a gesture of good faith in the friendship he hoped to rebuild with Mac, but he also thought it would be a fitting insult to his father. Using the money from the sale of his estate to invest in the very company that stole his father's prized engineer – that would be the ultimate insult. "One final F-you," he chuckled.

Mac laughed and admitted he liked the idea. However, rather than agreeing, he said, "Let me buy this place instead."

Shepard choked and asked if Mac was serious. As long as Lonny's ashes weren't buried somewhere on the property, then he was serious. No worries there, Shepard assured him. Living next to the ocean had made Lonny afraid of property erosion, and his ego wouldn't let him be buried in a place that wouldn't survive the ravages of time. He was buried in a mausoleum, befitting a man of his wealth and stature. Shepard's voice dripped with sarcasm. 

He considered Mac's proposal serious, but, with a cunning smile, said he would have to increase the price now that he had a wealthy buyer interested. The two joked back and forth, until Shepard finally decided.

"I'll sell you this entire place plus everything inside for 10% of WAT. You own a 68% stake in the company now, and even at 58% you will still have controlling shares." Shepard smiled as if very pleased with himself. "The best thing I could do to that nasty bastard, is to sell his house and possessions for nothing." He laughed and said it would also give Mac and him the opportunity to work together.

Mac thought for a bit, hesitant to give up equity in his company. He turned to looked at Chez and, after a moment, smiled. We'll never know what Mac thought in that moment, or why it had made him smile, but immediately after he turned to Shepard and agreed to the price.

The two shook hands and Shepard refilled everyone's glass for a toast: one to Lonny's legacy. A sentiment which made Mac visibly wince. Shepard would have the paperwork drawn up and sent over to Mac's office in a few days but told them to walk around and take a look at the place – Mac was the new owner after all.

In good spirits, Mac and Chez did just that. They meandered around, looking inside rooms and cupboards, judging with amusement Lonny's taste or lack thereof. Eventually, they made their way outside to the grounds and walk along the cliff side overlooking the ocean. 

Checking his watch, Mac excitedly pointed to a corner of the sky and said that his company's first station was about to make its way across. He laughed and said he always got a morbid kick out of imagining that, if anything ever happened to it, the station might plummet into the ocean right in front of Lonny's house – hopefully flooding the whole thing.

Chez grinned. "You'll have to change the position of its orbit now that the place belongs to you. Wouldn't want anything to happen while you slept."

Mac squinted at the sky. "Naw. If something ever happens to me, it'll probably be when I'm up there," he said darkly.

They sat on the ground and stared at the ocean. A chilly breeze was blowing, and it carried the smell of salt and something more: a soft, lightly sweet, almost lemony fragrance. Looking around, Chez noticed the red and white spider lilies nearby adorning the funeral tables.

"It's actually really relaxing here." Mac breathed.

Chez had to agree. There was something soothing about the sound of crashing waves and the sun disappearing into the ocean. He breathed deeply and wondered if he should find a place near the ocean someday.

Mac interrupted his thoughts. "I know I behave like everything off-Earth is fun and exciting. But honestly, Chez, it's not as glamorous as I pretend it is for the media and public. Difficult decisions come with living off-Earth, the type that people not living in those societies find hard to imagine. We now have colonists who've lived their whole lives on the colonies. Many feel that Earth doesn't care about them."

He sighed. "I've been thinking about the direction I want to take the company. A few of my shareholders are supportive, but others seem less enthusiastic. With half of them living on Earth and the others off-Earth like me, herding this particular group of cats has been quite a struggle. The only reason I'm able to manage is because I control the company, but more importantly, it's because I'm able to bring in money from investors."

"Sometimes, I wish I felt," Mac sighed again, "like someone had my back up there." He admitted this sadly as if talking to himself.

Chez frowned. Since the beginning of their friendship, Mac had always had his back. Even if it was only a slight comfort to him, Chez wanted him to know, he was on Mac's side – even when they were worlds apart. "I have your back," he insisted.

Mac turned and gave him a measured look. Until now, he'd been staring at the ocean, but it was as if he was seeing something else. "Do you really?" There was a ring of optimism in his voice.

Chez nodded and because he was a man of few words he simply added, "Always."

Mac sighed as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He turned his gaze to the ocean again, and this time it looked like he was seeing it.

"I have a project." He said after a while. "There's this woman I hired some time ago. She's a doctor and, at the time, I wasn't really sure how best to use her. But lately, as I mentioned, I've been thinking about the direction of the company, and I've started putting together a team to spearhead this new project of mine."

He looked at Chez who waited patiently for him to find the point. "I need an engineer."

Ah, though Chez. He suspected the project to be another one of Mac's toys and by the sound of it, Mac was envisioning a large one. Chez sighed and told Mac he was already spread too thin. Chez reminded him of the magnetic grappling gun he'd just added to the list less than a week ago. But seeing Mac's diminishing smile, Chez reluctantly agreed and said he'd hand off some of the projects to the other engineers.

Mac chuckled. "That's great. But you'll probably need to hand all of them off." Mac then explained that this new project would require he took a month or so off to meet the team and get acquainted with the project details.

He continued. "And since one of the team members is sort of unwelcome back on Earth, you're going to have to go there to meet them."

Chez froze. "Sorry. What now?"

Mac laughed, delighting in Chez's face. "The project and team are both waiting for you at Station 2."

Chez held up his hands in protest. No. He wasn't going to space. Station 2 was WATs own space station. It orbited the moon and acted as a waystation between colonists and other stations. A simple video call would be sufficient for him. Mac shook his head and said that wouldn't be enough to understand the depth of the project – not until he was there would he understand.

He slapped Chez on the back. "It's just a month. You'll be back tinkering in your lab again in no time."