The Second Weekend and What Comes Next

CHAPTER 28

THE SECOND WEEKEND AND WHAT COMES NEXT

We went home after Weekend One. For a few days, that was supposed to be the end of Coachella.

Back to Richmond Virginia.

Back to the Company.

Back to Dominion.

Back to morning coffee, emails, meetings, spreadsheets, keycards, glass doors, and everything we’d temporarily left behind while standing in a field on the other side of the country.

I was tired.

My back was happy to see my own furniture again.

My feet had finally stopped reminding me how much walking we’d done.

And if anybody had asked me Sunday night whether I wanted to turn around and do the whole thing again, I would’ve laughed.

Then somehow, less than a week later, I was paying to take us back.

Even now, that sounds ridiculous.

This time was different.

There was no business reason for it.

No sponsor arrangement that needed fulfilling.

No Company expense I could justify on a spreadsheet.

I paid for it.

Personally.

And since I’d already learned everything I needed to know about how much my forty-year-old body appreciated festival camping, I wasn’t doing that part again either.

I rented us a private place in the desert.

Actual bedrooms.

Actual bathrooms.

Air conditioning.

A pool.

A kitchen.

Doors that closed.

And, most importantly, a real bed waiting for me at the end of the night.

It cost considerably more.

Flights again.

The house.

Transportation.

Festival expenses.

Everything that came with deciding, on very little notice, that three people were going back across the country for another weekend at Coachella.

It was ridiculous.

Not impossible.

Ridiculous.

There was a difference.

When I told Grayson and Sean what I’d done, Grayson stared at me.

“You’re serious?”

“Unfortunately.”

“We’re actually going back?”

“Yes.”

A smile spread across his face.

Then he came over and hugged me.

“Dad, seriously. Thank you.”

I hugged him back.

“You’re welcome.”

Sean already had his phone out.

He was checking the schedule.

His eyes moved across the screen.

Then stopped.

“Anyma.”

I knew.

That was part of the reason I’d done it.

“Friday,” he said.

“Yep.”

“He’s actually scheduled again.”

“That’s what it says.”

Sean looked up at me.

And for the first time since we’d left California, I saw that excitement come all the way back.

I’m not going to tell you everything that happened during Weekend Two.

Some memories don’t need to become chapters.

Some photographs don’t need to become promotional material.

Some conversations don’t belong to the Company, Dominion, an audience, or anybody else.

Weekend Two belongs to the three of us.

What I will say is this:

It went very well.

We went back.

We stayed somewhere much more comfortable.

We had fun.

We separated sometimes and did our own things.

We came back together when we wanted to.

Nobody needed an itinerary documenting every hour.

Nobody needed to turn the weekend into work.

And the performance Sean had lost the first time finally happened.

Anyma performed.

That is about as much of that night as I need to give away.

I remember the lights.

I remember the scale of it.

And mostly, I remember looking at Sean.

He was happy.

Really happy.

The disappointment he’d carried out of Weekend One wasn’t on his face anymore.

I stood there watching my son finally get the moment he’d wanted.

And I remember thinking:

There.

That’s why I did this.

The rest can stay ours.

By Sunday morning, we’d had enough.

Not in a bad way.

There simply wasn’t anything left we desperately needed from the festival.

There were performers that day.

There were undoubtedly thousands of people preparing for another full afternoon and night.

Good for them.

We were done.

We’d gotten what we’d come back for.

So instead of forcing ourselves through another day simply because we’d paid to be there, we packed.

We left the house.

We headed for the airport.

And we flew home.

California disappeared behind us again.

This time, none of us talked about coming back.

Virginia felt almost aggressively normal.

I appreciated that.

My house was quiet.

My bed was mine.

There wasn’t bass coming from somewhere in the distance.

There weren’t thousands of people outside.

There wasn’t desert dust hiding in places desert dust had no business being.

There was home.

And after two trips across the country in less than two weeks, home felt pretty damn good.

For a little while, I thought that was where the Coachella story ended.

We’d gone once.

The wind had taken something from Sean.

I’d made the ridiculous decision to take us back.

He’d gotten his moment.

Grayson had gotten his own memories with me.

I’d gotten time with both of my sons that didn’t revolve entirely around work.

We came home together.

That was enough.

At least, I thought it was.

Work didn’t care that we’d been to Coachella.

DarkEvil Company was still there.

DarkEvil Dominion was still there.

The emails certainly hadn’t gone anywhere.

Neither had the contracts.

By the time Grayson and I were back at headquarters, it felt like we’d stepped into a machine that had kept running while we were gone.

Which was exactly what I wanted.

If everything collapsed every time I left Virginia, I hadn’t built a company.

I’d built another cage.

I walked into my office, set my things down, and looked through what had accumulated while we were away.

Grayson disappeared into his own work.

People came and went.

Messages were answered.

Coffee was made.

Normal.

Almost painfully normal.

Until I noticed something.

Sean wasn’t there.

At first, I didn’t think much of it.

We had just gotten back.

We were all tired.

Maybe he’d slept through an alarm.

Maybe traffic had slowed him down.

Maybe he had stopped somewhere.

I checked the time.

Then I went back to work.

A little while later, I checked again.

Still nothing.

I stepped into the hallway.

“Grayson?”

He looked up.

“Yeah?”

“Where’s your brother?”

Grayson looked toward Sean’s workspace.

Then back at me.

“I thought he was with you.”

“No.”

“I thought he was coming in.”

“So did I.”

Grayson checked his phone.

“No message.”

Neither of us panicked.

There wasn’t a reason to.

Sean was an adult.

He had his own car.

He knew where he was supposed to be.

And if Coachella had taught me anything, it was that I couldn’t spend the rest of my life tracking every movement my grown sons made.

So I did the reasonable thing.

I called him.

The phone rang.

No answer.

I waited.

Called again.

Nothing.

I sent a text.

You coming in today?

Then I put my phone down.

Sean wasn’t asleep.

He wasn’t stuck in traffic.

He wasn’t on his way to headquarters.

He was at my house.

In my office.

And my laptop was open in front of him.

He knew the password.

Of course he did.

I’d given it to him.

There had been times when I’d needed one of my sons to grab something for me, check something, send something, or get into a system while I was somewhere else.

I trusted him.

That was why the password wasn’t a problem.

Until it was.

Sean wasn’t looking through random files.

Not at first.

He was looking for something specific.

A communication.

Something involving Lauren.

Something involving him.

His future.

What came after high school.

College.

Plans that hadn’t been completely settled yet.

He searched.

Scrolled.

Opened one thing.

Closed another.

Then he found it.

A message concerning Sean and what came next.

He stared at the screen.

“There it is.”

He read.

And then he should have stopped.

He didn’t.

Something else caught his attention.

A document.

Then another.

Numbers.

Financial information.

Property information.

Things that had nothing to do with the message he’d come looking for.

One click became another.

The screen changed.

Sean leaned closer.

He looked at one number.

Then looked again.

Maybe he thought he’d misunderstood it.

He hadn’t.

There were more.

Accounts.

Assets.

Property.

Numbers large enough that they didn’t look real at first.

My private information.

My money.

My life.

Sean kept reading.

And somewhere in those documents, my son discovered something I’d never sat him down and explained.

His father had a lot more money than he’d realized.

Not thousands.

Not simply enough to be comfortable.

Millions.

Sean stared at the screen.

Then his phone started ringing.

The sound cut through the quiet office.

He looked down.

DAD

My name stayed on the screen.

The phone rang.

Sean didn’t answer.

Eventually it stopped.

A few seconds later, the screen lit again.

My message appeared.

You coming in today?

Sean read it.

He didn’t respond.

He looked back at my laptop.

Back at the numbers.

Back at information he had never been invited to see.

And then he kept going.

At headquarters, I put my phone beside my keyboard.

Still nothing.

Grayson appeared in my doorway.

“Anything?”

I shook my head.

“No.”

“You worried?”

I thought about it.

“No. Not yet.”

And I meant it.

Sean was an adult.

I trusted him.

I had spent the last two weekends learning that I didn’t have to keep both hands around my sons every second of every day.

They were allowed to have lives I couldn’t see.

They were allowed to go somewhere without Dad knowing every detail.

They were allowed privacy.

I believed that.

I still do.

What I didn’t understand yet was that there is a difference between giving someone privacy…

and giving someone trust.

I had given Sean both.

Only one of us knew what he was doing with it.