Billy Croce picked up his house phone on the fourth ring and was so surprised to hear Ziggy’s voice that he choked on his peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
“I’m sorry I bailed on the fireworks,” Ziggy said. “Can I stop by?”
When he wasn’t traveling internationally, Billy lived in the slipshod bungalow he grew up in, among the pines that he and Zeke ran through as kids. The front door was a peeling dark green that Ziggy thumbed with interest before the door swung open.
“To what do I owe the honor?” Billy asked, hugging his godson.
After a quick tour of the small house Ziggy hadn’t stepped in for decades, Billy led him through the kitchen and out to the back porch, where the corrugated roof was thick with mold but kept the rain off the two brown La-Z-Boy chairs that looked out on the looming woods. Billy tossed Ziggy a beer and invited him to sit down in the slightly newer-looking of the two recliners.
“Did you know my dad was in debt?” Ziggy blurted out.
Billy’s eyebrows alone proved that he did not. “Debt?” Billy asked. “From what?”
“Yates.”
Billy nodded at his beer, fiddled with the metal tab.
“He hid a hundred-thousand-dollar debt from me,” Ziggy said, taking a long swig. “And technically I was his business partner.”
Leaning back in his chair, Billy stretched out his legs, visibly weighing his words. “Sure, but you were also technically his son.”
“Either way,” Ziggy muttered, “I’m dealing with the fallout.”
Billy took a deep breath and tapped his fingers on his armrest. “I know he was old school about those accounting books and, I mean, let’s face it, Zeke wasn’t much of a businessman since he barely charged his friends, and he had a lot of friends. But as your dad, he had one job—I know because he told me so himself—and that was to give you better options—a bigger life—than what we had.”
Staring into the trees, Ziggy said, “Well, since he’s not here, I was hoping I’d get your blessing to sell MVP to Ocean City HVAC. They made a decent offer to buy it—or acquire it, I guess is the business term for it.”
Billy chuckled as he looked over at Ziggy. “Do you want my blessing or my help?”
For thirty-four years, the only person Ziggy had felt comfortable asking for help was his dad. But Zeke was gone and Billy was here.
“Help,” Ziggy mustered after several beats. “I’m asking for your help.”
The thing about a small town is that it tends to get smaller the older you get. Joey the barback waved to Ziggy as soon as he entered the Coffee Cow, where they’d arranged to meet the following Monday—Labor Day. After Goldie delivered two coffees, Joey launched into the business pitch he’d perfected over the last two years at Tech before Ziggy cut him off. I’m sorry,” he said, “but I just don’t understand how a certificate in sustainable energy is going to help me.”
“It’s a certificate in HVAC and sustainable energy,” Joey corrected him. “So I already know a thing or two about heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning—most of the stuff you do on a daily basis.”
“Okay, so—”
“But it’s not just me,” Joey interrupted. “I’ve teamed up with some friends I met at Tech—one does computer stuff and the other does business marketing stuff—we’re trying to take on Ocean City HVAC.” At the prospect, Joey beamed devilishly and Ziggy laughed.
“Then what do you need me for?”
“Your name.” At Ziggy’s confused look, Joey elaborated. “It’s hard to launch a brand-new business without any built-in credibility. Everyone around here knows and trusts MVP.”
Ziggy nodded slowly. His dad and grandfather had sacrificed so much for that legacy, Ziggy’s true inheritance, and he’d almost squandered it all at Daffodil Cottage. It still made him shudder to think of all the fallout if he’d ever been caught, all the trust lost. Despite his misfortunes, Ziggy knew he was lucky.
“Billy told me about the debt,” Joey said, withdrawing a professional-looking binder from his satchel. “This is the business model and here are the cash-flow projections I’ve been working on for the last six months—I thought I could walk you through them, if you’re interested. The plan is tight enough and the numbers are sound enough that I’ve actually got a few different banks competing for the business line of credit—we’ll go with whoever comes up with the lowest interest rate, and I’m confident we can roll the outstanding balance into that line of credit.”
There it was again, Ziggy thought: We.
He flagged Goldie for more coffee and tried to harness the wings in his chest. Joey’s plan was more comprehensive than he could have hoped for. “So what would I do, besides let you use the company name?”
“I don’t have my license as a master plumber or half the certifications you have.”
“Oh.” Ziggy felt an unfamiliar swell of pride.
“Which is why you’d be, joking aside, the MVP of MVP,” Joey said, smiling. “And we’d need to compensate you for it—I figure you’d get a signing bonus and your first year’s salary up front—we could roll it into the loan from the bank.”
The number Joey scrawled on the corner of a syrup-stained napkin was several times larger than what Ziggy had expected. He snarled, “I don’t need your charity.”
Joey stared down at the counter and scratched his ear nervously. Like Ziggy, he had a propensity for blushing. “You know, if your dad hadn’t died—”
“We’d be the competition?” Ziggy quipped facetiously.
Goldie arrived with a fresh pot of coffee and a warning look that told Ziggy to ease up and listen to what the kid, who wasn’t a kid anymore, had to say.
“Not quite.” Joey squirmed on his barstool. “Look, you know I work with Kate, right? At the Jetty Bar?”
Ziggy focused his eyes on the silver tines of his unused fork, not liking where this was going. He and Kate hadn’t spoken since Daffodil Cottage a month ago. He didn’t know if she was still going to come to his dad’s Rock the Boat party the next day. He didn’t even know if he wanted her to.
“She told me about how you and your dad renovated Daffodil Cottage and the other places around town,” Joey said. “I was thinking, we could expand MVP so that it was plumbing and HVAC but also general contracting. We could give Harry Leeper a run for his money, except we’d actually do solid work—like what you and your dad did at Daffodil Cottage. You’ve got the experience and the trusted name; I’ve got the banks competing to give me money, a hunger for this thing to succeed, and enough business savvy from Tech to navigate the launch—”
Ziggy looked out the window at his bustling town on the last busy day of the summer. He closed his eyes and wondered what his dad would want him to do. Joey had clearly thought this through—he had an immediate plan and goals for the future. It was impressive. Overwhelming but impressive and, if Ziggy was honest with himself, exciting: It would be a dream to do more projects like Daffodil Cottage.
“What I was trying to say before, about your dad, if he hadn’t died,” Joey said, cutting through Ziggy’s thoughts with choppy nervousness, “it’s just…I really admired him.”
Ziggy nodded. “Thanks.”
“Yeah, but—well, so”—Ziggy looked over and saw Joey searching the counter for words—“I used to cut school a lot,” Joey said, squinting at the memory. “In high school. And one time I was walking out of the Wawa when I should have been in class, and your dad was like, ‘Get in the truck.’ ”
Ziggy leaned forward, hungry for any story about his father.
“And I was a punk for sure but I wasn’t dumb enough to say no to Zeke Miller, so I got in the truck, and we ended up just driving around for a while, talking about nothing and everything, my siblings, the Phillies, he was kind of obsessed with some instrument from Zimbabwe? And then, well, so, the thing is—”
“Joey, for the love of God, spit it out.”
“I guess what makes this feel full circle,” Joey said, sitting up straight on his barstool, “is that when he dropped me back off at school, your dad said that when I got my degree, he’d give me a job.”
Ziggy let the idea sink in.
“I’m not trying to be dramatic, but I’ve thought about it a lot,” Joey continued, “and it’s kinda like he’d always planned for us to work together.”