The Toast

The garland lights above Larkspur Creative Group's open floor blinked gold, then blue, then gold again, and I stood near the dessert table pretending the champagne in my hand was doing something for my nerves. It wasn't.

"Everyone, everyone—" Warren Cassidy tapped his glass with a pen, and the room's chatter dropped to a murmur. Forty people in ugly sweaters and blazers turned toward the little stage where Gerald Thorne stood, silver hair combed back, tuxedo jacket open, grinning like this was the easiest thing in the world.

"You all know the story," Warren said, "but it never gets old. Twenty-six years ago, Gerald Thorne started this company with two hundred dollars and a folding table in his garage."

A ripple of applause. I clapped too, out of habit, because that's what you do.

"No investors. No family money. Just a man with an idea nobody believed in—"

I stopped clapping.

Two hundred dollars. A folding table. A garage.

I knew that story. I'd heard it a hundred times, except in my mother's version, the man's name wasn't Gerald.

"Everything you see here," Warren went on, gesturing at the gleaming office, the exposed brick, the neon LARKSPUR sign over reception, "he built with his own two hands. Self-made, through and through."

Gerald raised his glass. The light caught it, threw a little gold coin of reflection across his cheek.

"To hard work," he said, voice warm and practiced, "and to never letting anyone tell you what you can't do."

Everyone drank. I lifted my glass to my lips and didn't drink at all.

Because Gerald kept talking, riding the applause, loosening his tie for effect. "People forget," he said, "this all started in October, twenty-six years ago. October the ninth, to be exact. I remember the date because it was my daughter's birthday the week before, and I told my wife, give me one year, just one, and if it doesn't work, I'll go back to a real job."

October ninth.

My hand went cold around the glass.

That wasn't Gerald's story.

That was my father's.