Undeniably His(68)

Tonight, after we have dinner together, the conversation turns to Rebecca and Kalin. “Rebecca was Kalin’s high school sweetheart. He was in love with her the day he met her.” Lauren hands me a picture of them together at the prom.

“She’s beautiful.” Rebecca is smiling brightly, and Kalin’s arm is around her slim waist. She has an elegant, sleeveless black dress on, the bodice decorated with beaded accents that bring out the green in her eyes. Her long brown hair is combed back elegantly in a woven braid, and Kalin is playfully adjusting the corsage on her wrist. I swipe at a tear burning the corner of my eye.

“Kalin was in love with her. He couldn’t hide it if he tried. What Peter and I said was puppy love turned out to be very real. Kalin asked her to marry him in college. Before he was rich and famous,” she says with an air of humor.

“We were excited because they both wanted to raise a big family,” Peter adds. “You don’t see that a lot these days. When Kalin started his company and it became successful, it put somewhat of a hold on their plans for marriage and a family. He had a lot of offers both to take it public and sell it. He decided he wanted it to stay in the family, not only for financial security, but to maintain the integrity of the company that Kalin had built it on. He told us the business world was getting more corrupt with mergers and such, with the same people running all these different conglomerates. He wanted to avoid them.”

“Rebecca loved the people side of everything,” Lauren recalls. “She would make big meals, entertain guests, and always try to set her friends up on dates.”

Peter chuckles across from us. “Some of those didn’t work out so well.”

Kalin’s love for her shines still in the photographs that Lauren shows me in the family album. “She loved kids and wanted a lot of them. I don’t think she was that interested in the business side of things.” Lauren looks up from the album with a warm glow in her eyes. “She was his oasis from that part of his life.”

“Maybe so, dear, but Rebecca certainly had an entrepreneurial flair in her own right. She was quite the event planner in Chicago. She could bring a gathering of zombies back to life,” Peter laughs. “Just don’t try and match any of them on a date. She didn’t know where to draw the line,” Peter cackles with a twinkle of amusement in his eyes. “Kalin wanted to teach his sons or daughters the business, and let them maintain the honor of the company name.” An inward gaze shades his face. “Just when everything was going perfectly…”

Lauren stands and caresses his arm with her fingers. A downcast expression pulls at their faces. “We shouldn’t trouble Annabelle with this.”

“No, Mr. and Mrs. Davis. If you don’t mind, I want to know. I want to know more about Kalin and his family.” I straighten up and lean in slightly.

Peter wipes his face with the back of his hand. “When Rebecca came down with pancreatic cancer, it was a devastating diagnosis that brought their world and dreams for a family crashing down. As CEO and chairman, Kalin left the company indefinitely to spend time with her. He approved the replacements that began to fill up key leadership roles in the company.

“Quite frankly, his heart was not with the company anymore. It was with Rebecca twenty-four-seven. Kalin would do anything to help her, and had all the money in the world to work with, but the cancer spread too quickly. At that point, he just wanted to spend as much time with her as possible. She died only eight months after the diagnosis. Kalin became quite reclusive and remained absent from the company altogether after she died. He just took off and travelled for six months. Nothing mattered to him anymore. He figured his dreams were broken, and he would just sell the company and move on.

“But when Kalin came back and received word that his clients and workers were not taken care of the way he directed, he decided to come back. Management knew what that meant. The party was over.”

“I could imagine some of them would not be happy about that. But do you think they would hatch a plan to kill him just to keep their lavish lifestyles?”

“Is there a bigger motive to murder than money?” Peter asks.

I take a deep breath to fight back the sickening feeling churning in my stomach.

“The way Kalin looks at you, Annabelle. We never saw a light in Kalin’s eyes like that since the way he looked at Rebecca. It’s as if you brought him back to himself.”

“I could never replace her.” I sigh and stare at my hands.

“Kalin would never expect that from anyone, sweetheart. But he sees something in you that brings him back to life.”