Hush by Jess Wygle Page B

young in your business with your father, didn’t you?  Wasn’t that a roadblock for you, too?”
    Before Callem could answer, Rafe had returned to take our order.  I went with the fettuccini alfredo and Callem got seafood alfredo.  “You know,” Callem started, picking up where we’d been interrupted.  “I don’t think it was people’s trust in me because of my age.  I think it had more to do with who my father was.  It was a double-edged sword.  Some guys had respect for me because they knew I was getting first-hand knowledge from my father, so what I knew came from him.  Others saw me as the snot-nosed son of the boss who didn’t really want to be there; was only there because it was expected of me and maybe didn’t take it as seriously as my father did.  You just have to prove to everyone what you stand for and what you’re working for.  What’s your paradigm?”
    “My paradigm?”
    “Yeah, what’s your driving force?  What’s your ‘why’?  Why do you do everything you do?  For me, at this point in my life, I feel like every day I’m preparing for a life I’ll eventually have.  Everything I have, everything I’ve built, everything I’m working for is a future with a family and stability and security.  I’m building an empire, for lack of a better word, meant for people, a wife and children, that I have yet to meet.”
    “Wow,” I managed.  “That’s deep.  How long was it before you realized that was your ‘why’?”
    Callem shrugged.  “I guess I never laid it out like that before.  I’ve never really explained it to anyone like that before.  I remember asking myself that question when I bought my first house.  I had the company and I had all this money and this big empty house and I asked myself what I was doing.  I don’t know if I decided that this was the path I wanted to go down or if the path chose me.  Either way, I knew I was just preparing myself for a life I wanted to share with someone else.  I don’t know.  Does that make sense?”
    I nodded quickly.  “Absolutely.  That makes perfect sense.  You can’t really go any further with that dream until the someone you’ve been waiting for walks into your life, so it’s all about preparation until then.  I get it.”
    Callem nodded slowly.  “What about you?  Why do you do what you do?”
    I pursed my lips and shrugged my shoulders.  “I don’t know.  You’d think with a question like that, it would be relatively easy to conjure up an answer, but I’m drawing an absolute blank.  When I was younger and people asked me that, I probably said something like I want to save lives.  I want to help people.  I don’t feel like that answer is good enough anymore.  Shouldn’t there be something more?  Shouldn’t I have an answer like yours?”
    Callem shook his head.  “Olivia, you’re twenty-one years old.  I didn’t know which way was up when I was twenty-one and that’s why I joined the army.  Even if you did know what you were working for, it doesn’t mean its set in stone.  It can be changed.  There’s no shame in not knowing at this point in your life.”
    Rafe came by and refilled my merlot.  I took another sip as soon as he left.
    “I hope I didn’t offend you,” Callem said, after I’d given him no response.
    “Oh, no.  No.  Not at all.  I don’t usually talk candidly like this.  Maybe just with Erin, but she and I are the same age.  The only future she thinks about is what she’s going to be doing that weekend.  Erin and I live in two completely different worlds and sometimes I forget to talk about my big girl problems.  This conversation is actually quite refreshing.  I’m not talking about blood cell counts or MRI results or even about Erin’s newest fling.  I’m talking about me.  I should do this more often.  It’s very educational.”
    Callem smiled.  “I’m sure it is.  We’re both doing something we don’t normally do tonight.  I don’t