Chapter 6: My Father's Handwriting
Noah was asleep within ten minutes.
I sat on the edge of his bed for a while after, watching him breathe, his small hand curled near his chin.
He had fallen asleep still holding the old phone.
I eased it out of his fingers and set it on his nightstand.
Three videos.
A seven-year-old had done what I hadn't been able to do in four years.
I went back downstairs.
My mother was still there.
She was seated at the kitchen table now, in the chair Martin had used, her hands wrapped around the coffee cup he had left behind.
She hadn't made herself a new one.
I sat down across from her.
"How long did you know Dad had written a will?" I asked.
"He told me the week he signed it." She didn't look up.
"He said he wanted everything settled properly.
He said he didn't want you to have to fight for anything."
"And you decided to fight me for it instead."
"I decided to survive." Her voice was thin.
"You don't know what the year after he passed was like, Daniel.
You were in your own grief.
You weren't here."
"I was here every weekend."
"You weren't here at two in the morning when the credit card statements came.
You weren't here when I found out about the second mortgage." She looked up.
"Your father was not a careful man with money.
He was generous and he was warm and I loved him, but he was not careful.
The debts he left behind were real."
"How much was real debt and how much did you spend yourself?"
Her jaw tightened.
"That's not fair."
"It's a fair question."
She was quiet for a moment.
"About a hundred and ten thousand was existing debt.
The rest—" She stopped.
"I made choices I shouldn't have made.
I was frightened and I made bad choices."
"For four years."
"Yes." The word came out very small.
"For four years."
I opened the folder again and turned to the page with my father's signature.
His handwriting was the same as I remembered it — slightly forward-leaning, the capital letters larger than necessary, the way he had always written his name on birthday cards and permission slips and the notes he used to leave on the kitchen counter when he left early for work.
*Gone fishing.
Back by noon.
Don't let your mother throw out the leftover pie.
— Dad*
I had been twenty-six when he passed.
Noah had been three.
Noah had no memory of him at all.
"He named Noah specifically," I said.
"I know."
"He wanted Noah to have security.
That was the point."
My mother pressed her fingers to her eyes.
"I know, Daniel."
"You took money that my father set aside for his grandson."
She didn't answer.
There was no answer to give.
I closed the folder.
"I'm going to pursue full recovery through the estate," I said.
"My attorney will contact you.
I don't know yet what the legal exposure looks like for you and for Martin, but I'm not going to shield either of you from it."
She nodded.
"I'm not going to pretend I didn't expect that."
"I also need you to understand that things between us are going to be different.
I don't know yet what that looks like.
But they will be different."
She looked at me for a long moment.
Her eyes were wet, but she didn't cry.
"He would be so ashamed of me," she said.
I didn't tell her she was wrong.
She picked up her coat from the back of the chair and walked to the front door.
She stopped with her hand on the latch.
"The pie," she said quietly.
"What?"
"He always left those notes about the pie." She didn't turn around.
"I threw it out every time.
I never told him."
The door opened.
The night air came in cold for a moment.
Then the door closed, and she was gone.
May you like
I sat alone at the kitchen table with my father's will in front of me and the broken wineglass still on the living room floor, and I didn't move for a long time.
Then I got up, found the dustpan under the sink, and cleaned it up.
