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“I didn’t want to, but you were a teenager by then, and your mother had said you had been asking many questions about your father recently. As you were aware, alleged assaults were circulating through the Hanson House. Your mother’s first concern was the safety of the women who helped raise you.”
Emotion weighs heavy behind my eyes, threatening a migraine.
“She asked me to look into it.”
“And did you?” Please say no so I can hate you—and hate my mother for always looking out for everyone but herself.
“I did. I helped arrange a task force through the police department that sent him on the run.”
“Not on the run, Teacher,” I correct. “You cornered him, and he burned his way out. He killed as many witnesses as he could that night.” Let’s not try to sugarcoat that night. That task force cost the lives of many.
“I’m sorry, Alistair. If I had been there, I would have saved your mother myself. She was a good woman. I had never been prouder of my son’s decisions as I was the day I met your mother, and she pulled back the curtains, revealing the heir to our family, cutting grass for another family.”
This is all too much to digest.
“Why did my mother never tell me this story?”
Enoch looks weary. “I don’t know. Maybe she didn’t want you to hurt the way she did when she learned of Paul’s death. Maybe she thought you had already lost too much.”
My mother was a fucking saint.
“I believe she was going to tell you, though. Once we dealt with the assaults, she was going to introduce us.”
I can’t take much more of this. I finally laugh. “So, you thought, what better way to introduce myself than to put a call into the tip line and have my grandson arrested.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Oh, yeah?” I clip. “How was it, then? Did I not look enough like Paul, or was it the fact that I was the last piece of your son’s mistake?”
Now, I’m just saying stupid shit out of anger.
“You offered me a plea bargain!” I yell. “You pretended not to know me.” I can barely breathe. I’m so livid. “You watched me cry. You watched them put me behind bars! How can you live with yourself?”
The older man pulls himself off the grass and faces me. “I saved you,” he says calmly. “I promised myself I would do whatever it took to ensure you survived this world, as your mother and father would have wanted.”
I shake my head like that eighteen-year-old boy again, but Enoch grabs my arm tightly. “I wasn’t going to let you roam the streets, searching for vengeance instead of peace. Justice isn’t always what we want it to be. The law can only do so much, but it is not for you to decide. Your mother wouldn’t have wanted to know that her brilliant boy was sleeping alone in whatever abandoned building he found, stalking people he thought deserved justice. You cannot be the judge in this world, Alistair. You didn’t create the rules; therefore, you cannot exact the punishment.”
“He murdered my mother! My innocent mother!”
I’m on my knees, dragging Enoch to the ground with me as tears leak from my eyes.
“I needed you to know you were not alone in this world,” Enoch continues. “I needed you to make something of yourself—find justice the right way. Your mother would be proud of the man you’ve become… your father, too.”
“And you?” I scoff. “Are you proud that your only heir is a former convict?”
He guides my chin up and levels me with a stern look. “Yes. I am prouder of you than I was of your father. You have been through so much, Alistair, and still, you are a good man. I didn’t want your vengeance to take that from you. I wanted to arm you with the tools that would give you the justice you craved but not get you killed in the process.”
“You could have just told me,” I argue. “You didn’t need to have me arrested.”
He looks apologetic when he says, “But I did. Every action has consequences. You were too far gone to have listened to anyone. You trusted no one but Reese.”
I scoff. “Congratulations. You fixed that problem.”
“I know you’re angry, and this is a lot to understand, but sometimes the only way to reach people is through hardships. They must be stripped down to their very core to see what remains. You are not an arsonist, my son. You are a brilliant attorney with a passion for justice that I’ve never seen before. Just because you made a mistake and went down a longer path to get here doesn’t mean you deserve it any less.”
I still think he could have had a conversation with me.
Like he knew that’s exactly what I was thinking, he adds, “Had you not spent those six years in prison, you wouldn’t have felt hopeless. You wouldn’t have realized that you were just as smart as Harvard grads and obtained your law degree in prison.”
