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Yet, all that keeps going through my mind is him sneaking into my house while I’m asleep and having his way with me again. Chills run up my spine, and I shudder. How am I going to sleep at night? What if he finds out where I live? What if he finds out my secret?
6
THEO
The door slams behind me, and I throw the letter onto the table. Why did my father have to ruin a good day? He writes to me every couple of months, and each time I don’t respond. He doesn’t deserve to hear from me. Not after he ruined my life and his. Parents are supposed to protect their children, and keep them from pain, but he didn’t. In fact, all he cared about was himself. His ego was too big and he wanted to be the best financial guy in the city, but that comes with a price. He’s paying for it.
I grab a beer from the fridge and pop the top off. Do I even want to open the letter? Will it make a difference? Maybe I’m better off just throwing it away and never reading it all. Everytime I receive a letter from him I buckle and end up reading it anyway. All it ever does is sour my mood for the rest of the day. He has a charm about him, that’s why he did well with his clients. He is good at spinning words to get what he wants. So, how will I ever know if he is being genuine or just his fake self? Sometimes I want to believe him, the things he writes to me, but it’s hard to believe people can change.
My father embezzled a lot of money from his clients. I’m talking millions of dollars. It was the biggest scandal in our town for years. Everyone talked about him, and unfortunately my life was affected by it. Once adults found out my last name, they always asked if I was related to him. In the beginning, I lied because it was better than the alternative. I didn’t want people thinking I was anything like my father, a man with horrible morals, but that only worked for so long.
He did this for years. For some reason, he didn’t think he would get caught, and that’s the problem. The longer it went on without coming to light, the ballsier he got with his purchases. I remember one year, we went on lavish vacations every couple of months, when before that, we had never been on an actual vacation. He was always too busy working to bring in new clients and keep the ones he had happy, that a vacation was never in the cards. I wondered what was going on, but as a child, I didn’t think that my dad was doing something illegal. I just figured he was working hard and reaping some good benefits. Boy was I wrong.
The next year, he bought us a new house. Well, it was more like a mini mansion. We moved from a small two bedroom house to a huge six bedroom, four bathroom home. It had a huge backyard with a basketball court and a swimming pool. We didn’t need a house that big, but thinking like my dad, he probably thought it showed his clients that he was good at his job, when really it should have expressed the opposite.
The month before the FBI showed up at our door was the worst. He bought a brand new truck, a vacation home on some fancy island, and who knows what else. He wasn’t the smartest man in the bunch. If you are embezzling money, wasn’t the truck to not let people find out? Did he not think the government would catch on after all the big spending he had been doing?
When the FBI showed up at our house, and I answered the door, I knew something was wrong. That everything my dad had been doing was, in fact, illegal. When they took him out in handcuffs and a social worker told me I had to go with her, that was the moment I realized that the life as I knew it was over.
I chug my first beer down, thinking maybe the buzz will help. The anger inside building up until I almost punch a whole in the wall. You would think after all these years, he would stop writing me letters. My index finger opens the envelope.
Son,
I understand why you haven’t been writing me back, but that doesn’t mean that I will stop reaching out to you. How are things going? The last time I heard from one of my buddies, he said you were a firefighter now. You are out there saving lives. I’m proud of you, son. I’m glad you turned out nothing like your old man.
I know what I did was wrong, and I’m paying the price now, but I hope that you can someday forgive me. I never intended for you to end up in the system. The rush of having an unlimited amount of money was far too great, and I was too weak to say no. That’s my undoing, not yours.
Don’t let what I did define your life. Go out there and be extraordinary. Show everyone what the Navaldi’s should be. What I did trashed our name, but you can fix it. I know you can, son.
I’m going to keep this short. But please remember that I love you.
Dad
The last twenty years haven't been easy. Constantly trying to make a name for myself, but my father is a shadow I can’t escape. Grapevine is not big enough for people to forget about what my father did. When I became of age, it was hard to even get a job, because once they saw my name and attributed my relation to my father, it was over. They wanted nothing to do with me. And why should my livelihood be diminished because of the mistakes of my father?
I throw the paper to the ground, knowing I should have never opened the damn thing in the first place. He’s proud of me? That man gets no fucking credit for what I have become. If anything, I have become the man I am today because of my strong will to survive.
The foster system was an awful place. Hence the mentoring program. I can’t change many things, but I can be the light at the end of the tunnel for these kids. They need someone to look up to and be in their corner, and yeah sometimes kids get lucky and find parents that truly care, but for the majority they don’t. They end up in a home with many kids, and no personal attention, and that’s the worst of it. Even me, there was a time when I was living in a group home with fifteen other boys. Sure, they didn’t abuse me, but kids need attention. And with that many kids, it was impossible. The woman who ran the home was all about the schedule. We had a chore wheel, a set homework and dinner time, which kept me on track for the most part, but it still had me lacking some of the basic fundamentals of having a parent. I didn’t have someone to hold me while I was sick, or talk to when I had my first breakup.
Believe me, I was in plenty of bad homes though, places where the parents didn’t give one shit about me. All they wanted was the check every month to spend on their gambling addiction or whatever. I would come home, go to my room, and sometimes even cook myself dinner because they were never home. Not much of a life for a child.
My father is the reason why I had to endure all of this. The reason my childhood was broken. S, excuse me if I don’t give a fuck that he’s proud of who I have become. He doesn’t get to take credit for that. He hasn’t been in my life for twenty years and will never be. I am the man I am today because he abandoned me. He chose money over his family.
I hope he rots in jail.
7
FELICITY
A week later…
The warm air hits on my skin as I step out of the building to head across the quad. The sun is peeking out from behind a cloud, but it’s already nearing a hundred degrees. The heavy backpack strap pulls on my shoulder. There are students everywhere, more than I remember seeing last semester, and most have a coffee cup in their hands. Caffeine is life.
I come to the Business building and open the big door. Here goes nothing. My Non Profit class is in Room 3B, and I’m thankful I don’t have to walk up any steps today. All the resting I’ve been doing has taken a toll on my fitness routine.
The double doors open at the back of the classroom, and another student and I walk in. There is tiered seating with fold-desk seats with adjustable desktops, aisles that lead down to the teaching area with a podium. The professor is at a small desk in the corner of the room, unpacking his bag while students continue to file inside.
I go down to the fourth row and take the seat by the aisle. The first week, I try to sit near the front and then gradually go back a row throughout the semester depending on how hard the class is.
