Chapter 11 - EVERYTHING RICHARD BOUGHT LOOKED DIFFERENT
I went home and hated the kitchen.
Richard remodeled it after selling Carter Machine Works.
Cherry cabinets.
Stone counters.
The breakfast nook where he drank coffee every morning.
Nothing in the room had changed.
Everything looked different.
Grief became complicated in a way I was not prepared for.
I missed him.
Then hated him.
Then remembered him sitting beside my mother during chemotherapy and wondered how the same man could knowingly help take money intended for her care.
Then remembered he was twenty-nine and terrified of his father.
Then remembered he kept Anna’s shares.
There was always another fact.
Daniel came over that evening.
He found me sitting on the floor beside boxes of Richard’s things.
“I don’t know who I married.”
Daniel sat beside me.
“Yes, you do.”
I looked at him sharply.
“No.”
“You knew part of him.”
“That’s supposed to help?”
“No.”
He picked up Richard’s old work gloves.
“He was the dad who taught me to drive.”
I said nothing.
“He was also the man who did this to Anna.”
Both.
Again.
I started crying.
Then anger returned.
“At least you got four months.”
Daniel stared.
“What?”
“To know who he really was.”
His face changed.
“You think that was easier?”
“I think you got to make choices.”
“I was twenty-seven years old and my dying father told me my childhood was partly paid for by something he stole from his sister.”
His voice rose.
“Then he asked me to help him confess after he died.”
I looked away.
Daniel continued:
“I didn't tell you because I promised him. I hated myself for that too.”
“You could have broken the promise.”
“Yes.”
He swallowed.
“I should have.”
That mattered.
He did not hide behind Richard.
“I thought if Dad had four months left, maybe I could force him to do the right thing himself.”
“And when he didn’t?”
“I left.”
He looked at me.
“That was my failure.”
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For the first time since the funeral, I saw Daniel not as keeper of Richard’s secret.
As another person Richard had burdened with it.
