Chapter 4 - MY SON HAD KNOWN FOR FOUR MONTHS
I became angry at Daniel next.
Grief makes fairness difficult.
“You knew.”
“Some of it.”
“For four months.”
“Yes.”
“You let me sit beside your father every day.”
Daniel’s face tightened.
“You think I liked that?”
“You could have told me.”
“I tried to make him tell you.”
“You made a promise instead.”
“After three weeks of fighting.”
I stood.
“He was dying.”
“So was Anna when you all still called her a thief.”
That stopped me.
Daniel immediately looked ashamed.
But he did not take the sentence back.
He shouldn’t have.
He explained what happened four months earlier.
Richard called him home.
Showed him the photograph.
The first bank records.
Then asked Daniel to make three promises.
Attend the funeral wearing a pink dress modeled after Anna’s.
Give me the photograph afterward.
And help Leah complete whatever restitution Richard had placed into his estate plan.
Daniel refused.
“Why the dress?”
Richard told him:
“Because I spent twenty-six years making it easy for everybody to remember Anna as the woman who ruined Christmas. I want the last room I ever occupy to contain the image I helped turn against her.”
Daniel said:
“Then wear it yourself while you’re alive.”
Richard cried.
Daniel had rarely seen his father cry.
Still, Richard refused to tell me.
Why?
He claimed evidence was incomplete.
Paul still had company records.
The estate needed restructuring.
He wanted Leah to secure documents before the family knew what he was doing.
Partly reasonable.
Partly cowardice.
Daniel recognized both.
“So you left.”
“Yes.”
“I thought you hated him.”
“I did.”
He looked toward me.
“I also loved him.”
That was the first useful sentence anyone gave me about Richard after his death.
Both things could exist.
May you like
Love did not erase accountability.
Accountability did not magically erase love.
