Chapter 4 - The Last Voicemail I Didn’t Return
Dad called me four days before he died.
I had not returned it.
That fact became heavier every hour.
His voicemail was still on my phone.
“Sadie. Call me when you’re done pretending you’re busier than everybody else.”
Typical Eli.
Then:
“I’ve got an electrical question.”
Pause.
“If concrete’s been sealed around a conduit for ten, twelve years, and you find current where there shouldn’t be current…”
Another pause.
“Actually, forget it. Call me.”
I had been on a survey job in Erie.
He and I had argued three weeks earlier.
Again.
Dad wanted me to inspect the clubhouse drainage settlement.
I told him to hire a local engineering firm.
He said he wanted somebody he trusted.
I said:
“You mean somebody you don’t have to pay.”
He hung up.
That was our last real conversation.
My relationship with my father had not been tragic.
That almost made the guilt worse.
We loved each other.
We also knew exactly which buttons to push.
My mother died when I was seventeen.
After that, Dad moved emotionally into the clubhouse.
The Riders became his grief strategy.
I became responsible early.
College.
Licensing.
Work.
I learned not to ask him for much.
He learned to assume that meant I needed nothing.
When tuition increased my junior year, he somehow found the money.
Nearly thirty thousand dollars over two semesters.
I asked where it came from.
“Overtime.”
I believed him because believing parents is easier than auditing them.
Now, sitting in my apartment with his voicemail playing again, I remembered something else.
That year was 2014.
The year in the photograph.
The year the bunker had apparently been exposed before somebody sealed it again.
I opened old bank statements Dad had left in the executor files.
Most were ordinary.
Mortgage.
Utilities.
Parts suppliers.
Then I found one deposit.
July 18, 2014.
Alder Environmental Services
$84,000.
Description:
Electrical remediation consulting.
May you like
My father had never been an environmental consultant.
And $84,000 was a strange amount of overtime.
