“I can still find you, you know,” he adds.
I wait.
“You know you’re the one who bumped the trigger. I shouldn’t be here. It should be you.”
“You son of a bitch,” I spit. “I was a kid, and you were forcing yourself on my mother. I was trying to save her.”
“Regardless,” he continues, as they he doesn’t have a care in the world. “I shouldn’t be here. Think on that.”
He hangs up, and I’m stunned.
What the hell was that all about?
I’m in shock as I sit in my rich leather chair and stare out the wall of windows to my left. Below me, Hartford bustles around on it’s busy streets and I suddenly feel all alone.
My mother’s killer called me at work. So he somehow knows that I’m working here, and probably knows my grandfather is dead.
Of course, he could’ve gotten that from the newspapers.
He must not have much to do in prison.
I’m suddenly burning with rage that he would dare to contact me. What gives him the right to even fucking speak to me?
I pick up the phone to call Mila, because that’s what I would normally do. We share everything.
Only… today... Mila is at home in bed with our unborn child, trying to ensure that it lives.
She’s got more to worry about than an old dumbass who is sitting in prison trying to get a rise out of me. I put my phone back down.
I’ll tell her about it later. Next week, when she’s up and around again.
With a sigh, I try to call my father instead, but he’s in a meeting.
Fuck, the adult world sucks sometimes.
I focus on work documents, scanning contracts, rubbing my knee.
And then, right before I decide to close-up shop to go home, Sasha comes in with the mail.
“It’s late today,” she tells me, as she puts the pre-opened stack in my inbox. She opens them, scans them, and flags them for me, categorized by color. Yellow means it can wait, Green means it needs a signature, and Red means it’s very important, and those are on top.
I only have one red flag today.
Sitting back in my chair, I grab it.
It’s a letter.
My eyes are glued to it as I read it from start to end, the scrawling handwriting clearly masculine.
Pax,
I hope this letter finds you well.
I think you’ll be interested in what I have to say, it you give me a few minutes to say it.
Would you like to know what your mother said to me about you before she died?
I’m the only one who knows, and I can tell you.