I Was Always Second. Until I Left. novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: What Malcolm Owes

Malcolm shut the car door, and stood in front of it with his hands at his sides.

"I was twenty-one the first time," he said. "Your father's lawyer met me in the drive with a folder."

"He said that if I came back, he'd file to break the trust, and the fee with it. He said your mother's wishes would be tied up in court until you were forty."

"And you believed him."

"I believed I could lose you your money. I was twenty-one and had never owned a suit."

"The second time?" I said.

"I was twenty-three."

"The same man was at the gate. He didn't have a folder. He had a photograph of you in a school uniform, at fifteen, standing behind a gate with your hand on the post."

"He said you'd told your father you didn't want to hear from me."

I felt something in my chest drop.

"I never said that."

"I know that now."

"You didn't ask me."

"No," Malcolm said. "I didn't."

He didn't look away.

I had wanted him to defend himself, and I had a speech ready for every excuse.

He didn't make any.

"I mailed the letters, and they came back with his handwriting on them," he said.

"I told myself that meant you'd read them and written back no."

"For fifteen years you told yourself that."

"I stopped telling myself around year four," he said. "I just kept writing, because I didn't know what else to do."

"You could have climbed the wall."

"Yes."

"You could have called a newspaper. You could have stood at my school. You could have knocked on every door in Pacific Heights."

"All of that."

"Instead you wrote me a letter once a year, and put it in the post, and went home."

"Yes."

I looked at him, at his big careful hands and his tired eyes, and I hated how much I loved him.

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