Chapter 5 - The Man Who Needed to Be Chosen
Richard and I met with our attorneys present.
I expected him to deny everything.
He didn’t.
He admitted creating the email account.
His explanation was almost worse than denial because he believed it made sense.
Susan and Robert, he said, kept Daniel “emotionally alive” for Lucy.
Birthday photographs.
Stories.
The Orioles hat.
References to “your dad.”
Richard believed those things prevented Lucy from fully accepting him.
“You could have talked to me.”
“I did.”
“No. You complained.”
“I told you she needed stability.”
“She had stability.”
“With a ghost in every room?”
I stared at him.
Daniel had been dead five years.
Richard was still competing with him.
He leaned forward.
“I was the one doing the actual work.”
“What work?”
“School pickup. Homework. Doctor appointments. Staying up when she was sick.”
“All things I appreciated.”
“And every time Daniel’s parents sent something, suddenly I was Richard again.”
I almost laughed.
“That’s your name.”
“You know what I mean.”
I did.
He wanted the word Dad.
Not eventually.
Not freely.
As proof.
Lucy had called him Richard from the day they met.
We never forced anything else.
I thought Richard accepted that.
Apparently, he had been keeping score.
“What happened to Daniel’s things?”
His eyes moved away.
“Some are still at the house.”
“And the missing bins?”
“One is there.”
“The others?”
“I donated some things.”
I stared at him.
“You what?”
“Clothes. Books. Things nobody used.”
“They were not yours.”
“You left them in storage for years.”
“That did not make them yours.”
He lowered his voice.
“You were never going to move forward if every closet was a shrine.”
My anger became almost quiet.
“My first husband died.”
“I know.”
“Lucy’s father died.”
“I know.”
“You do not get to cure grief by throwing away the person.”
Richard’s attorney touched his arm.
He stopped talking.
That was when I understood something important.
Richard wasn’t hiding one ugly mistake.
He had constructed an entire private policy for our family.
Daniel faded.
His parents disappeared.
His belongings vanished.
And eventually, Richard expected the empty space to become his.
May you like
The bracelet was not what caused the fight.
It was one of the last things he had failed to erase.
