It took four rings before Darnell finally answered the phone. However, when he did, he was annoyed and acted as though I interrupted something extremely important. I could hear some noise from the background; loud music and laughter, along with clinking of glasses, like he was in a whole other world than my quiet kitchen, where I just clung to the counter in order to be able to stand on my feet.
It was only a few hours since his mother died. I could still feel that sensation of her slipping out of my hand, that thick, suffocating silence that falls over a home after the person has breathed their last breath.
When I gathered the strength to deliver the news of his mother’s passing, Darnell just said something about being late to an important dinner he couldn’t miss and hung up the phone.
This was a few weeks ago. At the time, I thought that telephone conversation was the absolute lowest point a father could ever reach with a child. I had no clue that my wife, Diane, had been planning something behind my back for the past fifteen years to keep me safe from the people we raised.
The funeral was held on Thursday, and there were hardly any people present there. There was only our next door neighbor, one of her friends, and the postman whom Diane made hot coffee during the chilly winter days. Darnell’s chair remained vacant. Everyone noticed this, but did not say anything about it. Sometimes, people show mercy when they decide to remain quiet.
A few days after that, I found myself rifling through her dressers, trying to keep myself busy. The final box, hidden in the bottom drawer, contained a bundle of letters from her that she had written to. Reading through the letters was a terrible experience as she had chronicled years of abuse from Darnell that I had been trying to ignore – the time he made fun of her cooking or holiday plans, the times when he didn’t call except when he needed money. However, in the final letter that she wrote before her death, she had mentioned Harold, our estate lawyer, and an amount of money that I didn’t know anything about.
I went to Harold’s downtown office and thought there must have been a mistake. We were a humble family, so how could Diane possibly had any money saved. But once at Harold’s, he explained that Diane had inherited a rundown house some years back, restored it, rented it out, and managed to make a real estate portfolio. All put together, she had a trust fund worth nine million dollars.
Apparently, she kept it a secret because she wanted to surprise me for my sixty-seventh birthday and allow me to retire comfortably. But she also explicitly wrote that Darnell shouldn’t get a single cent unless he proved he cared about more than just money.
While I was still sitting in the lawyer’s office, my telephone rang. It was Darnell. Weeks of no contact, and then suddenly his voice becomes so warm, asking how I was doing and offering help to sort out the stuff his mother left behind. Diane knew just how he and his wife Veronica were going to react to it. In one of her letters, she wrote that she had even hired a private detective to check Veronica out because something about her just felt off.
That Saturday, they showed up. They sat in their rented car outside for ten minutes, obviously rehearsing their story line, and then when they came in, they began to take inventory of the living room. Veronica gave me a phony hug, passed me a card of a psychiatrist, dropped hints that my grief was clouding my judgment, and suggested I should move to their condo. I knew exactly what they were up to. I went to the kitchen and called Harold to tell him they had arrived.
A few days later, they returned with a lawyer, psychiatrist, and social worker to perform a psychiatric evaluation, asking me a barrage of questions for two hours straight, all the while Veronica wandered through the rooms touching things as if she owned them.
Once they were done, I told them I needed to place a call, and then on cue, the doorbell rang. In came Harold with the private investigator along with a detective from the financial crimes division. The investigator then began to lay out evidence in the form of documents and photographs on the coffee table, and thus all came tumbling down. It became apparent that Veronica had been married three times previously to men who were rich and elderly, taking all that they possessed while leaving their families completely broke. And then came the audio tape that Diane had recorded of Veronica admitting her plan to put me in a home and sell the house.
Darnell looked as though the floor had just dropped from underneath him. The detective then took Veronica into custody immediately for fraud and exploitation of an elder while she begged for Darnell to help her out.
After everyone left, it was just me and my son sitting in the quiet. He finally broke down, crying about missing the funeral and wondering if his mother hated him. I didn’t sugarcoat it. I told him she forgave him, but that he didn’t deserve it, and that he’d have to spend the rest of his life trying to be worthy of that kind of grace.
Veronica ended up taking a twelve-year plea deal. Darnell went back to Detroit, but I clearly told him he was not going to live with me anymore. He got himself a little place and a steady job. He visits me on Sundays when I call him for dinner. It’s difficult, but he is trying. The last time he came to visit, he had a small basil plant which he put on the windowsill, where Diane used to grow her herbs.
I am living in our old home surrounded by all her things and have no intention of moving anything yet. It dawned on me that not only did Diane save me from being poor, she saved me from being used and manipulated by those who perceived me as being vulnerable. She loved me quietly but fiercely, and her love is protecting me even now that she is gone.
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Bored Daddy
Love and Peace