“I never got one, Grandpa,” I whispered while I felt the heat rise in my face. “I never got a trust fund and I have been struggling to pay my bills for years,” I told him.
I watched his face go from steady to something carved from old wood and deep grief. He turned his head toward Mr. Henderson and the lawyer clicked the briefcase open to pull out several folders of paper.
He laid the folders out in a neat row and each one had a tab with a year printed in black ink. There were twenty five folders sitting there which represented twenty five years of something I never knew existed.
My mother made a sound that was not a word but rather the sound an animal makes when it steps into a trap. My father stood up so fast his chair tipped backward and crashed onto the wood floor with a loud bang.
“Dad, please,” my father said as he gripped the table. “Whatever this is we can talk about it privately and not in front of Riley,” he pleaded.
My grandfather did not even look at him because he kept his eyes locked on mine. “On the day you were born I deposited $1 million into a trust fund in your name,” my grandfather explained.
“It was meant to grow until your twenty fifth birthday at which point it would have been worth over $3 million,” he said. “Your parents were the trustees and they were responsible for handing it over to you completely,” he added.
I could not speak so I just shook my head while my eyes started to fill with hot tears. I was looking at my mother who had told me at twenty two that I would have to take out student loans for school.
She was the same woman who had cried with me in 2020 when I had to declare bankruptcy after my small bakery failed. “Sweetheart, we just do not have anything extra to give right now,” she had said just three months ago when I asked for help.
She would not look at me now while she stared at the spilled wine on the tablecloth. My father had gone the color of old paper and he looked like a fish pulled out of the water.
“Twenty five years,” my grandfather said as he looked at his son. “I trusted them because they were my family and I believed they would do what was right by you,” he said.
“I was wrong and tonight I am going to make it right,” he stated firmly. Mr. Henderson opened the first folder and showed me a starting balance of $1 million dated on my birthday in 1993.
I do not remember standing up from that table but I must have because the next thing I knew I was in the bathroom. I splashed cold water on my face and stared at a reflection that did not look like me anymore.
All I could hear was the phrase three million dollars repeating itself over and over like a scratched record. I remembered the summer I was sixteen when I wanted to go on a school trip but my mother said we could not afford it.
