Chapter 88
NINE YEARS BEFORE
N ew Year’s Eve, in the Hunt household, was often a time that everyone celebrated—but for very different reasons.
For Edwin, he kept talking about all of the money he was going to make in the new year.
He would always talk about how he was going to buy this company, make this amount of money, or make the billionaire’s list. The new year wasn’t a time for reflecting on personal goals, but for creating financial ones.
For Mrs. Hunt, it seemed like the kind of time in which she wanted everyone to grow.
She spoke about her goals for Edwin, her goals for Morgan and I, but very rarely goals for herself.
I would ask her why she did this, but she would brush it off, saying something to the effect of “if your father is happy, I’m happy.
” I never bothered to correct her by saying that I didn’t consider Edwin my father anymore than I considered anyone else in my adopted family, well, family.
If I did, they’d just wind up leaving me anyways.
For Morgan, it was about the girls in our class he’d get.
When he got especially mean, he’d tell me he was going to get Sarah Hill to make me jealous—that was the easiest way to ensure that we’d fight with fists and go for each other’s throats with gusto.
But otherwise, he was mostly just like the rest of the guys our age.
For me?
I didn’t really make goals. I especially didn’t make goals having to deal with other people.
Life, to me, was just a series of failures with the occasional surprise success. Every relationship I’d had so far had ended poorly; every class I did well in, Morgan did better; and even within my own family, my parents and Morgan loved each other more than any of them loved me.
With an hour to go before New Year’s Day, then, I found myself, as usual, sitting on a corner chair in silence, listening to the Hunts talk about the same thing they did every year.
I wanted desperately to get up and leave; I wanted to retreat to my room, maybe play some video games, and dream of the day when I was older and able to escape the grip of the Hunts.
“Chance?”
I looked up in surprise to see Mrs. Hunt approaching. She sat beside me. I had trouble looking her in the eye; I didn’t really feel like engaging right now.
“How are you, sweetie?”
I rolled my eyes. She didn’t really care how I felt.
“I’m fine,” I said.
It was a lie, but it was a lie that would hopefully end the conversation. Even someone as nice as Mrs. Hunt was bound to prefer hanging out with her husband or her real son than me. It was just obvious.
“Chance,” she said. “You don’t have to tell me everything if you don’t want to. But I did want to tell you my resolution for you.”
“OK,” I said.
Great, like I need to learn what some old lady wants to do for me. I’m sure this will be of the greatest interest and something that I won’t care about in the slightest. Damnit.
“I want to see if you’d like to connect with your real parents,” she said.
“Why?” I said, scowling at her.
I could see the hurt in her eyes. She didn’t understand. Why would I ever want to see the two people who had left me behind? And for good, at that?
“I just… I thought you’d want to see them while you still could,” she said.
“What, are they like my grandparents?” I said, being stupidly insulting and caustic.
“No, but you never know, Chance,” she said. “You never know how long someone’s going to be around. You should take the opportunity while you can.”
“OK, Mrs. Hunt, God!” I said, turning away.
I felt a soft hand on my back, a simple gesture that made my eyes water. I hadn’t had much touch in my earlier years, and I definitely didn’t have much in the way of touching from anyone or anything since Sarah had stupidly dumped me.
“I will never force you to do anything, sweetie,” she said. “But I care about you and want to make sure you get the chance to see and do whatever you need to do.”
“OK,” I said, but I couldn’t hide the sobbing in my voice.
Someday, maybe, I thought. Someday, I’ll see my real parents.
But I’ve got all the time in the world. What’s the worst that can happen from waiting?
Present Day
It was either the worst case scenario come true or just a brutal reality brought to light when the funeral began for Edwin Hunt.
There couldn’t have been more than a dozen, maybe a dozen and a half, people present.
Maybe to some people, that would have been a lot. But I knew that if Edwin Hunt knew that only… fourteen people, three of them people that grew up in his house, had attended, he would have felt extraordinarily disappointed.
It wasn’t from a lack of making time, either. A Sunday funeral ensured that everyone had the chance to come on their day off of work or to come on their day of worship. There was no reason for anyone to not come other than “I just didn’t like the guy.”
And so it was that despite having impacted thousands, maybe even millions, of lives with his business work, Edwin only found himself with a select few old friends.
As I spoke to his college and MBA friends, I noticed how many of them spoke of Edwin not in the present tense, but as of him from when he was much younger.
It sounded like money and greed had changed him; he sounded like he’d always been something of a hardass, but he at least had a softer side in his youth.
Clearly, that had been eroded.
I didn’t even want to speak with them; I think most of them came to us out of some sense of wanting to assure us that Edwin was a good person and, perhaps by extension, they were good people.
This made me feel only sadder at the reception for the life of Edwin.
Maybe I was reading too much into it, but it sure seemed like Edwin was the kind of person that made people apologize for being their friend.
OK, I probably was reading too much into that. But I definitely wasn’t reading too much into the fact that a billionaire had only fourteen people at his funeral, fifteen if you counted the priest, and at least two of them—Mom and I—who were there not because of Edwin, but because of Morgan.
I truthfully spent most of the funeral reflecting not on the life of Edwin, but on my own past and my own future.
It went beyond just Layla and Sarah; I thought about how I had never visited my biological father’s grave, let alone said anything to him when he was alive.
Was that fucked up? It felt fucked up now.
It felt like I had let a chance at a relationship pass by. Obviously, it was a very different type of relationship than what I could have with Layla or Sarah, but it was still a relationship nevertheless that I had let slip by. But you can still do that with your real mother. You should…
You should reach out to her. You should see how she is.
Do you want to be a guy like this who only has a few people coming to his funeral? What would yours like if you died tomorrow? Would you want to die knowing that you had pushed your biological parents away for so long? That you let your insecurities get the better of you when it came to love?
When the reception came, what had been a small room rented out soon downshifted to people just going out to eat.
Mom didn’t even seem that upset; Morgan seemed bothered, but he also seemed like he just accepted it as part of who his father was.
I saw no reason to stay any longer, but there was one thing I needed to do first.
I pulled Mom aside, putting my arm around her, though she didn’t need me to do such a thing.
“You OK?” she asked.
“Who, me?” I said with a chuckle. “Of course I’m fine. I’m just here for Morgan.”
“So am I,” she said. “But I think he’ll be fine. He needs some time to process this all, but he’ll be OK.”
I nodded.
“Mom,” I said. “A couple of times in my teenage years, you asked me if I wanted to meet my biological parents. I know my father is dead. But I don’t want to wait any longer.”
I sighed. It was harder to admit this out loud than I cared to—it was like admitting I wanted to meet someone whom I once had felt had abandoned me. But it was something that was worth admitting to; until I knew why I had been given up for adoption, there was no reason to pass judgment.
“I want to meet my real Mom.”
The reaction she had was about the last thing I ever would have expected.
The mother I had grown up with not only smiled and hugged me, displaying more emotion than she had the entire wedding, she dropped a bombshell on me.
“I’ve actually spoken with her almost monthly since the day we got you,” she said. “Your father, too, up until the day he died.”
My eyes went wide. My parents… they had wanted to stay in touch with me that much? They’d wanted to know what I was doing this whole time?
“I can have something arranged as soon as tomorrow,” she said, smiling and looking as if I’d just told her the greatest thing she’d ever heard.
“Oh, Beth is going to be so excited to see you! She hasn’t seen you since you were but a little boy.
I think it was three years old when we adopted you—poor Beth and Parker were so sad to see you go, but—”
“Mom,” I said.
I was having to fight the fact that tears were welling in my eyes. I’d held a grudge against my parents for so long; I’d thought they’d just abandoned me… but they were so sad to see me go? And they spoke with Melanie this whole time?
I couldn’t fight it much longer. I hugged Mom, shed tears into her shoulders, and let it all out.
Two decades worth of false assumptions fell off of me like a heavy weight sliding off of my shoulders.
It had come too late for me to know my real father, but at least I was going to meet my real mother.
At least I was beginning to take the right steps toward making another healthy relationship in my life.
“One thing,” I said as I pulled back and Mom rubbed my arm. “Can we do Tuesday? I have things to do tomorrow.”
“Oh, of course,” Mom said. “Why, she’d be happy to see you anytime. Just don’t cancel on her; if I tell her you’re coming and then you decide to change your mind, that would devastate her. Heaven knows I would—”
“Mom, mom,” I said, smiling. “The past few days have shown me what it means to hurt someone. I’m not going to be another Edwin Hunt. There is no way short of an emergency that I am going to cancel on my birth mother. And if I have something happen here, I’ll fly her to New York City.”
Mom beamed, kissed me on the cheek, and hugged me.
“I’m so glad you and Morgan turned out the way you both did,” she said. “You both are turning into fine, young men.”
Almost.
I have just a couple of things to take care of.
But I’m almost there.