Chapter 10 #4
He looked at her in surprise and said, “Chelsea, I haven’t seen you in a long time.”
She smiled and nodded, then stepped over and gave him a hug. “I know that, Grandpa. I’m sorry. School’s been pretty rough.”
He nodded. “Are you doing okay?”
“I’m fine. I’ve just got another few weeks, and then I’ll be done.”
She spoke with such pride, and Sterling realized for the first time just how important that accomplishment was to her. He also got a glimpse of how challenging it had been, especially considering her circumstances and lack of support.
“And you brought me some company,” he noted, turning his gaze on Sterling. Immediately his eyes widened, and he stared at him for a long moment, his fingers pleating the blanket on his lap.
At that moment, Sterling realized that his grandfather knew he was alive.
“Good God,” Grandpa muttered, his voice cracking a little.
“Hello, Granddad,” Sterling replied. “I sure wish you hadn’t dropped contact all those years ago. I’ve missed you.”
The old man’s eyes filled with tears, and his shoulders started to shake. “It’s really you, isn’t it?” he asked, his voice half muffled.
Chelsea walked over and placed a hand on his shoulder.
“Yeah, it’s me,” Sterling confirmed. He pulled up a kitchen chair from the small table and motioned at Lindsey to sit in the other one.
Then he sat down, his heart completely crushing as he realized that all of this would have been avoided if only his aunt had been a decent human being.
He stared at the old man and asked, “Why?” That was the one question he desperately wanted answers to. “Why did you leave me in foster care?”
The old man started to cry. “I was told you were dead. She told me that you were hit by a car on the way to school. There was a small funeral and all.”
“And yet you don’t seem terribly surprised to see me.”
He shook his head. “No, I didn’t realize until Penny was trying to sell the place, and I knew there was some problem because she was fussing about signatures.
I didn’t understand what that problem could be, but it occurred to me that the farm was probably still in your mother’s name.
And, if that were the case, she hadn’t taken care of settling Pamela’s estate.
Penny had the death certificate, so it should have been a simple probate process, but she was in such a dither that I got suspicious.
I didn’t realize that it was in trust for you, until after I’d paid a lawyer to look into it.
I did that on the sly, and that’s when I realized that you hadn’t died after all and that you had gone to foster care.
” He burst into tears as he mentioned it, and it took a few moments before he continued.
“You were already of legal age at that time and were no longer in the system,” he noted.
“Then I hired somebody to find out if you were okay and where you’d gone.
When I learned that you’d gone into the military, I was relieved because I knew you had a roof over your head, food to eat, and that you would gain the skills you needed to survive in the world when you got out. ”
Grandpa shook his head. “We had one hell of a row when I found out. All that time I’d been helping her because she was the only family I had left, and the entire time she knew about you, knew you went into foster care.”
“She not only knew, she’s the one who signed me into it,” he declared.
The old man’s lips twitched before he started to tear up again. “God no. To even think that my daughter would do that to one of our own, to a young boy who had lost his mother. I don’t think I can come to terms with that.” He looked at Chelsea. “He obviously found you.”
“He did, and Mom’s already on the rampage about a big legal problem coming up.”
At that, his grandfather looked back at Sterling.
Sterling nodded. “That would be me causing the big legal problem and associated rampage,” he declared. “I came out of the military injured and have enough on my plate without walking away from a property I rightly own.”
At that, the old man’s gaze frantically searched Sterling’s body.
Sterling lifted his pant leg to show his prosthetic.
“I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do or even what I could do.
I had more or less tried to bury everything about what happened after my mom died, and I had no love for any family member who would dump a child into foster care,” he shared, “including you.”
The old man’s eyes filled with tears again.
“I couldn’t understand why you wouldn’t at least have contacted me to let me know why or to say happy birthday or drop me a note once in a while,” he said, “and foster care was not a good experience. The thought that you let that happen to me, when we had been so close, was disorienting, and I’m sure you can imagine the anger and hate that those thoughts spawned. ”
The old man couldn’t seem to stop crying at that point.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “I trusted her, and I shouldn’t have, but I didn’t realize that at the time,” he said, still sobbing.
“Oh my goodness, I still can’t quite believe that you are really alive and right here in front of me.
” He just shook his head. “It’s all so unbelievable. ”
“It might be unbelievable for you, but, for me, it’s also pretty rough to find out that she’s not only stolen my inheritance but I’m sitting here, watching the remnants of my family like some sort of train wreck happening.”
The old man mustered half a smile. “Yeah, that’s a really good description, and that was her all over again.
Everything in her life was all about her,” he declared.
“I know that is something you are just now coming to terms with, but it’s something I’ve been fighting with for quite a while.
I am absolutely overwhelmed with joy that you are here,” he said.
“I was so hoping that one day you would care enough to look me up once I found out the truth.”
“Look you up?” Sterling repeated, giving a headshake. “Half the time I assumed you were dead, thinking that was the only explanation for your letting me be sent away. I didn’t even know where you were until Chelsea told me today.”
“Chelsea’s a good person, not at all like her mother,” he said to Sterling. “Don’t punish her like her mother.”
“She might not be like her mother,” he replied, “and I get that, but she’ll still get caught up in the crosswinds.”
“No,” Chelsea argued. “I want absolutely nothing to do with this. You’ve suffered far more than you should have had to. I can’t believe she did that to a child. She should have brought you home without a thought. I would have loved having you there.”
For the first time they looked at each—really looked, then smiled.
“The fact that she couldn’t find it in herself to make that happen is absolutely disgusting,” Chelsea declared.
“And even now, the fact that her boyfriend is doing all he can to sleep his life away on that property when it’s clearly yours, and yet she remains right in the middle of it?
Yeah, please, do whatever you can to get it back. ”
“The thing is,” Grandfather added, “I did do one thing for you. Penny doesn’t know how it happened, but it was me through the lawyers.
When I found out that you were alive, one of the reasons that I had that search done was because you were coming up on turning eighteen,” he explained.
“I made sure your name remained on the deed as the trust age converted to when you became an adult. I know Penny told me that you were dead, but I … didn’t trust her.
The older I got, the less I trusted her.
Anytime I brought it up, she told me how I was old and losing it.
She was trying to use my mental capacity against me, so I stopped bringing it up. ”
He turned to look at Chelsea. “When your mom found out, we had a whopper of a fight, and, as you can see, I lost,” he said, as he pointed out his surroundings.
“But, in a way, maybe I won after all,” he declared, smiling at his grandson.
“Because it did save that property for you, and that is why I did it. I know that you probably won’t believe me, but it’s true,” he stated.
“Absolutely no way I could let Penny do that, not once I realized you were alive. Yet she refused to acknowledge it. A couple times I told her that the property was yours. She said something to the effect of no way in hell and that she would just have you declared dead. I told her that I didn’t think it worked that way, and she got mad and said I was too much of a feeble old geezer to say anything. ”
Sterling just let him talk.
“She said an awful lot more at the same time,” he added.
“Things that a child should never say to a parent, but she didn’t know what I’d done.
And then when she found out that I’d had changed the property ownership from being in trust for a child to your sole name on the title as an adult, well, I ended up in this retirement home, as you can see.
She forcibly moved me out, and I wasn’t physically capable of doing anything about it. ”
A sob came from beside them, and Sterling looked over at Chelsea, who was crying her heart out.
Chelsea wailed, “Granddad, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
“I know you didn’t,” he whispered. “And you weren’t strong enough to fight your mother either, neither of us were at that point in time,” he noted. “I had no idea that she could be like that, but I found out the hard way.”
“So, how are you now physically?” Sterling asked with a frown, as he realized that even though they had reconnected, there was a good chance he would lose his grandfather before long.
The old man shrugged. “I’m okay. I didn’t really have a whole lot to live for.” Then he smiled. “But to see you here in front of me,” he added, “I am really glad I lived this long.”
“I think it would be nice if you tried to live a little longer now that I know you’re here,” Sterling suggested.