More Whips; Fewer Chains

Chapter 7

Chapter 7:

Hey, hey, they say I better get a chaperone. Because I can't stop messin' with the danger zone...

She Bop, Cindi Lauper

I slept in on Saturday morning. I laid on the couch, ordered pizza, and dozed on and off for most of the day. I didn't feel like doing much of anything. In the late afternoon, I started going through some of Grampa Charlie's things. It felt like snooping. I had to keep reminding myself that all of this stuff was mine now. It was a surreal feeling. All of the financial minutia of Grampa Charlie's estate had been resolved months ago. In the last two years before he died, Grampa Charlie had undergone the monumental task of divesting himself to all of his businesses. The task of digging through a lifetime's worth of accumulated personal effects now fell to me.

I figured I'd start with Grampa Charlie's bedroom. He told me the combination to the safe, but I hadn't looked to see what was inside until now. Until he told me about it on his deathbed, I never knew that he even had a safe. I grew up in the house, but his room was always off limits. The few times I did sneak into his room as a girl, I mostly just looked, but didn't touch. I never even suspected that there was a safe in the house.

I pulled on the bookcase. The door popped open, but the hinges let out an awful screeching noise. I looked at the safe for the first time. I didn't know what I expected to find. I figured it would be much smaller than it was. It was almost as tall as me. It looked like it weighed a ton. I wondered how he got it up the stairs. I pulled out the piece of paper that I had written the combination on. I unlocked it and opened the door. My ability to breathe suddenly left me. I couldn't believe my eyes. I was staring at a massive pile of cash, two envelopes, a few pieces of jewelry, and what looked like a loaded revolver. I reached in and grabbed the envelope closest to me. I read my name on it in Grampa Charlie's handwriting.

It read:

Katie,

This is your inheritance from your father. One day in 1972, he showed up at my door with a bag full of money. Your father was, quite frankly, a criminal. I'm certain that this money was not obtained through legal means. I'm sure if you did some digging, you could figure out where it came from. I've had my suspicions. Let's just say, he was an avid skydiver. The other assumption that can be made is: if your father left this money for you, selfish son of a bitch that he was, it's because he knew he was not going to live long enough to be able to spend it himself.

In the absence of a real father, I did the best that I could do for you. I hope that you'll be able to forgive me for not having the courage to tell you any of this in life. In the years that have passed since he darkened my doorstep for the last time, I've often wondered if giving you this money was the right thing to do. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that the money is yours, and it's your right to use it as you see fit. It would make me happy to know that you used it to follow your dreams.

Love always,

Grampa Charlie

I sat down on the floor next to the open safe. It was all too much to process. My father was a criminal. I had always assumed that this was the likely scenario, but to learn the truth of it still felt like a punch in the gut. As a little girl, I allowed myself to harbor the fantasy that we were royalty. I dreamed that someday he would come and take me away to be a princess and we would live together, in a castle, happily ever after. Sometimes I imagined that the only reason he didn't do any of these things was because he was being held against his will. Or that he was imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit; anything to avoid facing what my intuition had told me was the truth all along. That for whatever reason, my father had chosen to abandon my mother and me.