"So you know I was adopted," Michael starts with a deep breath. I nod my head. In all of my frantic wondering about his secrets, I had somehow known that this was the root of it. Or that it was somehow involved.
"Well, growing up I had kind of always known that everyone knew more about my past than they were telling me. About my family, where I came from, my parents. At first I didn't mind it too much, I didn't really care to know what I used to be. I didn't want to be anything other than what I was."
I am tempted to ask him what changed, why he now wants to be something different from what he is, but I stay quiet.
"So once, I was in my dad's office, looking for something. I was in his desk drawer and there was a stack of envelopes addressed to me." Michael pauses and I see him trying to collect his emotions and thoughts, and I do the same. I hadn't realized that I was holding my breath until it comes out like a gust of wind as I prepare to hear what Michael found in his father's drawer.
He continues. "Before I could open them, my dad came in and saw me with them and he just... freaked out. Like freaked out. He panicked and he grabbed them away from me and he went off about me going through his stuff or something. I went back a few times in the next few days, but he door to his study was locked. He was determined that I wouldn't see whatever was in those envelopes, but that only made me more determined to know."
"Did you ever see them?" I ask.
"I'm getting there," Michael says with a small smile. I squeeze his hand and urge him to continue. "It took a few months, but I finally convinced my dad that I was done looking for anything. I just acted like I had given up, and that I didn't care. I think it just started to slip his mind, you know? One day I stayed home sick and when everyone left, I went straight to his study. Obviously, the envelopes were gone. He wouldn't just keep them in the same place. But I searched everywhere and I finally found them. Well, one of them." He takes another deep breathe and I copy him, tension and anxiety in the pit of my stomach. "Do you know what was in it, Kate?" He asks softly.
I shake my head.
"Money," he says. He spits the word out, almost bitterly. "Three thousand dollars, in cash."
My mouth falls open. "What?"
Michael just nods his head. "Hundred dollar bills, stuffed in an envelope and addressed to me."
"What did you do?" I ask.
"I wanted to just take it," he says. "I mean, it was technically mine, you know? But more than that, I wanted to know what it was, where it came from. And why my parents were keeping it from me."
I want to interrupt him again, to ask the questions in my head, but I know that if I just keep letting him talk he will answer them. It's a battle with myself to stay quiet.
"My dad got home and I blew up in his face. I mean... I tried to stay calm, I really did, but I couldn't. He wouldn't tell me anything. No answers. He told me that I could have the money if I stopped asking questions."
"Oh my," I say breathlessly. There is nothing else that comes to mind.
"So I took the money," he says heavily.
"Three thousand dollars and you stopped asking questions?"
"It was more than three thousand, Kate, there were seventeen envelopes."
"Seventeen?" I breathe. I quickly do the math in my head, and that adds up to just over fifty thousand dollars.
"Some of them had more than three thousand, some had less." Michael is looking away from me, not making eye contact, as if afraid that I am judging him for taking the money. "I took it, but I didn't stop looking for answers." His green eyes find mine, and I can tell that whatever answers he has been looking for, he hasn't found them yet.
