“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.
I had worked at a frozen yogurt shop instead and cried in the walk in freezer while my friends sent me pictures from Europe. The year I turned eighteen my father explained that they had nothing saved for my education.
I had spent the next four years living on cheap pasta and graduated with $87,000 in student debt. Every month since then had been a struggle to pay that debt while I watched my bank account dwindle.
When my bakery failed I had begged my parents for a loan of just $20,000 to keep the lease going. My mother had told me she would pray for me while she watched $3 million grow in an account she never mentioned.
There was a knock on the door and Jackson called my name softly before I let him inside. “Riley, are you okay?” he asked while he held me the way you hold someone at a funeral.
“I am the opposite of okay because my parents took everything from me,” I told him. He told me that I should go back out there because my grandfather was waiting for me to see the rest.
I dried my face and walked back down the hallway to the dining room which had gone very quiet. My grandfather had moved to the chair next to mine while my mother sat with her face in her hands.
“Show me everything,” I said as I sat down and looked at the lawyer. The trust had been established with clear terms that said I should have been informed at twenty one.
