I Paid His Down Payment, But My Son Thanked His Stepmom Instead Chapter 12

“Rourke, I stopped blaming you for what happened when you were twelve a long time ago.”

“You were just a kid. You didn’t know any better.”

He looked up, as if a weight had finally lifted off his shoulders.

But I wasn’t done.

“What hurt me was your wedding day.”

“No one told you that day.”

“No one told you to stick your own mother in a corner.”

“Rourke, you were twenty-eight.”

He went rigid. The color drained from his face.

His lips parted, but no words came out.

The wind picked up outside, and crape myrtle blossoms fell everywhere.

I closed the old bank statement and put it in his hands.

“Take it. Don’t let anyone write your words for you again.”

The lawsuit lasted three months.

On the day the ruling came down, Rourke called me.

The IOU was void, and Tamsin’s name came off the deed.

At first she refused to sign. Then the lawyer told her if she kept it up, he’d report it as fraud.

She signed.

Halfway through the lawsuit, Barrett had a stroke.

He lost the use of half his body and could barely speak.

The company was long gone-an empty shell. Whatever money was left went to hospital bills, and

six months later, it ran out.

Tamsin stayed with him for three months.

In the fourth month, she put their house up for sale.

The day it sold, she moved Barrett into a nursing home on the north side-the cheapest she could

find, six to a room.

She paid six months’ fees and never came back.

Word was she went back to her hometown with what was left from the sale.

When Junie told me, she gritted her teeth and cursed.

I wasn’t surprised.

Tamsin’s one talent was finding someone to lean on.

Once Barrett was no use to her, she moved on.

Just like she took my husband and my son when I couldn’t hold on to them anymore.

Rourke went to see Barrett.

When he came back, he sat beside my bed for a long time without saying anything.

“He’s all skin and bones. His pants were wet and nobody had changed him.”

“When he saw me, the first thing he asked was how you were doing.”

“He wants to see you.”

Rourke took a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to me.

The writing was crooked, like every word had cost him everything he had left.

There were only one sentence: [I’m sorry.]

I glanced at the note, folded it, and handed it back to Rourke.

“Pay his bills. He’s your father.”

“But I’m not going.”

That company’s first money came from my mother’s gold pendant.

On the night my mother died, his new wife had been sitting in her car downstairs.

Those words came too late.

Solate I couldn’t even be bothered to hate him anymore.

I started teaching piano again at the community center.

Every Wednesday afternoon, I taught music at a community school for low-income kids.

One little girl, Posy, lived with her grandmother while her parents worked out of state.

She kept missing the same note. One day she burst into tears. “Am I just stupid, Ms. Marchetti?”

“No, sweetheart. That note’s tricky. Get it wrong, just try again.”

Eventually, she played it correctly and threw her arms around me.

“Can you come to my parent-teacher conference next week, Ms. Marchetti?”

“My grandma’s legs aren’t very good. My teacher said anyone in my family can come.”

That day, I wore a new dress and sat among a roomful of young parents.

When the teacher called Posy’s name, I raised my hand.

Posy turned around and beamed at me.

Rourke came to see me every Sunday.

He brought new blankets, a space heater, a little speaker, and a pinwheel he stuck in the flowerpot on my windowsill.