Scott ignored my calls for two days.
On the third day, I drove to his apartment.
I knew his car would probably be there. He had told Mom he was working extra hours, but Scott had a habit of saying that whenever he didn't want questions.
His apartment was above a laundromat.
The building always smelled of detergent and old cigarettes.
I parked beside his car and sat for a moment with both hands on the steering wheel.
I had been angry with Scott plenty of times before.
This felt different.
I wasn't going there to demand repayment.
I wasn't going to remind him that he had taken something from our grieving mother.
I wanted to know what Dad had told him about Daniel Whitaker.
And I wanted to know why he seemed so frightened of a name that had been buried in our family history for forty-five years.
I climbed the stairs.
The hallway light flickered.
I knocked twice.
Nobody answered.
I could hear a television through the door.
"Scott, it's Jenny."
Nothing.
I knocked again.
"I know you're home."
Footsteps approached.
The door opened just enough for me to see one side of his face.
"What do you want?"
"Five minutes."
"I'm busy."
"Then you can be busy while we talk."
He looked past me into the hallway.
"Keep your voice down."
I hadn't raised it.
That told me something.
Scott opened the door and stepped aside.
His apartment looked worse than I remembered.
There were empty food containers on the coffee table.
Clothes lay across a chair.
Several unopened envelopes were scattered near the television.
I noticed a pile of bills.
I didn't ask about them.
For once, Scott's money problems weren't the reason I was there.
He sat on the couch.
I remained standing.
"What do you know about Daniel Whitaker?"
He rubbed his eyes.
"You're still doing this?"
"Yes."
"Jenny, I already told you. Dad mentioned him once."
"You told me more than that."
"No, I didn't."
"You warned me not to go to the mill."
He looked toward the television.
I picked up the remote and turned it off.
He stared at me.
"Seriously?"
"Talk to me."
He leaned back and folded his arms.
I could see that he was tired.
There were dark circles beneath his eyes.
For a moment, I felt the old urge to help him.
I knew that feeling well.
Dad had felt it for years.
Mom still felt it.
Scott always looked most helpless when somebody was about to hold him responsible.
I refused to let that distract me.
"We found the locker."
His arms dropped.
I watched his face.
"Locker 214," I continued.
He didn't speak.
"There was a ledger inside."
He looked down.
"It contained financial records from 1981."
He swallowed.
"And there was a newspaper article about Daniel disappearing."
Scott's head came up.
I could tell he hadn't expected that.
"There was also a photograph of Robert Vale and his wife."
He stood suddenly.
"Why are you telling me all this?"
"Because you keep acting like you know something."
"I never said I knew anything about a ledger."
I stopped.
That was interesting.
I hadn't asked whether he knew about the ledger.
I had asked what he knew about Daniel.
"So you don't know about the ledger."
"No."
"But you know something else."
He rubbed both hands over his face.
"Jenny."
"Tell me."
He walked toward the window.
His reflection looked pale in the glass.
I waited.
He was always good at making silence uncomfortable.
Usually, I gave in first.
Not that day.
Eventually, he turned around.
"When I was twenty-one, Dad took me to lunch."
I frowned.
"What does that have to do with Daniel?"
"Would you just listen?"
I sat down.
Scott remained near the window.
He told me about a diner beside the highway.
I remembered it immediately.
Dad had taken us there when we were children.
The pancakes were enormous.
The waitress knew his name.
He always ordered coffee before looking at the menu.
Scott said Dad had taken him there after discovering he had borrowed money from people he shouldn't have trusted.
It was before Scott's first serious debt problem became known to the whole family.
Dad had been furious.
But instead of shouting, he had taken Scott to lunch.
That sounded like him.
Dad rarely tried to teach us anything while he was angry.
He preferred to wait until everybody had calmed down.
Scott stared at the carpet.
"He told me he'd made a mistake when he was young."
I leaned forward.
"What mistake?"
"He wouldn't say."
I felt disappointed.
Then Scott continued.
"He said that mistake almost ruined another man's life."
I went still.
Scott said Dad had spent years trying to keep the consequences from hurting anyone else.
He had called it something he could never completely repair.
I pictured Dad sitting across from Scott in that old diner.
Coffee in front of him.
His watch resting against the edge of the table.
What had he been remembering?
"What did you ask him?" I said.
"I asked if it happened at work."
"And?"
"He told me not to ask questions about Daniel Whitaker."
I looked straight at Scott.
"Are you certain he used that name?"
He nodded.
"That's why I recognized it when you called."
For several seconds, I couldn't speak.
Dad had never told me about Daniel.
He had never explained the photograph.
He had never mentioned a missing coworker.
But he had spoken to Scott.
Not enough to explain the truth.
Just enough to make my brother afraid of it.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
Scott gave me a tired look.
"Because I didn't know what it meant."
"You knew Dad connected Daniel to a terrible mistake."
"I was twenty-one, Jen. I had people chasing me for money. I wasn't thinking about something that happened before I could remember."
I wanted to argue.
But there was some truth in that.
At twenty-one, Scott had been reckless.
He was frightened of his creditors.
And Dad had apparently chosen that moment to tell him something deeply personal.
Maybe Scott hadn't understood.
That didn't explain everything.
"What else did Dad say?"
Scott thought for a moment.
"He said some decent people had been put in situations where every choice was bad."
The words hurt.
I had spent my whole life seeing Dad as a man who always knew the right thing to do.
He fixed problems.
He paid bills.
He helped neighbors.
He believed promises mattered.
Now I was hearing that he had once faced a choice he couldn't live comfortably with.
"Did he tell you what happened to Daniel?"
"No."
"Did he tell you about Robert Vale?"
"No."
"What about Eleanor?"
Scott shook his head.
I watched him carefully.
This time, I believed he didn't recognize the name.
He looked confused rather than frightened.
I took a breath.
"Did Dad ever mention Daniel again?"
Scott hesitated.
Then he nodded.
"About six months before he died."
I felt my chest tighten.
Dad had been ill by then.
He still tried to behave as though he could manage everything himself.
He hated having us worry.
I remembered visiting him that winter and finding him sorting through papers at the kitchen table.
Whenever I asked whether he needed help, he changed the subject.
Scott said he had visited one afternoon.
Dad had been sitting with an old envelope.
When Scott came in, Dad quickly put it away.
"Was Mom there?"
"I don't think so."
"What was in the envelope?"
"I never saw."
Scott sat down again.
He pressed his palms together.
"He looked scared, Jenny."
I didn't say anything.
"I'd never seen him look like that."
I thought about Mom telling me that Dad sometimes woke from dreams about the mill.
Perhaps he had carried that fear much longer than either of us realized.
Scott said Dad asked whether he remembered their conversation at the diner.
He told him old decisions didn't always stay buried.
Sometimes they returned when a person was too old to do anything about them.
I looked down at my hands.
Dad had contacted Mr. Cole's law firm during those final months.
He had arranged the envelope.
He had left instructions about the watch.
It seemed he had been trying to put something right before he died.
Or at least trying to give Mom the chance to do it afterward.
"Did he ask you to help?" I said.
Scott looked away.
"Not exactly."
"What did he ask?"
He remained silent.
I knew that expression.
There was something he didn't want to admit.
"Scott."
His eyes filled.
Then he spoke.
"He told me about the watch."
My stomach dropped.
"What about it?"
"He said that if something happened to him, I needed to make sure Mom got it."
I stared.
Scott kept looking at the floor.
"He told me it belonged with her."
I could barely hear my own voice.
"You knew."
He nodded.
"That watch wasn't just sitting around the house."
"I know."
"Dad specifically told you to protect it."
"I know."
"And you sold it."
Scott covered his face.
I didn't know whether I wanted to cry or shout.
I had been angry when I thought he took the watch because he didn't understand its importance.
Now I knew he understood at least part of it.
Dad had spoken to him directly.
He had made a request.
And Scott had ignored it for forty dollars.
I stood.
"You knew it mattered."
"I was desperate."
"You always say that."
He looked up.
"I really was."
I glanced toward the unpaid bills.
I believed he was struggling.
But struggling didn't excuse stealing from Mom.
It didn't excuse lying.
And it certainly didn't excuse taking something Dad had specifically asked him to keep safe.
"Why didn't you tell me Dad had talked about Daniel?"
"Because I thought it would make things worse."
"Worse for whom?"
He didn't answer.
I moved toward the door.
Scott followed me.
"Jenny, please."
I stopped.
He looked ashamed.
For once, there was no joke.
No angry complaint about everybody blaming him.
Just my brother standing in a cluttered apartment, unable to explain why he had broken our father's trust.
I wanted that shame to mean he would change.
But I had wanted that before.
Many times.
"Mom deserves to hear this from you," I said.
He wiped his face.
"I know."
"Not another excuse."
He nodded.
I opened the door.
Then Scott spoke again.
"Dad didn't want us asking questions."
I turned around.
"He left Mom instructions to find the ledger."
Scott lowered his eyes.
"He must have changed his mind."
That was the first thing he had said all afternoon that made complete sense.
Dad had spent decades keeping quiet.
Then, near the end, he had made arrangements to reveal the truth.
Whatever decision he had regretted, he no longer wanted silence to be the final word.
I walked down the stairs.
Outside, the laundromat windows were fogged.
A woman was folding towels inside.
Life continued around me as though nothing had happened.
I sat in my car without starting it.
I kept hearing Scott's admission.
Dad had told him to protect the watch.
Scott had sold it anyway.
I was angry.
But beneath that anger was something harder to admit.
I was frightened of learning what Dad had done in 1981.
Not because I believed he was dishonest.
Because I was beginning to understand that being a good person didn't mean he had never made a mistake.
And perhaps the mistake he regretted most had followed him all the way to his grave.
I drove back to Mom's house.
Her kitchen light was on.
Dad's watch was sitting beside his glasses.
I looked at it before taking off my coat.
The scratched steel case was familiar.
The stopped hands were familiar.
Everything about it reminded me of the father I loved.
But now I knew he had used that same watch to pass a final responsibility to his family.
And the person he first trusted with it had been Scott.
That hurt more than the forty dollars ever could.
Source: psndaily.xyz
Click here to continue reading: PART 6: After Scott Admitted Dad Had Warned Him About Daniel, I Finally Understood Why the Missing Man’s Name Frightened Him
My Brother Thought Dad’s Old Watch Was Worth Forty Dollars, Until a Stranger Returned It With Something Hidden Inside
Part 5 of 15
