Scott ignored my calls for two days.<\/p>\n
On the third day, I drove to his apartment.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
His apartment was above a laundromat.<\/p>\n
The building always smelled of detergent and old cigarettes.<\/p>\n
I parked beside his car and sat for a moment with both hands on the steering wheel.<\/p>\n
I had been angry with Scott plenty of times before.<\/p>\n
This felt different.<\/p>\n
I wasn't going there to demand repayment.<\/p>\n
I wasn't going to remind him that he had taken something from our grieving mother.<\/p>\n
I wanted to know what Dad had told him about Daniel Whitaker.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
I climbed the stairs.<\/p>\n
The hallway light flickered.<\/p>\n
I knocked twice.<\/p>\n
Nobody answered.<\/p>\n
I could hear a television through the door.<\/p>\n
"Scott, it's Jenny."<\/p>\n
Nothing.<\/p>\n
I knocked again.<\/p>\n
"I know you're home."<\/p>\n
Footsteps approached.<\/p>\n
The door opened just enough for me to see one side of his face.<\/p>\n
"What do you want?"<\/p>\n
"Five minutes."<\/p>\n
"I'm busy."<\/p>\n
"Then you can be busy while we talk."<\/p>\n
He looked past me into the hallway.<\/p>\n
"Keep your voice down."<\/p>\n
I hadn't raised it.<\/p>\n
That told me something.<\/p>\n
Scott opened the door and stepped aside.<\/p>\n
His apartment looked worse than I remembered.<\/p>\n
There were empty food containers on the coffee table.<\/p>\n
Clothes lay across a chair.<\/p>\n
Several unopened envelopes were scattered near the television.<\/p>\n
I noticed a pile of bills.<\/p>\n
I didn't ask about them.<\/p>\n
For once, Scott's money problems weren't the reason I was there.<\/p>\n
He sat on the couch.<\/p>\n
I remained standing.<\/p>\n
"What do you know about Daniel Whitaker?"<\/p>\n
He rubbed his eyes.<\/p>\n
"You're still doing this?"<\/p>\n
"Yes."<\/p>\n
"Jenny, I already told you. Dad mentioned him once."<\/p>\n
"You told me more than that."<\/p>\n
"No, I didn't."<\/p>\n
"You warned me not to go to the mill."<\/p>\n
He looked toward the television.<\/p>\n
I picked up the remote and turned it off.<\/p>\n
He stared at me.<\/p>\n
"Seriously?"<\/p>\n
"Talk to me."<\/p>\n
He leaned back and folded his arms.<\/p>\n
I could see that he was tired.<\/p>\n
There were dark circles beneath his eyes.<\/p>\n
For a moment, I felt the old urge to help him.<\/p>\n
I knew that feeling well.<\/p>\n
Dad had felt it for years.<\/p>\n
Mom still felt it.<\/p>\n
Scott always looked most helpless when somebody was about to hold him responsible.<\/p>\n
I refused to let that distract me.<\/p>\n
"We found the locker."<\/p>\n
His arms dropped.<\/p>\n
I watched his face.<\/p>\n
"Locker 214," I continued.<\/p>\n
He didn't speak.<\/p>\n
"There was a ledger inside."<\/p>\n
He looked down.<\/p>\n
"It contained financial records from 1981."<\/p>\n
He swallowed.<\/p>\n
"And there was a newspaper article about Daniel disappearing."<\/p>\n
Scott's head came up.<\/p>\n
I could tell he hadn't expected that.<\/p>\n
"There was also a photograph of Robert Vale and his wife."<\/p>\n
He stood suddenly.<\/p>\n
"Why are you telling me all this?"<\/p>\n
"Because you keep acting like you know something."<\/p>\n
"I never said I knew anything about a ledger."<\/p>\n
I stopped.<\/p>\n
That was interesting.<\/p>\n
I hadn't asked whether he knew about the ledger.<\/p>\n
I had asked what he knew about Daniel.<\/p>\n
"So you don't know about the ledger."<\/p>\n
"No."<\/p>\n
"But you know something else."<\/p>\n
He rubbed both hands over his face.<\/p>\n
"Jenny."<\/p>\n
"Tell me."<\/p>\n
He walked toward the window.<\/p>\n
His reflection looked pale in the glass.<\/p>\n
I waited.<\/p>\n
He was always good at making silence uncomfortable.<\/p>\n
Usually, I gave in first.<\/p>\n
Not that day.<\/p>\n
Eventually, he turned around.<\/p>\n
"When I was twenty-one, Dad took me to lunch."<\/p>\n
I frowned.<\/p>\n
"What does that have to do with Daniel?"<\/p>\n
"Would you just listen?"<\/p>\n
I sat down.<\/p>\n
Scott remained near the window.<\/p>\n
He told me about a diner beside the highway.<\/p>\n
I remembered it immediately.<\/p>\n
Dad had taken us there when we were children.<\/p>\n
The pancakes were enormous.<\/p>\n
The waitress knew his name.<\/p>\n
He always ordered coffee before looking at the menu.<\/p>\n
Scott said Dad had taken him there after discovering he had borrowed money from people he shouldn't have trusted.<\/p>\n
It was before Scott's first serious debt problem became known to the whole family.<\/p>\n
Dad had been furious.<\/p>\n
But instead of shouting, he had taken Scott to lunch.<\/p>\n
That sounded like him.<\/p>\n
Dad rarely tried to teach us anything while he was angry.<\/p>\n
He preferred to wait until everybody had calmed down.<\/p>\n
Scott stared at the carpet.<\/p>\n
"He told me he'd made a mistake when he was young."<\/p>\n
I leaned forward.<\/p>\n
"What mistake?"<\/p>\n
"He wouldn't say."<\/p>\n
I felt disappointed.<\/p>\n
Then Scott continued.<\/p>\n
"He said that mistake almost ruined another man's life."<\/p>\n
I went still.<\/p>\n
Scott said Dad had spent years trying to keep the consequences from hurting anyone else.<\/p>\n
He had called it something he could never completely repair.<\/p>\n
I pictured Dad sitting across from Scott in that old diner.<\/p>\n
Coffee in front of him.<\/p>\n
His watch resting against the edge of the table.<\/p>\n
What had he been remembering?<\/p>\n
"What did you ask him?" I said.<\/p>\n
"I asked if it happened at work."<\/p>\n
"And?"<\/p>\n
"He told me not to ask questions about Daniel Whitaker."<\/p>\n
I looked straight at Scott.<\/p>\n
"Are you certain he used that name?"<\/p>\n
He nodded.<\/p>\n
"That's why I recognized it when you called."<\/p>\n
For several seconds, I couldn't speak.<\/p>\n
Dad had never told me about Daniel.<\/p>\n
He had never explained the photograph.<\/p>\n
He had never mentioned a missing coworker.<\/p>\n
But he had spoken to Scott.<\/p>\n
Not enough to explain the truth.<\/p>\n
Just enough to make my brother afraid of it.<\/p>\n
"Why didn't you tell me?"<\/p>\n
Scott gave me a tired look.<\/p>\n
"Because I didn't know what it meant."<\/p>\n
"You knew Dad connected Daniel to a terrible mistake."<\/p>\n
"I was twenty-one, Jen. I had people chasing me for money. I wasn't thinking about something that happened before I could remember."<\/p>\n
I wanted to argue.<\/p>\n
But there was some truth in that.<\/p>\n
At twenty-one, Scott had been reckless.<\/p>\n
He was frightened of his creditors.<\/p>\n
And Dad had apparently chosen that moment to tell him something deeply personal.<\/p>\n
Maybe Scott hadn't understood.<\/p>\n
That didn't explain everything.<\/p>\n
"What else did Dad say?"<\/p>\n
Scott thought for a moment.<\/p>\n
"He said some decent people had been put in situations where every choice was bad."<\/p>\n
The words hurt.<\/p>\n
I had spent my whole life seeing Dad as a man who always knew the right thing to do.<\/p>\n
He fixed problems.<\/p>\n
He paid bills.<\/p>\n
He helped neighbors.<\/p>\n
He believed promises mattered.<\/p>\n
Now I was hearing that he had once faced a choice he couldn't live comfortably with.<\/p>\n
"Did he tell you what happened to Daniel?"<\/p>\n
"No."<\/p>\n
"Did he tell you about Robert Vale?"<\/p>\n
"No."<\/p>\n
"What about Eleanor?"<\/p>\n
Scott shook his head.<\/p>\n
I watched him carefully.<\/p>\n
This time, I believed he didn't recognize the name.<\/p>\n
He looked confused rather than frightened.<\/p>\n
I took a breath.<\/p>\n
"Did Dad ever mention Daniel again?"<\/p>\n
Scott hesitated.<\/p>\n
Then he nodded.<\/p>\n
"About six months before he died."<\/p>\n
I felt my chest tighten.<\/p>\n
Dad had been ill by then.<\/p>\n
He still tried to behave as though he could manage everything himself.<\/p>\n
He hated having us worry.<\/p>\n
I remembered visiting him that winter and finding him sorting through papers at the kitchen table.<\/p>\n
Whenever I asked whether he needed help, he changed the subject.<\/p>\n
Scott said he had visited one afternoon.<\/p>\n
Dad had been sitting with an old envelope.<\/p>\n
When Scott came in, Dad quickly put it away.<\/p>\n
"Was Mom there?"<\/p>\n
"I don't think so."<\/p>\n
"What was in the envelope?"<\/p>\n
"I never saw."<\/p>\n
Scott sat down again.<\/p>\n
He pressed his palms together.<\/p>\n
"He looked scared, Jenny."<\/p>\n
I didn't say anything.<\/p>\n
"I'd never seen him look like that."<\/p>\n
I thought about Mom telling me that Dad sometimes woke from dreams about the mill.<\/p>\n
Perhaps he had carried that fear much longer than either of us realized.<\/p>\n
Scott said Dad asked whether he remembered their conversation at the diner.<\/p>\n
He told him old decisions didn't always stay buried.<\/p>\n
Sometimes they returned when a person was too old to do anything about them.<\/p>\n
I looked down at my hands.<\/p>\n
Dad had contacted Mr. Cole's law firm during those final months.<\/p>\n
He had arranged the envelope.<\/p>\n
He had left instructions about the watch.<\/p>\n
It seemed he had been trying to put something right before he died.<\/p>\n
Or at least trying to give Mom the chance to do it afterward.<\/p>\n
"Did he ask you to help?" I said.<\/p>\n
Scott looked away.<\/p>\n
"Not exactly."<\/p>\n
"What did he ask?"<\/p>\n
He remained silent.<\/p>\n
I knew that expression.<\/p>\n
There was something he didn't want to admit.<\/p>\n
"Scott."<\/p>\n
His eyes filled.<\/p>\n
Then he spoke.<\/p>\n
"He told me about the watch."<\/p>\n
My stomach dropped.<\/p>\n
"What about it?"<\/p>\n
"He said that if something happened to him, I needed to make sure Mom got it."<\/p>\n
I stared.<\/p>\n
Scott kept looking at the floor.<\/p>\n
"He told me it belonged with her."<\/p>\n
I could barely hear my own voice.<\/p>\n
"You knew."<\/p>\n
He nodded.<\/p>\n
"That watch wasn't just sitting around the house."<\/p>\n
"I know."<\/p>\n
"Dad specifically told you to protect it."<\/p>\n
"I know."<\/p>\n
"And you sold it."<\/p>\n
Scott covered his face.<\/p>\n
I didn't know whether I wanted to cry or shout.<\/p>\n
I had been angry when I thought he took the watch because he didn't understand its importance.<\/p>\n
Now I knew he understood at least part of it.<\/p>\n
Dad had spoken to him directly.<\/p>\n
He had made a request.<\/p>\n
And Scott had ignored it for forty dollars.<\/p>\n
I stood.<\/p>\n
"You knew it mattered."<\/p>\n
"I was desperate."<\/p>\n
"You always say that."<\/p>\n
He looked up.<\/p>\n
"I really was."<\/p>\n
I glanced toward the unpaid bills.<\/p>\n
I believed he was struggling.<\/p>\n
But struggling didn't excuse stealing from Mom.<\/p>\n
It didn't excuse lying.<\/p>\n
And it certainly didn't excuse taking something Dad had specifically asked him to keep safe.<\/p>\n
"Why didn't you tell me Dad had talked about Daniel?"<\/p>\n
"Because I thought it would make things worse."<\/p>\n
"Worse for whom?"<\/p>\n
He didn't answer.<\/p>\n
I moved toward the door.<\/p>\n
Scott followed me.<\/p>\n
"Jenny, please."<\/p>\n
I stopped.<\/p>\n
He looked ashamed.<\/p>\n
For once, there was no joke.<\/p>\n
No angry complaint about everybody blaming him.<\/p>\n
Just my brother standing in a cluttered apartment, unable to explain why he had broken our father's trust.<\/p>\n
I wanted that shame to mean he would change.<\/p>\n
But I had wanted that before.<\/p>\n
Many times.<\/p>\n
"Mom deserves to hear this from you," I said.<\/p>\n
He wiped his face.<\/p>\n
"I know."<\/p>\n
"Not another excuse."<\/p>\n
He nodded.<\/p>\n
I opened the door.<\/p>\n
Then Scott spoke again.<\/p>\n
"Dad didn't want us asking questions."<\/p>\n
I turned around.<\/p>\n
"He left Mom instructions to find the ledger."<\/p>\n
Scott lowered his eyes.<\/p>\n
"He must have changed his mind."<\/p>\n
That was the first thing he had said all afternoon that made complete sense.<\/p>\n
Dad had spent decades keeping quiet.<\/p>\n
Then, near the end, he had made arrangements to reveal the truth.<\/p>\n
Whatever decision he had regretted, he no longer wanted silence to be the final word.<\/p>\n
I walked down the stairs.<\/p>\n
Outside, the laundromat windows were fogged.<\/p>\n
A woman was folding towels inside.<\/p>\n
Life continued around me as though nothing had happened.<\/p>\n
I sat in my car without starting it.<\/p>\n
I kept hearing Scott's admission.<\/p>\n
Dad had told him to protect the watch.<\/p>\n
Scott had sold it anyway.<\/p>\n
I was angry.<\/p>\n
But beneath that anger was something harder to admit.<\/p>\n
I was frightened of learning what Dad had done in 1981.<\/p>\n
Not because I believed he was dishonest.<\/p>\n
Because I was beginning to understand that being a good person didn't mean he had never made a mistake.<\/p>\n
And perhaps the mistake he regretted most had followed him all the way to his grave.<\/p>\n
I drove back to Mom's house.<\/p>\n
Her kitchen light was on.<\/p>\n
Dad's watch was sitting beside his glasses.<\/p>\n
I looked at it before taking off my coat.<\/p>\n
The scratched steel case was familiar.<\/p>\n
The stopped hands were familiar.<\/p>\n
Everything about it reminded me of the father I loved.<\/p>\n
But now I knew he had used that same watch to pass a final responsibility to his family.<\/p>\n
And the person he first trusted with it had been Scott.<\/p>\n
That hurt more than the forty dollars ever could.<\/p>\n
Source: psndaily.xyz<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n 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 … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6361,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-readmore"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/readstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/readstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/readstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6366"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/readstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6381,"href":"https:\/\/readstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6366\/revisions\/6381"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/readstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readstoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nClick here to continue reading: PART 6: After Scott Admitted Dad Had Warned Him About Daniel, I Finally Understood Why the Missing Man\u2019s Name Frightened Him<\/a><\/strong><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"