I always hated my grandparents. They were cold, strict people, and the word love didn’t seem to exist for them. Whenever I misbehaved, they’d scream at me. If I pushed it too far, they’d even slap me. And yet, after Dad died, I came to live with them.
Dad had been my hero. After Mom passed away when I was only six years, he took it upon himself to bring me up and take care of me. He was a freelance business consultant but always made time for me. We spent countless evenings playing video games late into the night. He even took me along on his business trips. He said I shouldn’t just sit at home all day, and that it was important to meet people and learn how the world worked. I was always psyched, even though I wasn’t there for the actual business talk. Instead, I hung out with whoever else was there, often playing games or watching movies way beyond my age.
Dad didn’t have much respect for my grandparents, either. Every weekend when he dropped me off with them, and when he came back to pick me up, we’d laugh about those silly old people and their stupid rules. I remember one specific night vividly when Grandpa flipped out on him.
“I dare you! If you ever do it again…!”
Dad, being the laid-back guy he was, just shrugged the old man’s threat off, and together we laughed about it. I guess it was us bonding about how much we both hated having to spend time with them.
Then came the night when the police arrived at their door. Dad had been in a car accident while on the way to pick me up. I was devastated, cried, screamed, and didn’t want to believe it was true. It was, and from then on, I was living with my grandparents.
My life changed after that. They took my video games away and forbid me from watching TV. Fun was replaced by homework, chores, and endless supplementary lessons. It felt as if they wanted to mold me into their idealized version of a good grandson. I hated it, and we fought constantly. By the time I attended high school, I begged them to move out, but it still took them a year before they gave in.
Once I’d left, I never looked back. I got my high school diploma and eventually attended university half the country away. I only visited them once, to attend Grandma’s funeral. Yet it was nothing but a formality; there were no tears, and I didn’t feel a thing.
About a month ago, Grandpa called me. It was in the late afternoon, and I was busy studying for exams. I thought it was a friend of mine, but when I saw it was Grandpa, I was instantly annoyed. I sighed, and rolled my eyes before I answered.
“What do you want, Grandpa?” I asked. “You know I’m busy.”
“Oh, Johann, I’m sorry. I know you’re busy and all that, but could you come visit me this weekend? I’d like to talk to you about a few-“
“Oh, come on. This weekend? I’ve got exams coming up! You know I can’t just up and leave!”
“The cancer’s back,” he said in a quivering voice.
When I heard that, I inhaled sharply. At the other end of the line, all I heard was his labored breathing as he waited for me to say something. At first, I was silent. I felt awful being so cold and had to remind myself that he wasn’t the stern man from my childhood anymore. No, he was just a lonely, dying old man, and I couldn’t help but feel for him a little
“Sure thing, Grandpa. I’ll be there.”
“Thank you, Johann, you know-“
Without a second thought, I hung up, not even listening to another word. It wasn’t a conscious decision, but more of a reflex. Old habits die hard.
A couple of days later, on Saturday afternoon, I arrived at his house. I was instantly flooded by unwanted nostalgia. I hadn’t been here since Grandma’s death, but the place still felt wrong.
When Grandpa opened the door, I knew the cancer hadn’t come back recently. He looked haggard, his skin translucent and bluish. He smiled when he saw me and motioned for me to come inside.
“There are a few things I wanted to talk to you about. I know you’d rather be anywhere else right now, and I can’t blame you. Claudia and I were never-“
Suddenly, he was seized by a violent cough. For a moment, I just stood there and watched before I stepped up to him. Old habits really die hard.
“You know, your mother… she used to be such a good girl. Probably a bit too sheltered, a bit too naive. I guess that’s why she chose a different life and-“
“Is this really about Mom? Why are you starting with this old story again after-“
My voice trailed off when I saw his eyes. They were as hard as they’d always been, but a deep sadness was hidden behind them. I sighed and let him continue.
“She was searching for something else, you know? Maybe it was adventure, maybe danger. That’s why she always chose guys like, well, your father. She always had a talent for picking those bad apples.”
I rolled my eyes. I knew Grandpa had never liked Dad, but why was he starting with all this again?
“What we didn’t know as the drugs. It was only after your mother died… after they found her. If we’d known sooner, we’d have done something, I’d have done something…”
“What drugs? What are you even talking about?”
“You wouldn’t know, would you, boy? You had no idea about what your father did, right?”
“Is that why you called me here? To listen to another one of your tirades about Dad? Wasn’t it enough to talk shit about him for all those years? And now drugs? Really? I know you hated him, but this… this is just low!”
I realized I’d jumped from my seat and was yelling at him, but I didn’t sit back down. No, I just stared at the thin old man in front of me, shaking my head.
“I don’t believe this. You called me here for that? This was a mistake. I shouldn’t have come here.”
I made my way towards the front door and was about to leave when Grandpa called after me. When I turned around, I found him standing in the living room doorway, holding something. My eyes widened. It was Dusty, the stuffed little doggy Mom had made for me when I was a little boy. I thought I’d lost him, yet here he was. A mixture of surprise and nostalgia washed over me when I saw the black and white fur, and the tiny button eyes.
“Where the hell…?” I started, but the words caught in my throat.
Memories came flooding back. Dusty had been the only thing that reminded me of Mom, and he’d always been by my side. That was until the night Dad and Grandpa had that fight. We’d left so quickly, I thought I’d lost him somewhere. Yet… he’d kept him from me!?
“Why do you have him!?”
He held him out for me.
“It was for the best boy. We had our reasons. We were-“
I didn’t wait for him to finish.
“How dare you! How dare you take him from me! I thought he was gone for good! Yet… yet, all those years you’d hidden him!”
I ripped the stuff animal from his hands. Grandpa was quiet. A miserable expression showed on his face, and tears welled up in his eyes. I didn’t care. I simply turned around and left. This time, I told myself, for good.
A couple of weeks later, when I couldn’t sleep, I picked up Dusty. I smiled as I looked at him. He was so roughed up by now, and patches of fur were missing here and there. As I held him, I remembered Mom’s voice and her face as she handed him to me.
“He’ll always watch over you,” she’d said.
At that moment, I felt something. On his stomach, where almost all the fur was gone, I found a sort of slit. I turned him around to get a better look and noticed a small hidden zipper. Back in the day, it must’ve been almost entirely hidden by his fur. I carefully pulled it open and found a pocket. Why was that here…?
When I pushed my hand inside, I discovered several written pages and a few pieces of paper. For a moment, I wondered if they were from Mom, but soon recognized Grandpa’s handwriting. I sighed and almost threw them aside. Then, despite my anger, curiosity got the better of me and I began reading.
I know you probably won’t listen, Johann, and maybe you never will, but I had to try. I wanted to tell you why Claudia and I acted the way we did. You might hate us, but there’s so much you didn’t know.
I crumpled the letter and threw it across the room. Really? Even now? Even here he’s got to give me this shit? I picked up the other notes next and was about to throw them away as well when I saw a small newspaper clipping. In a second, my eyes had scanned the headline.
Tragic Death: Young Woman (28) Dies From Overdose
Why had Grandpa put this in here? When I checked it, I saw the article was from a popular tabloid. The date was… March 2004. That date, I knew it, but how? Then it clicked. Wasn’t that the year Mom had died? I skimmed the rest of the article. It wasn’t long, barely two paragraphs in total. A young woman who overdosed in her home had to be taken to the hospital, but died there. It said she left a young son, aged six, and a husband behind. Said husband was under the suspicion of ownership and trade of illegal substances.
My hands were shaking. What the hell was this? I read the article again, this time more carefully. The name… Natalie M. – Natalie Miller, Mom’s name. Boy aged six, the age I’d been back then. The clipping slipped from my hands. No freaking way. This had to be fake somehow, another one of their stupid ploys to make me hate Dad. Yet, when I entered the name and date into Google, there was no doubt. Mom’s death had not only been mentioned in the tabloid but also in a handful of other local papers. The clipping was real.
Grandpa had mentioned drugs, but… there was no way. I went to pick up the crumpled letter and continued reading.
Your mother’s, Natalie’s death hit us out of nowhere. She was always making bad decisions, but who were we to stop her? It was her life. And yet, with him, why didn’t we see it? Why were we so blind? Why didn’t we do more? I ask myself this every night, but I still can’t find an answer.
When we learned what had happened, and how your father was involved, we did everything we could. We fought the system, but it took too long to see results. His uncle in real estate, he was pulling strings, sweeping it all under the carpet. There wasn’t anything we could do, and in the end, all we got was to see you on the weekends. Nothing more.
It was so hard for us. Every weekend, he was back, grinning and with bloodshot eyes as he into our home. Even worse, every time I looked at you, I saw him, saw you becoming more like him. You were just a boy, but I couldn’t help it. We tried to love you, but it was never enough.
I lowered the letter again, my heart racing. What the hell was he talking about? Dad and drugs? There’s no freaking way! Then, slowly and one by one, memories crawled back into my mind, and like a spider weaving a web, I began to connect the dots. For a moment, I almost couldn’t breathe.
Dad had always been smoking, hadn’t he? Those funny cigarettes, as he called them while giggling to himself with that half-empty look on his face. All those people who came over. He said they were business associates and customers. Then why did they spend the entire day drinking and playing Xbox? The same was true for those business trips. I’d forgotten how strange they were, but now it all came back to me, the people he worked with: Fat Mario, the half-naked drunk guy who always watched those weird Japanese movies. Bobby, who said he wanted to be a professional gamer one day and owned all the newest games. What sort of business would you do with guys like that? There were so many other things that didn’t add up: the fact that Dad was always paid in cash, that he owned almost a dozen business phones, and that I was always sent to my room when they had their little talks.
It all painted a much, much different story. Only I’d never thought about it, hadn’t seen it like that. Dad had been my hero. I’d always trusted him and now… Fuck! What the hell was this?!
As I read on, Grandpa explained their struggle during the custody battle. How hard the situation had been on them, especially Grandma. And then I learned the truth about the night Dad and Grandpa had fought, the truth about why Dad had always kept me around.
That day, when he dropped you off, he threw us your backpack without a word, and left before we could say anything. You acted just like him, rushed past us without so much as a hello, already glued to that Gameboy of yours.
Your Grandma, God bless her soul. She wanted to bring Dusty over to you, and that’s when something dropped on the floor. She didn’t understand, but I knew. The moment I saw the pills, I knew. I ripped Dusty from her hands and found more stuffed inside him. I wanted to scream, to rage, and confront him. But he was already gone.
I knew what was going on, Johann. Those people you went to visit with him. I knew something was wrong. I knew he was lying to us, but I never expected him to go that far.
Dusty had always been with me, and I’d taken the little doggy everywhere. Dad had told me so many times to keep him close.
“It’s what your mother would’ve wanted. That’s why she made him for you.”
I picked up the small doggy again and looked at him. It was the perfect hiding place, wasn’t it? Who’d suspect a kid’s stuffed animal?
I sat there, crushed and shaking with rage. I screamed and beat my fists against my desk repeatedly before I slumped back in my chair, feeling utterly defeated. Had Dad ever truly cared about me? No, I realized, he never had. He just kept me around because I was useful. I was his little mule, a safe way to get his drugs from one place to another. The night Grandpa took Dusty away, he’d been trying to protect me.
“I dare you! If you ever do it again,” he’d screamed at Dad.
I never understood what had happened that night, had never even cared about it. Now I knew. That evening, he’d realized that Dad had used me. It hadn’t stopped Dad, of course. After that, he’d always been tinkering with my backpack, putting patches on it and what not. I was sure he did other things, too. Me being the child I was, I was happy about it, and felt awesome wearing it.
As I read on, I discovered that Dad hadn’t died in a car accident. That was just what they told me. Instead, he’d been out and got into a fight with some local thugs. No one really knew what had happened, but it was brushed off as related to drug money. I felt nothing. It was just an empty acknowledgment to the man he’d really been: a junkie.
After that, you came to live with us. Your Grandma cried tears of joy and said everything would be better now.
Maybe we tried too hard, Johann. Maybe we wanted to make up for what happened with your mother, but we went too far.
We wanted to tell you the truth. We really did, but what could we do? How could we hope a boy like you would understand? It was easier to let things be the way they were. I knew you hated us, but I want you to know we never meant to hurt you.
I hope one day you’ll find it in your heart to forgive us.
Love, Grandpa.
The tears were streaming from my eyes. The world had just come crashing down on me, swallowed me up, and spat me back out an empty, emotionless mess. I sat there, reading the letter over and over again, hugging Dusty. This was too much, too goddamn much. I remembered all the things I’d said to them over the years, all the things I’d done, and could never take back. Most of all, I thought about how that last terrible visit to Grandpa had ended.
I don’t know when I drifted off to sleep. The moment I woke up, though, I picked up the phone and dialed Grandpa’s number. There were so many things I wanted to say, so many things I wanted to apologize for. I was already on my way to the car when the call finally connected.
“Grandpa, I’m sorry, I’m going to-“
“Hello, Johann,” a female voice answered.
I recognized her as Mrs. Richter, our old neighbor.
“Oh dear,” she started in a shaken voice. “There was no way to reach you, I’m so sorry…”
I didn’t listen anymore. I didn’t have to. As the phone dropped from my hand, I realized I was too late.
