But I also watched your mother’s family hand their kids everything, and I watched those kids grow up unable to stand on their own two feet, and when the hard times came — and they always come — those kids broke.
I was so afraid of both things. Of you having nothing. And of you never learning how to build something.
So I did the only thing my stubborn, uneducated heart could think of.
I charged you rent, so you would learn how to earn, and budget, and survive a cut in hours and a car that breaks down. So that the world could never do to you what it did to me at nineteen.
And I saved every dollar of it, and I added to it with everything I had, so that when the lesson was done, you would also have the cushion I never had.
The rent was so you’d be strong.
The account was so you’d never be cold.
I meant to give it to you when you turned twenty-five. I thought I had time.
I’m sorry, son. I’m sorry about the shoes. I bought you the boots that same week and then I stood in the hallway like a coward and couldn’t give them to you, because somewhere in me I was afraid that if I was soft with you even once, I’d go all the way soft, and I’d raise you the way your mother’s family raised theirs, and the world would break you after I was gone.
That was my mistake. Not the rent. The silence.
I was so busy making sure you’d survive without me that I forgot to let you know your father was in the house.
I was proud of you every single day.
The month you covered your own car repair and still paid your rent on time, I sat in this chair and cried, because I knew — I knew you were going to be all right no matter what happened to me.
You were the best thing your mother and I ever made.
Buy yourself a house, son. Put those boots on first.
And I hope to God you turn out to be a warmer man than I knew how to be.
— Dad.”
Chapter 4: Frank’s Side
I couldn’t speak for a long time after I finished the letter.
Frank sat with me at the kitchen table, in the quiet, and slowly he gave me back the father I thought I’d never had.
“The beer and the fishing gear,” Frank said. “You want to know about that? The beer was the cheapest brand the store carried. That ‘new’ fishing rod he came home with? He bought it secondhand off me, twelve dollars, so he’d have a reason to sit by the water and think. He wore the same two coats for fifteen years.”
Frank shook his head.
