We met at a coffee shop, neutral territory. It was one of those chain places you see all over the States, with jazz playing softly and people working on laptops.
My father looked older than I remembered, smaller somehow. The man who had loomed so large in my childhood now seemed diminished.
“I heard about the inheritance,” he said, not meeting my eyes. “I suppose you think you won.”
“I don’t think this is about winning or losing,” I said.
“Your grandfather always did enjoy making me look bad,” he muttered.
There was bitterness in his voice, old and deep, even from the grave.
“He wasn’t trying to make you look bad,” I said. “He was trying to help me.”
“By cutting me out? By giving everything to a kid he never even met?” my father snapped.
“By giving something to the grandson you threw out on his eighteenth birthday,” I said quietly. “The grandson you took three thousand dollars from. The grandson you treated like he didn’t matter for fourteen years.”
My father finally looked at me.
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