My knees buckled right there in the middle of the empty classroom. Mrs. Dilmore caught my elbow, guiding me into a student chair as the world spun around me. The scent of dry-erase markers and floor wax felt suffocating. I forced my eyes back to the page, my son’s neat, round cursive blurring through my tears.
“Mom, if you’re reading this, it means Dad’s plan worked, and I’m gone. But please don’t cry. I need you to be strong, just like you always told me to be. I don’t have much time to write this before we leave for the lake, so I’m giving it to Mrs. Dilmore. She’s the only one I can trust.
Dad isn’t who you think he is. For the last two years, he hasn’t been going to ‘business conferences.’ He has a secret bank account, Mom. I found the statements hidden in the spare tire compartment in his trunk when I was looking for my baseball glove. He owes a lot of money to some really bad people—more than five hundred thousand dollars. I heard him crying on the phone a month ago, begging someone for more time.
But then, everything changed. Last week, I overheard him talking to his friend Uncle Todd in the garage. They didn’t know I was upstairs. Dad said, ‘The insurance policy is finalized. Half a million for accidental drowning. No body, no crime, just a tragic storm. We’ll split it, and my debts are wiped clean.’
