Page 9 of Cole's Joy
When Cole volunteered to cook for the both of them, she didn’t turn down the offer. As he cooked, she set the table, and instead of sitting there and drooling over the man, she started packing the dishes she’d pulled out of her cupboard the day before. By the time the meal was on the table, she’d cleaned off the entire counter.
As they began to eat, Lois looked at him.
“What?”
“Tell me about yourself. I didn’t mean to go on and on about my late husband, but I thought you should know that I loved him, even though he didn’t do the typical male dominated role in the marriage.”
“That doesn’t bother me. I’m just glad that you found something that worked for the two of you. What I’m about to tell you, not a lot of people know. I didn’t do anything bad, or at least I don’t think I did.”
“Tell me,” Lois encouraged as he continued to eat in silence. He didn’t speak again until his meal was done. He moved the plate away and picked up his coffee cup. Lois knew enough about him to know that he would talk when he was ready, he really was the epitome of ‘the strong silent type’.
“I was put into the foster care system when I was eight years old. I don’t trust my memories enough to think I know why that happened.”
“Do you remember anything?”
“I remembered that my home life was pure hell. I remember the drugs, the alcohol, the bodies passed out and lying around when I’d get up in the mornings. The loud rock music screaming through the house every night. I didn’t find out until later that the two people I thought of as my parents weren’t.” He quickly stood and took both their plates to the sink, got them into the dishwasher, refilled his coffee cup, and settled back at the table. While he’d done that, Lois had taken care of the leftover food.
“Do you know who they were?”
“The woman I thought was my mother was actually my mother’s third or fourth cousin, and the guy I thought was my father was her boyfriend. My real parents were killed by a drunk driver when I wasn’t quite a year old, and this cousin was the only blood family I had left. I later discovered that she only took me in because she could get money from the state for keeping me.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be, they received their just rewards in the end. Anyway, around the time I was eight, there was a new teacher in my school. I didn’t know until the police showed up that she had moved in across the street, but down a couple of houses from me. She knew what was going on. She reported it to the police. See, the extra bodies passed out from the drugs and alcohol were, I’m going to be blunt here, but they were the other men and women my guardians were screwing. They used the money and food stamps they got to keep me to party. My teacher felt for me and reported it. It wasn’t until the police arrived, I think it was like the tenth complaint, and it happened to be to a party that got out of hand.”
“Oh my, how bad?”
“Bad. I abhor to call them my parents, but that was all I knew, but they were fighting. Apparently, he had brought a woman to the house that she hated. Like I just mentioned, they were screwing other people, something about an open relationship, and they had set boundaries on the one person they couldn’t mess with. He brought home that one person she said no to. They fought, guns were involved, and though no one was killed, they did fire at a police officer that arrived because of the complaint. I remember hearing a gun go off, I slipped out of my bedroom window and hid behind the neighbor’s house. Not the teacher. This neighbor worked nights, he knew of my home situation, and though he didn’t want to become involved, he did help me as much as he could by setting up a little area for me to go if I needed to. After everything calmed down, I saw my teacher on the sidewalk watching everything and I ran over to her. She hugged me, and cried. It took some time to tell the police who I was. It was a mess.” He sipped his coffee, and shook his head. “I mean a mess. It took damn near a year to sort everything out. During that time, I was placed in temporary foster care, and when it was all said and done, my guardians were arrested because of the drugs, and the illegal firearms they had in their home.”
“What happened to you?”
“I was sent to that emergency foster care family, but after the year was up, I was sent to another family. That went on for about four years, I think I was twelve by that time. I went to another home, and this was the best one by far. The family had a grandfather that they didn’t want to take care of, and they only tolerated him. I loved that man.”
“Why didn’t they like him?”
“He had dementia, and he would talk about the past all the time. They wouldn’t believe him because he wasn’t aroundwhen they grew up, they didn’t know whether his stories were true or not. It didn’t help that he grew up in a different part of the country from them, so they didn’t know his lifestyle.” Cole looked at Lois with a nostalgia look. “I believed him, I even took notes. Like I said, I was around twelve when I went to that home, and I think they only kept me around because I was the only one that could deal with the grandfather. I ended up having to feed, bathe, and dress him. They even kept me from school just so I could keep an eye on him. They made up some excuse and I was only physically in the classroom once or twice a month.”
“That wasn’t right.”
“I know, but I think I learned more from taking care of that old man than I would have in the classroom. In the end, it worked out for me.”
They were both quiet for several minutes before Lois reached out and gently laid her hand over his. She didn’t know whether it made her happy or sad when he turned his hand and entwined their fingers. She felt he was using her as a lifeline, and she was okay with that.
“What happened?”
“Three days before my sixteenth birthday, he passed away. We went through the funeral and everything, and when everything settled, the family was pissed at me. They tried to say I manipulated him to change his will. However, the lawyer was clear that Thomas wasn’t coerced by anyone.” Cole chuckled as he shook his head and rose to get a bottle of water from the refrigerator. He settled back down with another chuckle.
“What?”
“He played up his dementia for the first couple of years. Yes, his mind was slipping, but not as badly as he led his family to believe. See, he was rich, and his family thought that if they took him in, they would inherit his wealth when he died. I didn’t go to school, not only because I was taking care of him, but hehomeschooled me. It wasn’t until the last six months of his life that the dementia was real and progressed that I fed him, and bathed him. It was well before that when he changed his will. The lawyer came to the house to do it.”
“Behind the family’s back?”
“Yes. See, I don’t know whether this is important or not, but they would take some of his money and go on vacations and leave me home to take care of him. He knew this was happening, and expected it. Before he moved in with them, he had set up this special account that they would have access to. It wasn’t the bulk of his money though.”
“Oh crap, he set them up? He knew this might happen, and he allowed it?”
“Yes. When he changed his will, he put more money into that account, and when he passed, his family had to share the balance left from the account they had been pilfering from. That was all they got. He left me roughly three hundred thousand dollars, and the rest of his wealth was given away in donations. When his family tried to say I stole from them, they couldn’t say anything because they were left money. The balance of the account they had been stealing from was almost four million dollars.”
