Chapter 297 Garrett

Chapter 297 Garrett
Garrett

It was a summer evening when I finally opened the box.

Aslan and I were sitting beneath a tree in the park near Emma’s house in Maine. He had brought a blanket, cold drinks, and enough snacks to sustain us through a natural disaster, but he didn’t ask why I’d carried the box there after leaving it untouched for weeks.

He only sat beside me while I opened it.

I was honestly expecting the deeds to the house, keys to a Porsche, or maybe an updated copy of my father’s will… Instead, I found the first Father’s Day card I had ever made, which totally threw me off. A badly folded piece of blue construction paper with a drawing of Dad and me holding hands beneath a sun almost as large as our bodies. Across the top, in crooked red letters, I had written, MY DAD IS THE BEST DAD IN THE WORLD.

My fingers tightened around it. What the fuck?

Beneath that was my first swimming certificate. A Student of the Month announcement from second grade. Honor-roll notices, school photographs, wrestling programs, and newspaper clippings from competitions I had almost forgotten. 

What the hell is all of this, and why am I about to fucking cry?

There was an article about the first tournament I won, another about becoming team captain, and printed pages from my Renaissance art blog going back to the first year I started it.
How the hell did he even know about my goddamned blog?
He had even kept the terrible early posts.

“Okay, I might never forgive him for preserving evidence that I once used the phrase ‘totally epic brushwork’ in an art review.” I tried to hide my emotions the only way I knew how.

Aslan leaned over my shoulder. “You were fifteen.”

He laughed softly and kissed my temple, but neither of us could pretend the moment wasn’t slowly tearing me apart.

Every clipping had a date written on the back in Dad’s handwriting. Some had small notes beneath it. First regional win. Perfect semester. Garrett’s first published review. Captain at seventeen.

Dad hadn’t ordered an assistant to put the box together after the trial. He had been collecting those pieces for years.

Near the bottom, I found a photograph of me standing beside him after a childhood swimming competition. I couldn’t have been more than eight. My wet hair was sticking up in every direction, a cheap medal hung around my neck, and Dad had one arm around my shoulders. We were both smiling.

“I don’t understand.” I looked through the clippings scattered across the blanket. “Why keep this stuff? Why write down every date if none of it mattered enough to show up?”

Aslan rested his hand over mine. “Maybe it mattered to him. Maybe he was just too late understanding that keeping these wasn’t the same as being there.”

A sealed envelope lay beneath the photograph. My name was written across it.
I opened it with trembling fingers.

Garrett,

I know this changes nothing. I also know I should have told you these things when you were still willing to hear them from me.

Like I said, I was proud of you then. I am proud of you now. Not because of the trophies, your grades, or the name you carried, but because you kept becoming a better man than I ever taught you to be.

These have always belonged to you.

I love you, son.

Dad

I read it twice. Then a third time, because the words blurred together before I could reach the end.
He’d had to lose me before he could say he loved me…
But he had always seen me.

Somewhere between the meetings, business trips, and endless phone calls that had always seemed more important than I was, he had noticed. He had followed my competitions, read my articles, and saved every small accomplishment I’d spent my childhood wishing I could show him.

“I wish he’d told me,” I said, wiping angrily at my face. “Just once. I would’ve given anything to hear that from him.”

“I know, wolf.” Aslan pulled me against him, his lips pressing into my hair. 

He was too late, but I cried anyway.
I cried for the little boy who had made that card, for the teenager scanning the crowd before every match and for the father who had apparently been proud of me from a distance while allowing that distance to swallow everything between us.

When I could breathe again, I returned to the box.
A small bundle of envelopes rested beneath the clippings, held together by a plain elastic band. Some had Garrett written across the front. Others said My son or My little boy. A few had no name at all.
The handwriting belonged to my mother.

There was another note from Dad.

"Your mother writes whenever she is able. She gave these to me during my visits. I didn’t know whether sending them would cause you more pain, so I kept them until the choice could be yours.

She is receiving long-term care at a residential facility in the countryside. Some days are clearer than others. Her doctors believe writing may help her organize her memories, but they warned me that not everything she writes will make sense.

You don’t have to read them."

Aslan watched my face. “We can put them away.”

“I think I wanna read one.”

The first letter had been written only days after Mom arrived at the facility.

My sweet boy,
They tell me you are grown, but today I remembered you at seven, doing your prayers and asking me if you did them right....

I tried to raise you according to God’s word. Everyone says I hurt you. I don’t understand how trying to save my son became something evil.

I folded the letter with trembling fingers.
That was enough for the day.

Over the next week, I read the others whenever I could bring myself to do it. They were scattered thoughts written by a woman drifting between different years, searching for an answer that would allow both her faith and her actions to remain right.

In some, she knew she was right. In others, she begged God to show her where she had gone wrong. Sometimes she wrote to the man I was now. Other times, she believed I was still fourteen and away at Spring Creek.

Then came one I read three times.

They tell me I must accept you as you are, but how can I accept something I was taught would condemn you? If I was wrong, then everything I believed was wrong. If I was right, why did doing God’s work destroy my family?

I don’t know what to believe anymore.
But you are still my son.

That moment, I understood she was just lost. So fucking lost…
But she was still my mother.

A few days later, I sat beside Aslan. “I think I’m ready,” I said.

“I think it’s time to see my mother.”