Even adults think that way when people they care about abandon them.
But she always left because of him.
Because she couldn’t take him. I was too young, but I suspected––and I know for a fact now––that there were too many indiscretions and other things, too, I assumed.
To say he is morally gray is a crass understatement.
It’s not surprising that he has a high tolerance for people like Ted Sloane. And there were others.
It’s just that I thought he’d cleaned up his act.
His business requirements are stricter now than they used to be. Or so I thought. I may be wrong.
But appealing to his sense of right and wrong is still an exercise in futility. His rules are lax when it comes to shady characters.
Because despite the appearances, he’s one of them.
My mother, conversely, was the opposite.
There was not an ounce of gray morality in her.
She loved me, a good cause, and her country.
She did a lot of good to many people, hoping that some of that would come back to her someday.
How did she wound up with him? And how do good women like her end up with bad men like my father?
It’s strikingly simple.
He’d checked several boxes on her list. He was charming, good with money––even before he left the military and started his own businesses––got game, and he was possessive.
All that while having a flawed character, leading a double life, and being demanding and overly exigent.
Once I came into the picture, my mother felt stuck. She thought he’d be a good father figure. In a sense, he was.
But he was also something I never wanted to become.
That duality created conflict in me and shaped me into who I am today.
There are things I hate about my father. Things that kept me away from him emotionally.
And that’s where we are.
I check Raven’s pictures again, only because I want to see her. Going over the stack Grayson has already checked I find another photo of that third man.
It was taken on a summer day.
He doesn’t wear his uniform, and he’s driving a coupe car. His face is concealed by his dark aviator glasses.
There is no name on the back of the photograph, and frankly, it could be anyone. A cousin. An uncle. There are people on my father’s side of the family that I've never met.
A random friend.
My gut tells me to follow the lead, though, so I pull out my phone, take a picture of the photograph, and enlarge it to check all the details.
Of course, it’s not the best quality. The image is grained, and it’s hard to distinguish anything of interest, but something catches my eye.
The name of the street.
What is it? With great effort, I make out an O and an A.
Oak? Oak Street? Place?
I run a quick online search on my phone. Several results pop up. Oak Street. Oak Place. Oak Road. A ton of them in New Jersey. Some are in Ridgewood, New Jersey.
All right.
I have a possible address and the US Military Academy. I just need to cross-check the addresses with the names of the men who graduated from West Pointe, and it should be fairly easy to locate the mystery man.