Garrett presses play on the device containing the audio recording.
“Walking in this house made me fucking homesick. The smell reminds me of the best times of my life.
“It’s been two days since Mother’s funeral. I haven’t slept more than minutes at a time since. I sit in one of the dark stained, wooden chairs at the table in her kitchen as I sip on the scotch that she had saved for a special occasion. She showed it to me years ago and told me that one day we would share it in celebration of a special occasion. We had already begun our special relationship, and I recall being in a state of wonderment at what sort of special occasion could outdo the dawning of a sexual relationship between a mother and her son.
Regardless….
“I’ve spent the last two days in a drunken haze roaming aimlessly throughout the house, remembering every detail of our relationship. It started with the box that sits in the middle of the table. It’s a small tote with clasps on two sides that keep the lid on tight. ‘Top Secret!’ is written in a wide-tipped black sharpie. It was written there when I was fourteen-years-old. At that age, the events that eventually unfolded in my life were inconceivable to me. Which fourteen-year-old would believe such fantasies could become reality? Everyone in my social circle always joked about making it with the hottest girl in school.
“This box here represents the fantasy that I bred in my mind, which became the focal point of my life… until it was all taken away.
“Before you can understand the implications that this box had on my life, you must first know my mother and how I came to be in this world.
“She was a beautiful woman by anyone’s standards. She was fifty-two, and despite her age, seemed to be in the prime of her life. That’s how it felt to me, anyway. She was single the entire time I grew up, but in a loving relationship with my father. They had been in love since long before I came to be. They were truly a wondrous and unique couple.
“They were very close; almost like brother and sister. They had a physical relationship that went the way many of them did in their circle of friends. She wound up pregnant with me when she was twenty, but he was better than his friends. He sat down with Mother over the course of several days and they hashed out how to move forward. I’ll spare you all the details. He was as active in my life as I ever wanted or needed.
“He was always happy to see me and take me places. We went to museums, ball games, camping, and more. It was just that he lived in a different house. Mom and Dad were happy with their separate living arrangements, but went out on dates often. My father was anything but an absentee parent who only sent five dollars on my birthday. In fact, Mother would often happily roll her eyes at how over the top he would get when it came to my annual celebrations.
“I could not have been happier. Until I was fourteen.
“I’m staring at the box as I recall my story. The words written on the box were not there when the contents inside began to accumulate. It was just an empty box. If I went back in time, I would tell myself that this box had a predetermined destiny. That destiny was to hold the fodder that was initially my obsession with Mother. But eventually turned into the fuel that lit the fire in our souls.