Fifteen thousand dollars.
On top was a handwritten note.
You earned every dollar of this. Don’t waste it the way I wasted my chance.
I held the letter against my chest.
For five years, I’d believed Dad was taking away my future, one rent payment at a time.
Now I understood that he’d been saving the money for me.
It didn’t erase the years of silence or the arguments we could never take back.
And I wished desperately that he’d trusted me enough to tell me the truth while he was alive.
But as I looked around the studio, surrounded by his guitars and the music we’d both loved, I finally understood what he’d been trying to say.
My father had spent years teaching me how to survive. His final gift was a chance to do something that made me happy.
I picked up my old guitar, sat in front of the microphone, and played the first song I’d written as a teenager.
