« Jij bent Jacob Torres, » zei de biker. Het was geen kwestie.
Mijn zoon keek hem verward aan. « Ja? Ken ik jou? »
De biker greep in zijn snee en haalde een manilla-envelop tevoorschijn die was opgevouwen en versleten door wat op jaren van hanteren leek.
Hij liep naar Jacobs bed—ik stond al, bewoog al tussen deze vreemdeling en mijn kwetsbare zoon—en liet de envelop op de deken vallen die Jacobs nutteloze benen bedekte.
Subscribe to Bikers Byte!
Get all the stories straight to your inbox
Website
Your Email…
Subscribe
We use your personal data for interest-based advertising, as outlined in our Privacy Notice.
“That’s yours,” the biker said. “Been saving it since you were two years old. Figured you’d need it for college. Circumstances changed, I guess, but money’s money. Use it however you need to.”
Jacob opened the envelope with shaking hands. Inside was a bank statement showing an account in his name with a balance of $47,000. Attached to the statement was a deposit receipt dated fifteen years earlier, showing an initial deposit of $5,000. Below that were monthly deposits, every single month for fifteen years, ranging from $200 to $500.
“I don’t understand,” Jacob said, and his voice cracked in that way it had been cracking since the accident, since he’d started crying at random moments when the weight of his new reality became too much. “Who are you? Why would you do this?”
The biker looked at me then, really looked at me for the first time since entering the room, and I saw something flicker across his weathered face that might have been disappointment or might have been something closer to disgust.
“Ask your father,” he said quietly. “He knows who I am. He’s known for seventeen years. He just chose to pretend he didn’t.”
Then he turned and walked out of the room.
I stood frozen for maybe five seconds before my brain started working again. By the time I reached the hallway, the biker was already at the elevator, already stepping inside.
I called out—I don’t even remember what I said—but he didn’t turn around. The doors closed and he was gone, leaving me standing in that fluorescent-lit corridor with my heart hammering and my son calling my name from the hospital room behind me.
When I walked back into Jacob’s room, he was staring at the bank statement like it might contain answers if he just looked hard enough. “Dad, what the hell was that? Who was that guy? Why does he have an account in my name?”
I sat down heavily in the vinyl chair and felt seventeen years of carefully maintained silence start to collapse. “His name is Ray Castellanos,” I said finally. “He’s… he was your mother’s first boyfriend. Before me. Before you were born.”
The expression on Jacob’s face went through several rapid transformations: confusion, shock, a dawning horror that I recognized because I’d felt it myself once, a long time ago. “Wait. Wait. Are you saying… is he…?”
“No,” I said quickly, firmly, because this was the one truth I’d clung to through everything else. “I’m your father. Biologically, genetically, in every way that matters. You’re mine. But Ray… Ray was around when your mother got pregnant. He was there at the beginning.”
What I didn’t tell Jacob in that moment, what I couldn’t bring myself to say while he was lying paralyzed in a hospital bed with his entire future uncertain, was the full story. The complicated, messy truth about how Jacob had come into existence and the role Ray Castellanos had played in his early life.
