Chapter 5 - The Mask SlipsMark tried to apologize, of course. He came to the house one night, the power cut off because he hadn't paid the bills, his expensive car repossessed. He looked at me, not with love, but with a desperate, pathetic hunger for a way out of his ruin.
"Althea, please," he sobbed. "I was wrong. I was young, I was busy... just let me back in. We can share the proceeds from the mining rights."
I looked at him, and for the first time in twelve years, I didn't see a husband. I saw a stranger who had stood by while his father suffered.
"You didn't care when he was alive," I said. "Why should you care now that he’s gone?"
"He was my father!"
"No," I corrected. "He was a man who needed his son. And you were a man who needed an inheritance. You chose the wrong thing, Mark."
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I showed him the final letter Bill had left for me, the one I hadn't shown anyone else. It was a note addressed to me, but meant for the family. It detailed how he had watched them wait for his death, and how he had decided, in his final days, that his only true family was the woman who had held his hand in the dark.
Mark left, his head bowed, not in shame, but in defeat. He knew he had lost, not just the money, but the only person who had ever truly tried to be his friend.
