Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 134133 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 671(@200wpm)___ 537(@250wpm)___ 447(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 134133 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 671(@200wpm)___ 537(@250wpm)___ 447(@300wpm)
But it wasn’t any woman my great-grandfather wanted most.
It was his money.
Because of his greed and ruthlessness, money’s no concern for me. It wasn’t an issue for my father, or his father before him. Though my great-grandfather married and started a family with someone else, he made sure to provide financial support to my great-grandmother and his firstborn son. After all, money was what really mattered, wasn’t it?
My grandfather James always felt he had something to prove to his estranged father. He was thirteen when his father’s first legitimate heir was born. At that tender age, he started helping his mom out with the books at the restaurant so his father would see them succeeding when he made his way to Boston and stopped in for a sporadic visit. Turned out, James Koch had a head for business.
They say he “had a way with the ladies,” too.
When their father’s eldest acknowledged son started attending Harvard, Grandpa James was a 35-year-old businessman in Boston. As much success as he’d had, there was still something missing. He still felt he had something to prove.
With his father’s other son in Boston, he saw his opportunity and began to stalk his prey.
In watching his brother, he discovered the younger man had fallen hard and fast for a gentle young woman named Katherine. She worked at a bookshop, and he was a collector of rare books.
From afar, my grandfather watched his brother’s wholesome courtship with Katherine. He even arranged a meeting between him and his brother (his father’s second family knew nothing of the first, so he pretended to be a stranger) at a bar one night where the younger brother professed his excitement—he’d bought Katherine a ring and was just waiting for the right moment to ask her.
Grandpa James was suitably convinced that what his brother wanted most in the world was Katherine.
And then, because my grandfather was an asshole, he swept in and seduced her. She didn’t love him, didn’t really even want him, but he was older and more experienced than she was, so he was skilled enough to confuse and trick her. All he needed was a brief opening to strike, and when he got it, he did.
Katherine was mesmerized by James, completely out of her depths with him. He was cunning and got her pregnant quickly so that she would marry him instead of his brother.
She did, and in doing so, shattered her lover’s heart.
Grandpa James got a bouncing baby boy, a brand-new bride, and the thing he wanted most of all.
Revenge.
As a result, my father grew up with parents who didn’t love each other. The generational trauma of abandonment had finally been resolved, but his mother was a lonely woman who could hardly endure my grandfather’s cruelty. He never stopped treating her like a tool he could wield to wound his brother, so he spent their entire marriage hurting her.
It was a relief when he died of heart failure at the age of 83. She was 66, young enough to perhaps find one last love to end her life with, but she never did.
Her first love had been so hurt by losing her to my grandpa, he never married or had children of his own.
Family urged her to reach out to him after my grandfather’s death hoping for a reunion that might heal both their wounded hearts, but she was too ashamed, so she never did.
After watching his parents’ miserable marriage, when my father met my warm and loving mother, he knew immediately he had to lock her down. Warmth was the one luxury he never had access to from his cold, wealthy father or his lonely, destroyed mother.
My mother filled that empty well deep inside him until it overflowed, and for that, he loved her immensely.
The problem was, in his gratitude and appreciation of my mother, he let her have more freedoms than I think he should have. My mother is a warm and loving woman, but her love and warmth isn’t just for him.
Over the years, I’ve watched him ignore countless affairs as my mother’s friends have become more than that.
She’s not a cruel woman, just weak and unable to control her own whimsical desires.
My father isn’t the sort of man you’d ever imagine suffering such an insult without punishing everyone involved and ensuring it never happened again, but he’s weak when it comes to her.
Over the years, I’ve watched him love her, and I’ve watched her hurt him. She’s always immensely sorry for the pain she’s caused when her affairs crash and burn, and his arms are always open for her to run right back into.
I understand my father’s appetite for warmth, but not his tolerance of her misbehavior.
I can understand loving someone with little self-control, but perhaps I have a streak of my grandfather in me, because if I were him, I’d have made damn sure she could never run off again after the first time.