At 6:30 on a freezing Thursday morning, my sister called to tell me our father was dead.
\nThere was just one problem.<\/p>\n
Dad sat three feet away from me in a navy flannel robe, sipping coffee and stealing bacon off my plate.<\/p>\n
I looked at the name glowing across my phone.<\/p>\n
Vanessa Cole.<\/p>\n
My older sister treated mornings like a personal enemy, so a call before sunrise usually meant someone had been seriously hurt.<\/p>\n
I never imagined she\u2019d be reporting a death that hadn\u2019t happened.<\/p>\n
Dad reached over and stole another strip of bacon.<\/p>\n
What?\u201d he whispered.<\/p>\n
I answered the call.<\/p>\n
\u201cVanessa?\u201d<\/p>\n
For a couple of seconds, all I heard was a car engine and a clicking turn signal.<\/p>\n
Then she said flatly,<\/p>\n
\u201cNatalie, Dad died last night.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dad stopped chewing.<\/p>\n
I slowly turned toward him.<\/p>\n
He looked right back at me.<\/p>\n
I tapped speaker.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSometime overnight. Harold found him.\u201d<\/p>\n
That choice of name was deliberate.<\/p>\n
Harold Pike had been Dad\u2019s closest friend for four decades and had once owned the local funeral home. If Vanessa wanted the story to sound believable, Harold was exactly who she\u2019d use.<\/p>\n
What happened?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
Vanessa sighed.<\/p>\n
\u201cDoes it matter? He\u2019s gone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dad\u2019s expression hardened.<\/p>\n
She continued.<\/p>\n
\u201cGrant and I are taking care of everything. Don\u2019t come to the house. We\u2019re changing the locks this morning.\u201d<\/p>\n
Grant laughed somewhere in the background.<\/p>\n
My brother-in-law had the kind of laugh that always sounded like he\u2019d just gotten away with something.
\nVanessa lowered her voice.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe found Dad\u2019s papers. He left the house, his truck, the accounts, everything to me and Grant.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then she delivered the line she\u2019d probably rehearsed for years.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou were specifically excluded.\u201d<\/p>\n
Grant grabbed the phone.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re finally out of the family, Natalie.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dad carefully set his coffee mug onto the table.<\/p>\n
The soft click of ceramic against wood unsettled me more than shouting ever could.<\/p>\n
Grant kept talking.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo more flying in every few months and pretending you\u2019re the devoted daughter.\u201d<\/p>\n
I stayed silent.<\/p>\n
Dad leaned closer to the phone.<\/p>\n
\u201cVanessa.\u201d<\/p>\n
Silence.<\/p>\n
Absolute silence.<\/p>\n
Dad spoke again, calm and steady.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s interesting, because I don\u2019t remember dying.\u201d<\/p>\n
I heard Grant whisper,<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat the hell?\u201d<\/p>\n
Vanessa\u2019s voice cracked.<\/p>\n
\u201cDad?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis isn\u2019t funny.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI agree.\u201d<\/p>\n
His tone turned colder.<\/p>\n
\u201cEspecially the part about dividing my property.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vanessa began stumbling over her words.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2014we were told\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBy whom?\u201d<\/p>\n
Nothing.<\/p>\n
Dad looked at me.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou found papers in my office, didn\u2019t you?\u201d<\/p>\n
Silence answered him again.<\/p>\n
A humorless smile crossed his face.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose weren\u2019t my final documents.\u201d<\/p>\n
Grant swore under his breath.<\/p>\n
Dad continued.<\/p>\n
Whenever Dad reached for another strip, I slapped his hand away.<\/p>\n
\u201cGet your own.\u201d<\/p>\n
He grinned.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m your father. What\u2019s yours is mine.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vanessa rolled her eyes.<\/p>\n
And every time he said it, the three of us understood exactly how untrue\u2014and how completely true\u2014that sentence really was.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At 6:30 on a freezing Thursday morning, my sister called to tell me our father was dead. There was just one problem. Dad sat three<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15208,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-viral-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorssite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorssite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorssite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorssite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorssite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15207"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/humorssite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15209,"href":"https:\/\/humorssite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15207\/revisions\/15209"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorssite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorssite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorssite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorssite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}