Mystery Money Soap
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Maddox had been in the shower for a while. I sat on my bed, still fully dressed, trying to figure out what he meant when he said “soap.” My first thought was that he’d bought some soap and wanted me to take it home to wash my clothes in instead of using his expensive laundry detergent.
But then why didn’t he just ask about it? He couldn’t have known how many bars were in there or even if I liked them so much that I wouldn’t want to use anyone else’s detergent—especially not after he gave it to me as a present. And then I wondered where he’d gotten the soap from and how long he’d been buying it because I hadn’t seen any other bar like it at Kroger or Target.
Then I remembered that he must have brought it in a different bag than mine when we went grocery shopping on Sunday night.
And so I waited. After twenty minutes, Maddox finally came into my room. “You know,” he said, sitting down on his side of the bed next to me. “I’ve been thinking.”
“About?”
“What happened today. What I did.”
I glanced sideways at him; he stared back at me with a pained expression. I wasn’t sure what he was trying to say by telling me this, but it seemed important, so I decided I should try and help him figure something out. If nothing else, I could learn something new about Maddox.
Maybe that would make it easier for me to get through our conversation without throwing up again. “Maybe you should start at the beginning?” I suggested quietly, looking away again.
He nodded slowly, then leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. It was a strange pose, and not one I’d ever really noticed before because I’d never seen Maddox do it. When he moved like that, he always seemed to be in motion.
He walked fast, he talked quickly, and most times he looked like he wanted to throw something around. Now though, he almost seemed defeated. As if he knew that he’d screwed up big time the second he opened his mouth at lunch.
I watched him for a moment, waiting until I saw him shift his gaze to the wall across from us. Then I turned myself around and faced the same way, putting my head on my pillow and crossing my ankles underneath it. That way he couldn’t see my face.
I didn’t feel like talking, so maybe we could skip over all the chitchat I was going to have to do and jump right into the questions and answers he needed answered.
“You were going to tell me that your dad has money problems,” I began, staring at the opposite wall, “but instead you started rambling about soap.”
Maddox groaned. I felt bad for asking such a stupid question. But then I remembered that I hadn’t asked him anything yet, and I was supposed to be helping him figure things out. So I tried again. “Why don’t you start by explaining your job and how you got it.”
“Okay,” he muttered, turning toward me with a look of defeat in his eyes, “you’re going to hate me forever now that I told you. But I think it’s better if you hear everything straight from the horse’s mouth.” He paused then cleared his throat.
“So, like I told you on Sunday night when my mom died, my grandparents took me in because they already had their own kids and they couldn’t handle another one.”
“Your grandparents raised you?”
“Yes. I lived with them for two years, but my father kept sending them messages saying he was coming to claim me.”
“And they wouldn’t let him claim you? Did he have some kind of legal thing against them or—”
“No. They didn’t know him. Not well anyway. He sent letters too, but they stopped answering those when they realized they couldn’t trust him. My father has been trying to find me ever since I disappeared.”
“But you’ve never heard from him?”
“Nope. No calls. No emails. No letters.”
“That’s weird.”
“Not if your dad is dead.”
“Well, how can they be sure that he’s dead, then?” I asked. “You never met him.”
“It’s not uncommon for fathers who abandon their families to end up in jail,” he explained.
“So it doesn’t matter if they’ve never heard from him because his family won’t tell them that he’s alive and they’ll only answer their calls and answer their letters if they pay off his debts or give him access to the bank accounts or something like that. So my grandparents are certain that he’s either dead or in jail.”
“How do they know for sure?”
“Because he’s done exactly that to a lot of other people.”
“Wow.”
“My grandparents thought his money troubles might have caused him to go into hiding, so we decided to wait until they passed away and then send someone to investigate. When that happened, one of the things my grandfather mentioned to me was how you guys were so nice to him while he was ill.
You gave him flowers every morning before class, and you bought extra food just for him. And how you all came to visit and spent time with him after he died. He said he’d never met anyone as thoughtful and generous as any of the Dobsons.
And then he told me about the letter that you wrote and how you helped your mother take care of him and how you’ve been paying your grandmother’s bills ever since she lost her license.”
“…what?”
His words made me freeze for a few moments. It wasn’t often I was speechless. I usually found a way to respond, even if it was with one of the stupidest responses possible. Like telling Maddox that the best thing he could do would be to go home to Chicago and stay there with his mother.
The fact that he’d never once given me an answer to the questions I’d asked meant that maybe, just maybe, he actually wanted to talk about this stuff. Maybe it didn’t seem like he was interested at first because he didn’t want me to think that he was avoiding me. Or that it mattered.
“I know you haven’t been in touch with your mom for a long time, but I thought maybe you’d been in contact with her after she went off the grid and moved to New York City. After all, you knew where she worked and you could probably track her down without a problem.
So what did you do when you read my letter, then?” I asked, feeling a little guilty. He hadn’t asked me any questions and I had gone straight ahead with mine, leaving him sitting there like an idiot waiting for me to speak. “What were you thinking?”
He hesitated a moment and looked down at his knees. “When I received your letter, I didn’t really know how to feel. To be honest, I still don’t. You see, I’m not the same person you met six months ago. I changed a lot when my grandfather died and my grandmother started losing her mind. She’s…gone now,” he finished, looking at me. His gaze was sad. “She died last week.”
This news was shocking and unexpected. But it shouldn’t have been. The woman who’d cared for him and protected him was suddenly gone, just when he needed her most. That must be hard.
“Oh.”
“It’s okay. We buried her yesterday. There was nothing more they could do. It was sudden. My uncle found her and called us right away.”
“Sorry for your loss.”
“Thanks.”
“Is she…” he began hesitantly. “Was she sick?”
“No.” I shook my head. “It happened very suddenly. I’m sure it seems strange that I’m here talking to you right now, considering all the crap she’s put me through. Especially if she’s not around to hear you explain it all to me.”
Maddox nodded. “Yeah, I guess it does seem kind of crazy.”
We sat for a second and didn’t say anything else. Maddox watched me intently, waiting for me to open up, to tell him the truth. It was almost painful watching him stare at me like that. So intense, yet so vulnerable.
If only he knew how easy it would be for me to hurt him the way she had, he wouldn’t be able to look at me the way he did right now. As though he expected me to rip his heart out. He was too softhearted to understand that she was a monster.
Not because she was evil. But because she was human and she had no control over herself. That was how she’d managed to survive all these years alone, without anyone looking out for her or trying to stop her.
I cleared my throat and looked back at him. “Do you want to talk about it?” I asked, knowing what he probably wanted me to ask him next.
“About my mom? No.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. I couldn’t help but smile at him. “So you’ll tell me what you’re doing with the house in South Carolina? What did you do?” I tried to keep my tone light and nonjudgmental, though I felt anything but that right now.
“I sold it.”
That wasn’t what I expected him to say. “Why?”
He shrugged. “My granddad always talked about moving back there and starting his own business. He left it to me when he passed away. Well, I’ve been going through the papers he gave me, which are mostly legal stuff about insurance, taxes, and things like that. He also had a couple letters from his brother who ran a farm near Columbia when he was alive.”
He smiled and looked at the ceiling, as though he could see him standing above us somewhere, telling stories to a group of children. Then he shook his head and sighed. “Anyway, one of the reasons Grandad didn’t move back here to Charleston is because he wanted to take care of my grandmother in her declining years.
He wanted to make sure someone took care of her before the inevitable happened.”
I understood that. It was exactly how my parents felt about each other, though we weren’t even married. They loved each other deeply until it was taken from them by cancer that had slowly eaten at my mother’s body.
“And so, instead of selling the farm to pay my grandmother’s medical bills, I decided to sell the house and use the money to start his dream in my uncle’s place.”
“You made the right choice. Your grandfather would have been proud.”
He frowned. “How can you be sure? Did he say that?”
“No.” I laughed. “But then, I doubt Grandad would have been capable of saying such a thing when his beloved wife was dying. He would have given up on everything. And he did. His life stopped when she did.”
Maddox stared at me, obviously struggling to understand what I meant. “What do you mean he stopped living? How could he stop living after losing her?”
“Because he believed in something. When people believe in something, they can endure anything as long as it doesn’t affect their belief. She died, and so he did too. Or maybe it was just that she was the glue holding him together and now he was lost.”
Maddox nodded thoughtfully, and we both fell silent again for a few seconds, thinking about my answer. It wasn’t an answer I was prepared to give since I hadn’t spent much time pondering this particular point in my life, but it seemed like it fit well enough for the moment. Then Maddox surprised me by speaking first.
“I think that might explain why Dad didn’t come back. Because my grandmother died too. And maybe not because he lost her physically, but because she was the last piece of him left.”
This time I couldn’t hold back my tears. My whole face burned bright red. The fact that his mother was dead was bad enough for me to consider, but the idea that he was feeling some of the same grief that I did because of it was overwhelming. We were kindred souls if ever I’d heard of one. “Your dad must miss her so much,” I whispered.
He nodded silently, and I waited for him to continue talking about it, hoping that he would open up more, but he just looked at me intently as though he was considering what I’d said and trying to put it into words himself.
After a while, he spoke again. “She was the most beautiful woman in town when she was younger, you know? And everyone loved her. She was a good person, the type who would lend a hand whenever she could. I remember once when Mom took a job at a local hospital and needed help around the house because Dad’s health was failing.
I was ten years old. I can still remember the excitement in the air as the neighbors and friends started coming over every day, offering to do whatever needed to be done. They all pitched in, cooking, cleaning, washing clothes, and taking care of my brother and sister.
Some went home, but the ones who stayed—were with us for weeks until she got sick, and they never left. Until her funeral, when the only friend left in the world was gone.”
Maddox’s eyes teared up.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted out.
“I’m not.” He wiped at his eyes. “They helped me take care of my family, and they cared for her in her sickness. That means more to me than anything, even knowing what she looked like now.”
There was nothing to say to that. We sat there in silence again, watching the fire crackle between us, our bodies so close together I could feel the warmth of him seep into mine, and yet we were worlds apart. I tried not to let it bother me.
If anyone deserved to be alone, it was me. But I had always craved the closeness of another person, someone who would make me feel safe and happy. Even as a kid, when Maddox had been going through so much pain, I had wanted to be near him. Now, looking at him sitting next to me on the floor of the cabin, I found myself wishing I wasn’t such a wimp.
Then he leaned forward and rested his head on my shoulder. “It hurts,” he confessed.
I stiffened automatically and held my breath, waiting for him to pull away or for me to push him away, but neither happened. Instead, he laid his cheek on my arm, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath, sighing loudly. “I need your forgiveness,” he said after a moment, “because it seems like I’m always hurting you.”
“Why?” I asked, unable to keep the frustration from my tone.
Maddox lifted his head and looked into my eyes. “You’re not angry, are you?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Never,” I lied, wondering how far I could let him take this before I told him I needed him to get up and go away.
He reached down and rubbed my hand gently. “When I look at you, you remind me of her.” He swallowed hard. “And it kills me a little inside. Because she deserves better than what I’ve given her since she died. She was a good person, and I should have been able to honor her memory better by living up to that title. At least to her kids.”
My heart twisted as I saw his sincerity, and he continued, “I wish I could tell her, somehow, that I understand that her death meant something to me. Not just because she was a great mother but because she was my mother and the best thing in my life.
When she passed, it wasn’t just the loss of losing a parent; it was that everything important in my life was taken from me—my family, my happiness. She was the only one left.”
A tear trickled down his face and landed on my shirt. He brushed it away and turned to stare into the fireplace. I waited quietly for him to say more but he said nothing else. Finally, I decided to give him an opening for the kind of discussion he seemed ready to have.
“What about your father?” I ventured, thinking that maybe if she had died first, he’d be closer to his dad and not as affected by her passing.
“Dad is just another sad story. He never wanted kids,” Maddox answered, staring into the flames. “We didn’t mean much to him.”
His father hadn’t raised his voice, yelled at him, or even shown any affection toward his sons. His mom had been his family, but his own parents had ignored them both. The way they treated Maddox as a child seemed to indicate that their relationship had not improved over time, and I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him.
I wanted to tell him how lucky he was to have had so many women in his life who had loved him unconditionally.
The End