Uncharted by Tracey Garvis Graves Read Free Book Online Page B

spoiled teenager when I said that, and he picked right up on it.
    “I’m sure they do care.”
    I set down my plate and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand; napkins had never quite made it onto my supply list. “In March of 1999 my company donated money to purchase refurbished computers for a public school in a lower-income district. We received requests for donations all the time, but no one wanted to grant this one. My business partners said it wasn’t high-profile enough. I lobbied hard for it, though, and they finally agreed, probably because they got tired of hearing me talk about it.”
    He set down his empty plate.
    “Do you want some more?” I asked. “There’s still some left.”
    “No thanks,” he said. “Go on.”
    “The principal and the teachers at the school were beyond appreciative and wanted the presentation of the check to be part of a school-wide assembly. I arranged to have a reporter and a photographer there when we presented the check. I figured the kids would get a kick out of seeing their picture in the paper and it would get my partners off my back because it would generate a little publicity.
    “Because my mom was the one who bought me my first computer I thought she and my stepdad might want to come. I was proud of what our company had done. I hoped maybe the donation would inspire another kid to get interested in computers the way I had been at that age. I left a message on my mom’s answering machine, giving her the details about when and where the assembly would be held, but I didn’t hear back from her. She and my stepdad traveled a lot, so I wasn’t sure she’d even get the message. I’d been working really long hours and it had been a while since I’d seen her.” I hesitated for a second, because I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell him the rest, but for some reason I found it easy to talk to him. “I don’t care for my stepdad. He married my mom about three years after my dad died, and we’ve never really gotten along.
    “Anyway, I didn’t hear back from my mom, but on the day of the school assembly I spotted her and my stepdad in the bleachers. I felt really good, you know?”
    He nodded.
    “When the crowd thinned out and the students started heading back to their classrooms, I walked over to them. I finally felt like I had done something worthwhile and seeing them there made it even better. I should have known that something was up, though. My stepdad wasn’t smiling and my mom just looked worried. Turns out they were heading to the airport, to catch their flight to Hawaii. But there was a problem with the money I wired them every month. The problem was that it hadn’t come through.”
    “You wired them money every month?”
    I nodded. “My stepdad hadn’t worked in two years. He couldn’t find a job that was a good fit, he said. I’d already been paying their mortgage, but he pulled me aside and said it might be better if I just transferred a set amount into their joint account each month and they’d take over paying the mortgage and the other bills. ‘Better for you,’ I said to him. I didn’t want to do it, but I worried about my mom. She was a customer-service manager, and she worked hard. I found out from my sister that my mom had been picking up extra shifts. If money was still tight for them, even without a mortgage to pay, it made me wonder what my stepdad had been spending it on. I hated the thought of her putting in extra hours and still not being able to get by, so I said I’d do it, even though the monthly amount he suggested was ridiculous.
    “It was the first day of the month and I don’t know what happened, but the automatic transfer I’d set up didn’t go through. It had always worked before, so my mom and stepdad stood there in that empty gym and waited while I called the bank. Apparently there had been some sort of glitch and they fixed it over the phone.
    “Ah,” he said. “Now I understand why you always ask.”
    “My stepdad