Page 221 of Broken Brothers

“OK, Mrs. Hunt, God!” I said, turning away.

I felt a soft hand on my back, a simple gesture that made my eyes water. I hadn’t had much touch in my earlier years, and I definitely didn’t have much in the way of touching from anyone or anything since Sarah had stupidly dumped me.

“I will never force you to do anything, sweetie,” she said. “But I care about you and want to make sure you get the chance to see and do whatever you need to do.”

“OK,” I said, but I couldn’t hide the sobbing in my voice.

Someday, maybe, I thought. Someday, I’ll see my real parents.

But I’ve got all the time in the world. What’s the worst that can happen from waiting?

Present Day

It waseither the worst case scenario come true or just a brutal reality brought to light when the funeral began for Edwin Hunt.

There couldn’t have been more than a dozen, maybe a dozen and a half, people present.

Maybe to some people, that would have been a lot. But I knew that if Edwin Hunt knew that only… fourteen people, three of them people that grew up in his house, had attended, he would have felt extraordinarily disappointed.

It wasn’t from a lack of making time, either. A Sunday funeral ensured that everyone had the chance to come on their day off of work or to come on their day of worship. There was no reason for anyone to not come other than “I just didn’t like the guy.”

And so it was that despite having impacted thousands, maybe even millions, of lives with his business work, Edwin only found himself with a select few old friends.

As I spoke to his college and MBA friends, I noticed how many of them spoke of Edwin not in the present tense, but as of him from when he was much younger. It sounded like money and greed had changed him; he sounded like he’d always been something of a hardass, but he at least had a softer side in his youth.

Clearly, that had been eroded.

I didn’t even want to speak with them; I think most of them came to us out of some sense of wanting to assure us that Edwin was a good person and, perhaps by extension, they were good people. This made me feel only sadder at the reception for the life of Edwin. Maybe I was reading too much into it, but it sure seemed like Edwin was the kind of person that made people apologize for being their friend.

OK, I probably was reading too much into that. But I definitely wasn’t reading too much into the fact that a billionaire had only fourteen people at his funeral, fifteen if you counted the priest, and at least two of them—Mom and I—who were there not because of Edwin, but because of Morgan.

I truthfully spent most of the funeral reflecting not on the life of Edwin, but on my own past and my own future. It went beyond just Layla and Sarah; I thought about how I had never visited my biological father’s grave, let alone said anything to him when he was alive. Was that fucked up? It felt fucked up now.

It felt like I had let a chance at a relationship pass by. Obviously, it was a very different type of relationship than what I could have with Layla or Sarah, but it was still a relationship nevertheless that I had let slip by.But you can still do that with your real mother. You should…

You should reach out to her. You should see how she is.

Do you want to be a guy like this who only has a few people coming to his funeral? What would yours like if you died tomorrow? Would you want to die knowing that you had pushed your biological parents away for so long? That you let your insecurities get the better of you when it came to love?

When the reception came, what had been a small room rented out soon downshifted to people just going out to eat. Mom didn’t even seem that upset; Morgan seemed bothered, but he also seemed like he just accepted it as part of who his father was. I saw no reason to stay any longer, but there was one thing I needed to do first.

I pulled Mom aside, putting my arm around her, though she didn’t need me to do such a thing.

“You OK?” she asked.

“Who, me?” I said with a chuckle. “Of course I’m fine. I’m just here for Morgan.”

“So am I,” she said. “But I think he’ll be fine. He needs some time to process this all, but he’ll be OK.”

I nodded.

“Mom,” I said. “A couple of times in my teenage years, you asked me if I wanted to meet my biological parents. I know my father is dead. But I don’t want to wait any longer.”

I sighed. It was harder to admit this out loud than I cared to—it was like admitting I wanted to meet someone whom I once had felt had abandoned me. But it was something that was worth admitting to; until I knew why I had been given up for adoption, there was no reason to pass judgment.

“I want to meet my real Mom.”

The reaction she had was about the last thing I ever would have expected.