A broken promise... #Literary #Thriller

Chasing Dolphins

by September Lynn Gray


“Yes. Jared never worked. At least not that I recall. He claimed he had a bad back and was fighting for a disability settlement. It wouldn't be long before the ship came in. That's what Jared used to say. He promised when the 'ship came in,' we'd go to Hawaii. He said the water was the bluest you'd ever seen and the dolphins were everywhere.”
Did he ever take you?”
“Are you joking? You think I ever went to Hawaii?”
“Don't know. This was all before my time.”
“We never went. The problem was that there was nothing wrong with Jared's back. He was just lazy and content to live off my mom's welfare until he could trick a court into giving him his settlement.”
“Did he ever get the money?”
“That's where it gets ugly. A month or so after my mother's funeral, I was shopping in town with my grandmother when we ran into one of Jared's old drinking buddies. According to this guy, Jared had moved across state and remarried. He was living high on the hog because he'd finally gotten his settlement.”
“That sucks. He got the money so soon after he left you.”
“Don't you get it? He got the money before and hid it from my mother. He was obviously having an affair.” This lent some merit to my grandmother's conviction that Jared had murdered my mother by intentionally withholding her dialysis treatment, but I tried never to think of it. Becoming convinced that my grandmother’s accusations were more than a grieving woman’s ramblings, or never knowing either way, would eat at me.