For your final semester. Your father would hate that I’m doing this.
— T.A.P.S. You were six the last time I held you. Orange juice, boat shoes.
I still have them.
The orange juice detail hit me like a punch. It was a story my mom used to tell about a “mystery relative” who let me drink juice on a dock and laughed when I spilled it. She was always vague about who he was.
Then I looked at the signature line.
Aldridge.
I froze.
The last name was a name I knew from the late-night arguments I’d overheard when my parents thought I was asleep—my father saying, “He’s dead to me,” my mother insisting, “I’m not taking his blood money.”
I went to the small box of personal things I kept from before they died and pulled out a thin folder I’d never been allowed to open. On the tab was the same name.
It clicked. The name on the check matched the name from those fights.
I remembered my mother saying, “He might be a billionaire, but he doesn’t get to buy our kid.”
My stomach turned.
The check suddenly felt radioactive. It wasn’t just from a janitor. It was from the man my parents had sworn never to forgive, the man they’d taught me to hate from far away.
On instinct, I decided I couldn’t take that money.
Not even to save my degree.
Not when it felt like betraying everything my parents stood for.
I shoved the check back in the envelope, marched across campus to the science building, and found Mr. Tomlinson’s cart in a side hallway. He wasn’t there, so I left the envelope on top with a short note:
I can’t take this.
Please don’t do this again. — Maya
I told myself I’d withdraw, go back to the warehouse full-time, save up, and maybe finish my degree later. It hurt, but at least I wouldn’t sell out my parents’ memory.
That night, I couldn’t sleep.
I kept replaying the note:
Around 2 a.m., I finally opened my laptop and searched the janitor’s name.
