I had resigned myself to the fate of being a poor man with barely enough money to afford a decent car when I came across something I thought my father sold a long time ago.
That gift led me to the mountains, where the truth about my family was revealed by a stranger.
The rain was relentless that evening, drumming on the roof like a mournful echo.
I sat in my living room slash dining room trying to piece together an old clock I’d found at a yard sale.
I was just about to call it a night when I decided to step outside to take out the trash.
Two years had passed since my dad Robert’s death, but the ache felt fresh every day. The evening was unusually quiet except for the hum of crickets that filled the air, broken only by the distant rustle of leaves in the wind.
But as I turned toward the yard, my heart almost stopped. The little workshop attached to my house was my escape, a distraction from the suffocating reality of my life since Dad’s death, but right then it was giving me heart palpitations…
I wiped my hands on my jeans and blinked several times, convinced my eyes were playing tricks on me.
My breath hitched. Parked in the yard in front of the small workshop I had inherited, glistening in the rain under the porch light, was Dad’s classic 1967 Mustang!
My heart pounded! It couldn’t be.
Dad had insisted that he sold it years ago—at least, that’s what he said—before he vanished. Then we received an anonymous video two years ago where he told us to move on because if we were watching the clip, he was dead. But he gave no clear explanations for his disappearance four years before.
The car looked immaculate like it had been freshly restored and just rolled out from a showroom!
I hesitated, then gripped the handle.
The door creaked open, and the smell of leather and engine oil hit me like a flood of memories! Inside, the dashboard was pristine. That’s when I saw it: a GPS mounted neatly on the dash.
I pressed a button, and a single saved location popped up.
My hands trembled as my fingers brushed against the leather steering wheel before I noticed the glove compartment was slightly open. Inside was a folded note. My late father’s handwriting was unmistakable…
It read: “Follow the path in the GPS, Danny.
It’s time.”
My knees buckled, and I sank into the driver’s seat. This wasn’t possible! But the hum of the rain and the steady rhythm of my heartbeat told me it was real.
Dad had left this for me. Swallowing my doubts and intrigued by the note, I started the engine, the growl of the Mustang filling the night.
As I followed the directions, being in the car reminded me of another sorrow I was still struggling with after losing my father. My mother, Helen, and older brother, Greg, had barely grieved Dad’s death.
As much as it pained me, my mother had managed to move on quickly as if my father’s death had been a minor inconvenience.
My brother, on the other hand, wasn’t any better. He was a smug opportunist who seized control of the successful family business within weeks of losing our father!
I was left to pick up whatever scraps I could to survive on my own, hence the little workshop with the tiny house attached. We barely spoke, my mother and brother.
She favored Greg because he was more like her, and I was too much like my father.
My mom and dad’s marriage was arranged, and while he grew to love her, she never felt the same. They were supposed to have one child, and so she considered my birth a mistake, and she resented me for it. We didn’t have much to say to each other, I thought, as I continued following the GPS.
The GPS led me out of town and into the remote mountains, the rain tapering off as I climbed higher.
Each twist and turn of the road felt surreal, like I was chasing a ghost. The farther I went, the more uneasy I became.
What if this was some cruel joke? What if the car had been planted there to mess with me?
But every time doubt crept in, I thought of Dad’s handwriting and his unshakable confidence.
Finally, the GPS announced, “You’ve arrived at your destination on the left.” I pulled into a clearing, my headlights illuminating a sprawling, unfinished house. It stood like a monument to a dream half-built. My throat tightened.
It was beautiful—wooden beams framed against the starlit sky, with a wide porch overlooking the forest.
“Hello?” I called out, stepping cautiously onto the porch.
The door creaked open, and a woman appeared, her silver hair catching the light.
She looked at me with a mix of recognition and sadness.
“You must be Daniel,” she said softly, her voice carrying a warmth that immediately put me at ease.
“Who are you?” I asked, my guard still up.
“My name is Clara,” she said, stepping aside to let me in. “Your father and I were… close, once.”
I blinked, stunned. Dad had never mentioned anyone named Clara.
Over tea in a cozy sitting room that seemed at odds with the unfinished state of the house, Clara told me her story.
She and Dad had been sweethearts long before he met Mom.
Life had taken them in different directions, but they had reconnected years later. When Dad saw how Mom and Greg were treating me, he began to plan.
“He knew they’d strip you of everything if they had the chance, and in his later years, he wasn’t that sharp anymore and didn’t have the energy to prepare a will,” she said, her eyes brimming with empathy.
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