When the site wrote about the lack of conclusive evidence, I laughed at the names people called my dad, Virginia, and me. Most of them didn’t even make sense, proof conspiracies about the case ran rampant or people just plain hated us.
Overprivileged red necks. (Virginia tossed a 14th century Ming dynasty vase against the butler’s pantry wall at that one.)
Succubi of the South. (Virginia dumped her fresh-squeezed kumquat juice into the pool and booked a four-hour-long, deep-tissue massage at an overnight spa.)
Stock Fraud Barbie. (Virginia legit flipped her shit, binge eating her way through a thousand grams of cheap carbs.)
By the time Hank Prescott had died and the threats grew to the worst they had ever been, I had long since abandoned checking my comments and messages. I still refused to delete my account or set it to private because it felt like admitting defeat.
Didn’t matter either way.
The threats didn’t get to me. Not until Hank died, and I had felt the real-world impact of Dad’s theft and the accusations finally held merit. Angus Bedford’s death came next, and that brought more nasty comments.
I accepted them all as my new normal, occasionally logging on to Insta and searching for pretty words to pass time. But this message took me by surprise. Not because I felt lonely but because her words felt lonelier.
Die. Just die.
The sender hadn’t bothered to put her feed on private or create a fake new profile like some of the others. It was so simple a threat on a rare moment the Winthrop family had left the news cycle, so it made me curious.
Demi Wilson.
18.
Dog lover.
Car lover.
People hater.
A kindred spirit.
I browsed her feed, learned her life, and found one picture I couldn’t forget.
She had her arm around Angus Bedford’s shoulders. They stood in front of a classic car with tools sprawled all over the floor. Rain plastered their hair to their foreheads, but it didn’t faze their goofy smiles.
The caption: I miss my dad something fierce on rainy days. #RIP
The next day, she apologized, told me she’d been drunk, and said she didn’t blame me for my dad’s mistakes. I messaged back a cheesy meme of two stick figure eggs hugging that read, “Apology Egg-ccepted.”
What I really wanted to say was—Forgiving others is a myth. The only prisoner freed when you forgive someone is you.
It didn’t matter if the Winthrop haters ever forgave me, because I would never forgive my family and the way I’d lived a life of privilege, oblivious to the sins that funded it.
I never talked to Demi again, but I checked on her like you would a wild animal in your backyard.
From afar.
Never speaking a word.
Just watching.
Waiting.
Wondering.
Months later, Demi posted her acceptance to Wilton University on her Insta feed. Two weeks later, she added to her Snap story when she received a full-ride scholarship from Wilton, then again when she got a C in Art History and it was rescinded.
I signed her change.org petition, which begged Wilton to change its mind. She had thirty-six signatures excluding my own, none of which did a thing. What she really needed was a wealthy father like mine, or at the very least, Angus Bedford, who had invested a decent chunk in Winthrop Textiles’s college fund before his death.
Each dollar put in would be matched by the company for use on college tuitions of employees and their families. When the company fell, so did the college fund.
My freshman year of college, I barely left my apartment, pigging out on packets of ramen I bought four for a buck at the dollar store down the block. My books landed on the iPhone Dad gifted me ages ago from my library scans. I paid my tuition and a small stipend with the crazy amounts of student loans I had taken out.
Virginia held my trust fund over my head, which meant I was broke, spending more money than I had each year, and taking out student loans to sustain the costs. Broke as I was, I couldn’t let Demi skip college.
I asked Dad’s old fixer to set up the anonymous scholarship fund and applied for a full-time job at the diner.
The double shifts gave me feet and back pain, but they didn’t kill me.
The inflexible work hours forced me to take classes I hated, but they didn’t kill me.
The extra responsibility racked me with anxiety, but it didn’t kill me.
The sleep deprivation made paying attention in class close to impossible, but it didn’t kill me.
The hunger pains bothered me, but they didn’t kill me.
At the end of the day, I didn’t regret paying for Demi.
It was the right thing to do.
I was a hollowed-out tree, long past death, and I had found a way to grow a leaf.
Nothing made me more agitated than talking about Sisyphus with Ben.
Not hunger.
Not poverty.
Not Virginia.
Not Dad.
Not even Nash Prescott.
Ben saw Sisyphus as having been punished, but I knew Sisyphus was smart.
Cunning.
A planner.
Here’s my take: Sisyphus created an empire. He was a human, yet he ruled the winds. He tricked gods and goddesses. Even Death feared him.
Sisyphus wanted his punishment; otherwise, he would have escaped it, too. Sisyphus chose not to, and each day, he got to reach heights no other mortal man could.
Through his punishment, he was the never-ending battle of the sea, the constant rise and fall of the tides, the cycle of the moon and the sun. His punishment immortalized him. Placed him in the company of gods and goddesses. Gave him the power of a god, too.
Ben didn’t see it that way, and no matter how much I wanted to shake him and demand he wake up, I couldn’t. I scrolled through our messages, resisting the urge to run out into the rain and let it drown my screams.
Benkinersophobia: What do you think about regret?
Durga: Regret is endless. That’s why it’s life’s longest punishment. There’s no way to fight it. You just learn to live with it.
Benkinersophobia: Like Sisyphus, destined to carry the boulder for eternity.
Durga: He could stop it if he wanted.
Benkinersophobia: It wouldn’t be a punishment if you can choose when it ends.
Durga: It’s not a punishment. It’s a test. Sisyphus has to prove he is worthy of the gods. By continuing to roll the boulder uphill, he is immortalized, a never-ending cycle, experiencing heights no other mortal has, in a place built by gods for gods. If he beats the test and levels the mountain by chipping a piece off each trip, he tricks Zeus once again. Either way, he has won.
Benkinersophobia: So, why would he choose to roll the boulder instead of leveling the mountain?
Durga: Sometimes, the struggle is important. Struggle changes people more than success.
I’d spent the past two days trying to explain this to Ben, but it was useless. He’d set his mind on condemning himself. I didn’t understand why, and I felt powerless to help him.
I rolled my bottom lip into my mouth, scraping my teeth against it just to feel the bite, wishing I could distract him from his demons. I hoped Ben considered me his escape as much as I considered him to be mine.