Morning all. I am strangely wide awake this morning. My eyes popped open a few minutes before my alarm and despite not turning on the coffee pot I feel as though I have already had my morning cup. It is a strange feeling but I am going to run with it. So timers set and lets kick off this Tuesday morning.
Not entirely certain where this is going. I like the set up but no idea what the story would be. But that is okay. The point is to get into a writing frame of mind and now I am.
Tuesday, August 4th: It was not entirely unexpected.
It was not entirely unexpected. Alexander had been threatening to cut him off for years. Charlie smiled to himself, amazed at how much relief he felt in the action finally being taken. Alexander never liked him. He faked it a bit until he married Charlie’s mom and then things steadily got just a little bit…colder.
There was resentment from Alexander as though Charlie were an unexpected burden he was surprised to be saddled with. Charlie wasn’t surprised. His treatment was only slightly colder than what he gave his own biological kids. They lived with Alexander’s first wife and when he had to send child support every month Charlie knew to avoid him. Alexander was generally resentful of any dollar he had to spend on anyone who wasn’t Alexander.
When his youngest turned eighteen, Alexander held a small party to celebrate no longer having to pay child support. From what Charlie heard, he hadn’t bothered to send a birthday present to Daniel.
‘Not that Daniel was expecting it.’ He saw what happened with his brother two years prior.
Seeing George’s eighteenth and knowing he was only four years younger than Daniel was a wakeup call for Charlie. He planned ahead. George and Daniel had their mother to help them if they needed it, but his mother was still married to Alexander and he would not let any support come his way once he turned eighteen.
He made his peace with that.
He was already working odd jobs as he knew anything that wasn’t actually required he would have to pay himself. Seeing George, he doubled down on his after school work. He took any odd job he could and had his grandfather help him open his own bank account. He wasn’t comfortable keeping extra cash around and didn’t want Alexander to know about a bank account.
Once it was set up he maintained everything online so no paperwork came to the house. Slowly he built his savings while trying to plan what he was going to do. When his grandfather became sick, and knew he wasn’t going to recover, he began slowly transferring small sums of cash each month into Charlie’s account, not wanting it to be appropriated by Alexander for household expenses.
When he died, two months before Charlie’s eighteenth birthday, there wasn’t much left. It was all left to Charlie though and there was a clause specifying that it wasn’t for household expenses. Alexander groaned but given the timing, he knew the will wouldn’t make it through the probate system before Charlie’s birthday.
Ten til Midnight 