I was twenty-seven years old, and yet that night, for the first time in my life, I was truly scared of my Uncle Richard. Since my childhood, he has been one of the people that everyone in our family has trusted. When I was little, he brought me birthday presents, came to my school events and always told me to call him if I ever needed anything. After my father died, those words became even more important to me.
However, over the past year, Richard has changed and started asking unusual questions about my family’s past. Usually I would just laugh and change the subject, but then one day he suddenly asked me, “Emily, are you a virgin?” I thought for a few seconds I heard him wrong. When I asked him what this had to do with him, he immediately changed the subject, but I could not forget that question and every time he called me I felt discomfort.
A few days later, Richard invited me to go with him outside the city to a hotel with a pool to relax a little. Although I hesitated, I eventually agreed because after my father’s death, he often tried to get me out of the house. The hotel was an old but elegant building with a large garden and outdoor pool. At first everything seemed normal, but then Richard began to constantly look at the clock. When I asked him if he was waiting for someone, he answered too quickly, and a few minutes later he approached me and whispered quietly: “After the pool, come up to my room. Room 214.”
I became stiff with fear and bad thoughts, but in the end I still headed there thinking that there might be something important that has to tell me. At 18:55 I was standing in front of room 214. The door wasn’t completely closed, so I gently pushed them and stepped in. My heart began to pound strongly when I saw the scene: the whole bed was covered with dozens of photos from my childhood, school days and college, while large pictures of my mother hung on the wall, and old letters and documents were scattered on the table.
At that moment, Richard entered the room and explained to me that I should not be afraid. He took the old envelope from the table and explained, “Your father made me promise not to give you this until you were twenty-seven.” It turns out that my father had been preparing a special surprise for me in the last months of his life, collecting my photos and memories, and opening a savings account with small payments that had accumulated over the years into enough money to finally realize my dream and open my own photography studio.
I sat on the edge of the bed wiping away the tears and realized the real truth. Richard explained to me that his clumsy question about my status was actually an unskilled attempt to find out if I was building my own life and whether I was making my own decisions. That night, we stayed in the room until midnight, opening my father’s letters, and three months later, I successfully opened my little photo studio, putting on the wall as the first photo of the memory of my father and uncle who believed in me.
I was twenty-seven years old, and yet I was that night
