Heart-Shaped Hack(43)
“And when it’s time to go, you move on? From the town and from them?”
“In the past ten years, I’ve asked two of them to come with me. They both declined. My lifestyle is not for everyone.”
Kate remained silent. If he were to ask, would she be willing to follow him wherever it was he wanted her to go?
“It doesn’t mean I love any less fiercely,” he said.
Her heart fluttered at the mention of love. How would it feel to be loved by Ian? To hear him utter those words to her?
“You said you didn’t really have any family to speak of. What happened to them?”
“I don’t have a lot of contact with my mom. She’s not really interested in my whereabouts and doesn’t know much about my adult life. She’s always been somewhat distant. I’m an only child, so I guess she never really took to parenting.”
“What about your dad?”
“My dad was wonderful. He was as warm as she was cold. He worked long hours at an office job so my mom could stay home with me, but she left me to my own devices most of the time, and once I started school she disengaged even more. She never showed up for things a parent was supposed to show up for, but my dad always did. He’d take off work and would be sitting right in the front row of my school program or award ceremony. When I got a little older and started playing sports, he never missed a game.”
Kate’s heart broke for him. Her parents had always been there for her and Chad, cheering on their accomplishments and showing their support. Her mother had taken things one step further, acting as homeroom mother several years in a row for both her and Chad. Diane was the kind of parent who volunteered to bake five dozen cupcakes for the bake sale or sew costumes for the school play.
“My dad’s the one who introduced me to computers. He was fairly technical and had always been interested in programming. He had an old Commodore computer in the basement, and he used a textbook to show me how to write programs for it. I was only twelve, but it didn’t take long before I’d surpassed everything he taught me, and he was amazed at what I could make that computer do. I was fourteen when we started accessing the Internet from home via dial-up, and my dad and I spent hours online. It was like a whole new world had opened up for me. For him too, although in a vastly different way.”
Ian seemed lost in thought for a moment. “As I got older, I realized he hated his job and that the thing he wanted most was to be independently wealthy. My mom rode him pretty hard—nothing he did was ever good enough—and it was no secret that he didn’t like his boss. He wanted desperately to be a self-made man, but he could never figure out how to make it happen. Though he should have been, he wasn’t suspicious about the financial opportunities he found on the Internet, and he fell victim to an online pyramid scheme. It was fairly sophisticated and nearly impossible to identify it as a scam, and he lost everything he had. But worse than that was the blow to his pride. I remember hearing my parents fight, massive screaming arguments, my mom yelling about how foolish he’d been. They argued all the time after that, especially about money. About six months later, when I was at school and my mom was out, he came home from work and left the car running when he shut the garage door.”
Kate’s eyes filled with tears. “I don’t know what to say, Ian. I’m so sorry. It sounds like he was a wonderful person.”
“It’s okay, sweetness,” he said soothingly. “The story ends well, I promise. After my dad died, my mom had to get a job and she was just so angry all the time. She couldn’t stand the sight of me on that computer, so I moved it into my bedroom and the two of us went our separate ways even though we lived under the same roof. I was lucky though, because I had an advisor in high school who’d picked up on the fact that I didn’t have any parental involvement when it came to planning for college. She’s the one I credit for helping me gain admission to MIT, which is not an easy thing to achieve even when you’re a 4.0 student like I was. I’d always shown a strong aptitude for math and science, so she made sure that everything I did from tenth grade on would benefit me during the admission process, whether it was encouraging me to sign up for extracurricular activities or asking my teachers for letters of recommendation. She knew I had no money for college but assured me that MIT had a great financial-aid program and that if I got in, she’d help me with the paperwork. I took every AP class available and several at the local community college so I could start earning credit while I was still in high school. When it came time to write my admissions essay, I made sure it would pull on the heartstrings of every person who read it. I spared no detail about my dad because I’d already figured out that playing upon the sympathies of the admissions board was just another way of identifying their weakness and using it to my advantage. No one was more excited when I got into MIT than my advisor.”
“Do you stay in touch?”
“I send her an e-mail every now and then. I wonder sometimes if she’s ever figured out where the extra money in her bank account comes from.”
“You put money in her bank account?” Kate loved that.
“I can tell by her average balance that she needs it, so a few times a year I make a deposit and make sure it can’t be traced back to me.”
“Your dad would be so proud of who you’ve become and the things you’ve accomplished.”