He came in and closed the door behind him, then practically collapsed into the seat on the other side of my desk.
“Mark, what’s wrong?” I asked. I normally referred to him as ‘Sir’ now, but we had decided that whenever we were at work or in public I’d just call him ‘Mark’ in case someone else overheard.
He waited a minute before answering, collecting his thoughts. When he spoke, it was almost like a whisper, nothing like the confident, deep voice I was used to.
“My father’s disinherited me.”
“Oh my God, that’s terrible!”
“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t care if it was just that. He’s also removing me from the board and getting rid of Teach the Children.”
I immediately knew this was really what was upsetting Mark.
“What? How can he do that? I thought you had complete control over the charity.”
“I thought so too. It turns out that’s not actually true. All of the money to start it up was originally in my trust fund, my father had to sign off on it to sign it over into my name. I sent him the paperwork and his lawyers told me they had been signed and filed. Today the lawyer told me that was a lie. Technically the charity operated out of the trust, so it’s still in my father’s control up until his death, as the trusts are set up so that they can be collapsed and rescinded.”
“What the hell? Is the lawyer allowed to just lie to you like that?”
“Since he was my father’s lawyer and not mine, apparently it’s fine. Completely fine. I don’t even... I don’t know what I’m going to do. He could have done anything else. I didn’t give a shit about the inheritance. I could make my own way in the world. The company doesn’t really mean anything to me. I’m proud of the work I do for it of course, but that’s it. But the charity, that’s a low blow. Teach the Children is my baby. I’m so God damned proud of those kids, so proud of what everyone working there does. I can’t believe my father would stoop so low to take the one thing he controls that I value more than everything else he owns. Actually, correct that, I can believe it. I can absolutely believe it.”
I could tell as he spoke that Mark was going from shocked to angry. The determination, the confidence was back in his voice, and I was glad to hear it.
“We’re going to find a way to get the charity back, Mark,” I told him.
“You know what Caroline? You’re right. We absolutely are.”
“Tell me what you need me to do. I’ll do anything to help us get the charity back. There has to be something.”
“You’re right, there has to. I don’t know what it is yet, I have no idea, but we will find it. We’ll find something. We have to.”
Making plans to meet that night in Mark’s office, he left mine and went back to his own. Finding that I couldn’t concentrate on my work, I decided to go down the street and grab a coffee from the place I liked. I sat at the table against the window, watching people go by and thinking about what Mark had told me. I felt absolutely devastated for him. It wasn’t fair at all what his father had done. That charity was what Mark lived for, he cared so incredibly much about what they were doing. To take it away from his was cruel, it was then that I realized just to what extent Mark’s father was angry at Mark no longer taking the abuse anymore.
I spent the afternoon wondering what we could possibly do to get the charity back. It was so important to Mark, it was so important to all of the employees and volunteers of the charity, and of course to the hundreds of kids that were helped directly because of what Mark did every single year. I didn’t know what was coming. I didn’t know what we were going to do.
What I did know was that we were going to do something. I knew deep down that I would fight as hard as I could, do everything I could to make sure that Mark’s father didn’t win, that he wouldn’t manage to punish Mark for daring to stand up to abuse. I knew exactly what Mark had gone through in daring to cut ties with his family, to move away from that forever, and I knew how hard it was. Now I was going to help him through it.
To Be Continued...