「故事·听力」I Answered My Dad's Phone And It Killed Our Family
I Answered My Dad's Phone And It Killed Our Family
This is Evan and right now, everything in his life is falling apart. His family, his studies, everything...and all of it happened just because he helped his father at his work. He wishes now that he could just travel back in time or erase what he found out about him from his memory.
It was hard to find anyone who didn’t admire Evan’s father. Everyone did. His mother, Evan himself, his colleagues and partners. You see, he was a rich businessman with his own company. But he started from NOTHING. So of course, it’s hard NOT to admire a man who achieved everything on his own and still managed to be a loving husband and father.
And he totally wanted to be like him. Evan didn’t want to take what he had for granted; he wanted to be as hard-working as his dad was. And his parents knew this. So his mom came up with the idea of asking his dad to let him be an unpaid intern at his company during the summer, to learn the ropes. Evan loved the idea, and he thought his dad would love it too.
But he turned out to be so...hesitant about it. Like, he said that he wasn’t sure if Evan would be needed there and said that he should enjoy his life while he’s still young.
Anyway, he and his mom finally persuaded his dad to let him be an intern, and he worked very hard to help with everything he could. And soon, everyone at the office started to like him so much, saying how much he resembled his father with his industriousness. And he could see that his father was very proud of him.
“I passed the test!” he thought to himself, and it made him work even harder. He knew that he was working for his own future. But...soon something happened. You see, his father was very strict about separating his career and his personal life. He would never talk about his work while at home, because he was fully concentrating on his family, being a perfect father and a perfect husband.
One day his father went out to some meeting, and he was supposed to take Evan home that day. Evan thought he was busy, so he decided to just wait for him in his office, since it was unlocked and he had been in there many times before.
While he was waiting there, the phone rang. It was in his desk drawer, so he decided to ignore it. But it kept calling again and again, like every 3 minutes, and he got tired of it, so he decided to answer and to say that his dad was away, thinking that maybe it was his mom.
He opened the drawer and looked at the phone, and it was...weird. You see, his father had two phones. One was his personal phone, and the other his work phone. And this phone...well, Evan had never seen that one before.
He answered the phone and a woman’s voice said: “Hey...want to come over today, darling?”
He quickly turned the phone off. It wasn’t his mom.
He didn’t know what to do or think, so he just left the office and never came back. His mom tried to ask him what had happened, but he just couldn’t tell her. And he knew that his father knew, but he just acted like nothing happened. That was the reason he hadn’t wanted him to work for him…
From that point on Evan avoided his parents as much as he could, because it was too painful for him to see them talking to each other and smiling. And he couldn’t just tell his mom, because he had found out about it by snooping around. He started to hate his dad, and even his mom for not seeing what was happening.
One day, Evan’s mom confronted him for avoiding them and spending a lot of time out of the house. She probably thought that he’d picked up bad habits or something. He tried to explain, but she was worried about him, and started to check his bags and everything else for things like cigarettes.
His dad just kept silent, because he knew what was really happening and why Evan was acting that way. But he didn’t say anything, and Evan could feel his respect for him dwindling away completely. He was so angry, so one day he just said: “ask DAD what's going on.” There was silence for a long time. Then they left and went into their room, and he had to listen to them shouting at each other for the whole night.
And it was his fault, of course...was it bad that they were living a lie if they were happy? Then they tried to act normal, like nothing happened, but he saw how everything had changed.
After a few months, his mom said that they were getting a divorce, and she didn’t really explain, because she knew that he knew.
Now they live separately, and Evan lives with his mom, and she’s very unhappy. His dad called him recently and told him that he’d done the right thing by telling her the truth. He also said that he couldn’t work normally after the divorce and that he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to keep the company.