I Had To Protect My Little Bro From Our Criminal Dad
Hello, my name is Fiona, I’m 19 and the life of my family changed because of my father. In the end, I had to testify against him in court... and to be honest, I don’t regret it.
My Father had always been a great man. He treated my Mom like a queen and spent a lot of time with me and my brother, Jeffrey. He always took pride in his work, so when he lost his job, it was like he also lost a big part of himself. He began to drink a lot, and it was painful to see him like that, but it became even worse when he started to gamble all of our money away, hoping to win big. All of us tried to help him, especially Mom - he never wanted her to work, because he wanted her to just enjoy life, but she was forced to find a job. Dad was making promises to us every day, but, of course, he always broke them and went straight back to drinking and gambling.
Because of this, we went almost completely broke and we desperately needed money. So my Dad did something horrible - he found his old pals from school, who were involved in some... shady business. I can't say what it was exactly, but needless to say, it was illegal. As soon as money started coming in, Dad changed back to his old confident self, but of course Mom wasn’t happy about it at all, she tried to talk with him, but Dad wouldn’t listen, because he thought that it was a good solution to our problems.
We tolerated it and, of course, I didn’t know that much at first, but it all changed once Dad tried to make Jeffrey a part of it. You see, Jeffrey has always looked up to Dad. He taught Jeffrey everything he knew and he was a great friend to him. So of course when Dad asked Jeffrey to help, Jeffrey instantly agreed. He simply couldn’t even imagine that Dad could do anything wrong. Often Dad or Jeffrey would come home incredibly late, and the worst part was that they were enjoying whatever they’d been doing. All those late evenings I was listening to how Mom was sobbing silently, and she could barely look at Dad or Jeffrey when they got home. She tried to act like everything was normal between them, but she had this sickly and worried facial expression all the time. I was begging my Father to stop, because at this point, he didn’t even try to find a normal job, but he was always saying that everything would be fine and that I shouldn’t worry.
I was incredibly scared for Mom, and especially Jeffrey, because he was only fifteen and didn’t even understand what he was doing. He could have ruined his whole life. I loved my Dad but he was a different man now. So I did something drastic - I went to the police and told them everything I knew - the names of my Father’s “friends” and what they were doing. I didn’t say anything about Jeffrey because I wanted to protect him. I really didn’t want to do that - I still loved Dad, but I was simply afraid of what would happen next.After a long trial, which I didn't play a big part in, because the police had already been making a case against them for a long time, my Father was put in jail. It wasn’t a long time, less than a year, but needless to say it shook our family to the core. Mom didn’t get better in any way, in fact, she got worse. She was thinking about leaving Dad for good. She spent a lot of time working so our family would have just enough money to get by, even with me finding a part time job. But the worst thing happened to Jeffrey. He hated me for betraying Dad. He didn’t even consider me his sister anymore. He thought that everything my Father did was right, so…(sigh) he continued to do what he did with our Father.
This basically meant that everything I’d done to save our family was completely meaningless. I tried to talk with him but he refused to answer. He would ignore me or look at me like I was the worst human in history. There was only one person who could help - my Father, so I actually had to go and visit him.I hadn't done that yet, and I don’t know why - was it because I hated him or because I was scared he would hate me. Especially because nobody else visited him. Mom couldn’t force herself to see his face and Jeffrey was underage, but they talked on the phone often. So I made an appointment and after a few days I was there. My heart was beating like crazy and I was sweating. And then I saw my Father. He was looking at me with a smile, but at the same time there were tears in his eyes. At first we just sat there silently, unable to say a single word to each other. Finally Dad started talking, and he was apologizing for everything he had done...文本并非一一对应，且不完整(我没有全文)，仅供参考阅读
LearnAndRecord
2015年2月8日
2019年12月2日
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