The video ended with all four kids yelling, “We miss you, Bennett,” while his father stood behind the camera. His stepsister wrote that they had made a new one every evening because the younger kids kept asking why Bennett hadn’t come. On the third night, one of them asked whether they could call him, and their mother finally told them to stop because Bennett “had made his choice.” That confused his stepsister because Bennett hadn’t chosen anything. She asked her father what he meant, and he told her Bennett had decided to spend the summer with me and therefore couldn’t expect to be included in everything their family did. She knew that wasn’t true because she’d been sitting beside Bennett in March when he bought the rash guard specifically for the trip.
I showed Bennett only the first video because I didn’t know what else was on the others. He watched it twice, then asked me to send it to him and went upstairs. His stepsister sent the remaining clips that evening, and in the last one the younger children weren’t holding the sign anymore. Instead, the camera kept recording after everyone thought it had stopped. You could hear Bennett’s stepmother asking why they were still making “these stupid videos” when nobody was ever going to send them. Then his father answered that he’d promised the kids they could make them because it kept them from asking questions. His wife asked why he hadn’t simply told Bennett the truth in the first place.
His answer was quiet, but perfectly clear. He said he’d asked Bennett in May whether he wanted to start living with them full-time once school ended, and Bennett had said no because he wanted to stay near his friends and basketball team. His father said he was tired of “being the optional parent” and wanted Bennett to understand what choosing one household over another actually cost. Then his wife asked, “So there really was room in the beach house?” and he laughed and said, “There was an entire extra bedroom. I just wasn’t rewarding him for choosing Karen.” His thirteen-year-old stepdaughter had recovered that video because she wanted Bennett to know the one thing none of the adults had been willing to tell him: there had always been a room waiting for him.
