My father was a rotten crook and I the youngest of three. That is to say that I did not meet him until I was old enough to remember it. I met him for the second time at four and then the third at six. That time, he brought his friend Mr. Decker. That is what Mom told me to call him, and that is what I did until he laughed in my face at the name.

The man told me to call him Theo instead, and while I think he was shooting for the kindness of informality, it started him off on the wrong foot. I did not, and do not, like to be laughed at. From then on, like a cat in a family full of admirers, he liked me best as I liked him least of all. He never followed me around or shot for my attention, but if I was in the room with Sherry and Isak, my two siblings, he would ask for my opinion on questions already answered by them.

By the fourth time we met, he was left alone with us for half a business week. Two-point-five days, but as a child I wanted to make it sound bigger because truthfully it felt like a lifetime. He asked me and my siblings if our father had ever tried to feed us sugar bread, a combination of sugar and bread as the name suggests, then attempted to feed it to us himself when we said no. He also fed us macaroni and cheese from a box he brought with him from America. Looking back, he was trying so hard to make us like him. It's a wonder he liked me best when I hated him.

Years and years ago, my father told me I was just like my mother, a neutral statement. Once, as an insult, she told me I was just like my father, and once as a compliment my sister told me I was like Theo. He was a drug addict who never touched heroin. That is a compliment for the ages when it comes to that man. He really thought he cleaned himself up, if that is what the book is to say. I say, thank God he had enough money to do something other than sniff glue. (In my head, I can hear him telling me, "Yeah, Jacus, because your mom gave you money to smoke weed," and in a taunting tone, too). The man had enough brain cells, but that is still no reason to lose some. He did, however, on my nineteenth birthday teach me how to do "whippits," drunk and in a fit of you wanna see what your Pops and I used to do in the good old days.

There is a reason I didn't write a foreword for the first book; I did not wish to spoil the audience to him before he could even share. However, now that we both know some of him, I can write a foreword to this: this is the man who my father loved and who left that love story to me; this is the story of my father's lover, Mr. Decker.

The first thing you need to know about Theo is that at age thirteen he was breaking into houses and stealing from them. Just random people for no good reason other than his friend was doing it and he wanted in.

Second. Well, I cannot tell if he did smoke at that age or if he just hung out with that bad apple he always talked about, but who cares. He was exposed to smoking, theavery, and crime before the painting. Theo says so himself, even if he doesn't acknowledge it for the rest of the book. This section isn't for him—he knew this—but for my audience who used to be his.

The third is not about Theo, but my father. Crook, addict, teller of tall tales. So much a teller in fact that when first shown a photo of us, myself only six months old, Theo believed us to be made up, a fake little family. He gave me a book where he wrote that, never wrote a book where he admitted to being wrong on that front.

The fourth is about me: I listened to all of my fathers tall tales, sometimes his phone calls, definitely his talks behind closed doors. Every minute I spent with him I soaked up.

In the wake of the novel, The Goldfinch as titled by him, I was given praise for answering a long awaited question, of what happened to the stolen painting: how did it get taken, by whom, how was it actually found, why was it returned. People said I gave interesting answers, too, but I didn't really do that. I simply released a book when the consequences no longer had bearing on anyone.

At thirty-six, when he first confessed to me that he too kept diaries as a child, then later as an adult, he would have been in trouble for what many call an action done when he was thirteen—an action he continued to believe he was taking through age twenty-three. That day, Theo showed me the book with a sworn promise on my part not to tell my father until he had the chance to do it first. That was the trick, my father may forgive me for my writings if he knew his lover had done it first, but he would be angry at me for breaking a secret. A Catch 22 from him.

"What are you gonna do about it," I asked Theo, "sit on his lap and beg forgiveness?"

"Probably," Theo laughed. He studied me for a second before saying, "You could too, you know."

"Why do I have to beg? You go tell him what you've done."

That's when he lied to me, one of the few times I have undeniable proof of: "You see, I never wrote about him doing anything illegal. Except shoplift, which the statute of limitations has run out on." I have a whole book calling him a liar.

But his lies didn't get either of us out of the shit that day or now. The difference is, at 13 years old I was too old to sit on my fathers lap. It was really gross that Theo would do it. Our mother never sat in any man's lap, not at parties or dinners. I would grow up to do the same. But on that day, I went over to where my father was sat on the couch and started to cry, guilty and ashamed and absolutely furious that I felt any guilt at all. He scooped me up, all 105 pounds and deposited me on his lap.

He asked me what was wrong, and Theo left the room. Good. I wanted him to be anywhere but with me and my father.

I tried to answer his question, but I hadn't planned on crying. In fact, I was still in shock by myself crying for any reason other than the plan to get out of trouble. And still, I hadn't done that since I was really young, young enough not to be embarrassed by crying. My father tried to give me a hug, and I pushed him away.

"Oh," he said, "You're mad at me." I was! I really, really was! He asked me why I was mad, and I shook my head like a child. I guess I was a child.

"Żabciu," Froggie it meant. When I was little I had big, wide-set eyes and liked to play in the rain. After that, he never called me another name. If my life were a sitcom with an episode teaching those pesky teens a lesson, if I were to get arrested, he would call me Żabciu while bailing me out.

That is to say two things: 1.) He wouldn't actually be that mad if I were to get arrested (Remember, no snitching. Do not be rat), and 2.) The name meant nothing to me as a comfort, especially when I chose not to make it one.

"Come on, look at me," He said gently, "Are you mad at me because I'm mad at you." I must've done something to the affirmative because he continued our one-sided conversation, "Am never more mad at you than I love you." He pet my hair, and I let him, still crying. "You know, Potter"—even to me, he called him that—"wrote his little journals."

"You know about the book?" I asked more shocked than angry, though I should've been angry. Theo was allowed to write.

"The book. No," Dad was amused. "Hundred little books. Okay, maybe only twenty, but Potter wrote many. He did not know, but I read some. Had to make sure he would not be unhappier than was. No, no, Do not bristle. Did not read yours on purpose, promise. You wrote in your school book, thought it was homework assignment."

"You kept reading past it!" Now I was done crying. "You read all of it."

"No, Did not. Read only what I needed to."

Oh, I was pissed. At that, I fought my way off his lap. "You didn't need to read any!" I was furious. I was yelling. That was the thing about my father, he always let me yell.

"Here," he said, still calm. "We make deal. You change names in booklet, little details, too. I do not want things traced back to me or your Mama. You do not want things traced back to us either, no?"

I shook my head. I didn't.

"Then we pretend book is fiction, yes? Am not Boris. Am Barry the great. No, don't like that one. Fine. You pick name. Give Potter bad name. You want to, yes?"

I did, and that was that. And that was my book. Theo was Gertrude, Dad was Barry, Mom was Dad, and the twins were something else entirely. This book, however, is no work of fiction any more so than the Goldfinch. If anything, it may be more truthful.

A little under two years into knowing Theo, He decided to take us to America with him. He was thirty years old and finally had his own two bedroom apartment. By that, I mean we stayed in a hotel. I was seven, and we had spent enough time together by then that I no longer counted his visits as times we 'met,' just times he stayed with us. Most of this I remember only from my diary, back in the days where I hadn't started hiding names, but also hadn't learned to spell "peepee," just sound it out phonetically as "peap." I spent at least fifteen minutes trying to figure out what "peap" meant. For the sake of pride in the use of my time, I'll tell you: I peed the hotel bed I shared with Sherry. She had not woken, but I did. Knowing exactly what to do, I skipped over where my mother and Isak were sharing their bed and left the room with no key and no knowledge that I needed one. I knocked on the door across the hall at what must have been somewhere between three and six am because when I knocked, they were inside.

Dressed only in his pajama pants, Theo opened the door and ushered me in to my father where he lay under the sheets. Early in the AM's and waking him from his sleep, I told him what I had done. From there, he grabbed the spare key, took me back into my mother's room and showed me how he fixed it. He picked up Sherry, only ten and still able to sleep through anything, and deposited her next to Mom and Isak. Then, he took me back into his room and set me between him and Theo. I remember sleeping well that night.

The next morning, having been woken up by her loud banging on the door, I heard my mother curse him out in Swedish. How could he be so irresponsible to let her worry that I had wandered off in the night when I was just in his room, no matter the fact that I had wandered out of her room of my own accord.

The story, bland as it may be, is about my father in whole. It was so him; fixing a mess, making sure I watched to see it was possible, being slightly careless at the idea that other people cared about the whereabouts of others, and, of course, always staying at least a hallway away.

That wasn't the story I set out to tell with our trip to America. We did so much more. I met Mr. Hobie who set me down into the workshop and told me how nice Theo was then laughed when I talked back on how Theo was, in the words of my childhood diary, a poophead. I'm sure I didn't say those words to Mr. Hobie. I knew well enough to be polite to a man who fed me cookies. I met Pippa who sang with the three of us and taught Isak how to play the flute. She was pregnant at that time some months in, and she was so happy to be around children, excited for motherhood and wanting so badly to be ready when that time came. I only met her a few times, but I can tell you she was ready.

On that trip, Everett was my favorite. After all that time, after moving on from Pippa, after being in a relationship of his own, Theo still hated that man. I didn't know why at the time—not that he ever had a good reason—only that he cast Everett dirty looks behind his back and cast me one when I asked him to keep talking. To this day, I would choose to talk to Everett about whatever it means to be a music librarian over Theo; Given the chance to converse with a dead man for the good of science, I would instead ask Everett about that modern pop music of 2013 and suffer through my father's hatred of Ariana Grande to hear about the cataloging and appreciation of music from the expert in that field.

There's something else in my possession that Theo didn't necessarily leave me but that I didn't take either. My mother brought me along to help Pippa clean out his apartment after he died. Sherry came too, claiming to want antiques, but I know she just wanted his reproduction of The Goldfinch. She knew parts of the story as well as I did. I wish Isak could've been there, if just to alleviate my boredom. He seems like the type of man to love digging through a dead man's home, but apparently not when it was Theo's. Personally, I just came to support my mother.

However, in that, we found his diaries, just as many as father told me he had, at least twenty from when he was little, at least fifty by then. At least that's what it appeared to be. After Sherry dropped it in my then empty bag meant for stuff I wanted to keep, I counted out forty-seven. This is how I know that more happened than me peeing myself and pissing off Theo via annoying Everett.

However, as an adult, I think Everett felt like Pippa, ecstatic to have a child following him around so close to having his own, ecstatic to feel like a kid liked him. However, I'm not sure if I was that subtle in why I chose to follow him. If anything, I think he may have been happy just to see Theo suffer from watching me take a liking to him.

Looking through his diaries, Theo felt the same. He knew immediately why I took an interest in Everett, and he knew that Everett enjoyed his suffering. I'm glad to know my plans worked. He also wrote something explicit about my father eight pages later, however, so maybe he got his revenge on me just decades later.

Here's how Theo recounts it:

April 2020

Unlike the first time I found Boris in America, it wasn't December. However, it was still snowing. I can still hear the little boy from Vegas sounding like a vampire as he says "Ahck, hate snow." He hated the heat too despite dressing in all black in the sun. He hated a lot of things, and tonight that apparently included me. He said it over a bottle of vodka, and I couldn't help but kiss him.

Gone are the days of our youth where some nights I could not stand to look him in the eye. That being said, he pushed me off and swore at me, in many languages and all in sayings I had repeated enough to translate on mention. He stopped, looked over at Maksim, I believe was his name, said "Fuck you," and kissed me back.

Thank you to Maksim for whatever he said because it was almost a decent kiss, drunk off his ass and still talking as he did it.

Earlier in the day, We met at the airport. Boris came with a child in each hand while Sherry ran ahead only to fake me out and hug Pippa instead. She had never met Pippa. Beyond any doubt, these are Astrid's children. It's still a wonder why Pippa came. Maybe to calm me, maybe to leave Everett alone to talk to Hobie; probably, It would suit me better keep up with what he's doing more, at least when he's within sight. For all that my eyes can glare, what he says goes in one ear and out the other.

What Pippa said, and what I am now choosing to take at face value, is how excited she was to meet Boris again. She loved him at the engagement party, even if she hated me for my actions there. She loved hearing about him when I started calling her a year after everything went down. Her mood only started to turn against him when I told her the wife and kids were real. Pippa's shock was almost as big as mine.

I never told her, but I think she knew we were… together, if that's what we could call it. If she was mad at him, I'm not sure why she wasn't mad at me except. Maybe that she knew I was the other man in most relationships, right down to the woman I lost my virginity to, kind of lost it at least.

Thinking of it now, only hours later, I know why she came; not to get a look over or psych him out, but because she truly thought I would break down, seeing his wife and kids when trying to see him, as if it wasn't my idea for them all to come to New York. But she didn't see how I took a sleeping Isak out of his hands, both of our arms now too full for a hug. No, she was too preoccupied with Sherry, the little asshole, to notice how gently Boris passed Isak while he slept or how he laughed when Jacus stuck his tongue out at me. Rude fucker. For as many grilled cheese sandwiches I made him, that kid still didn't like me.

Astrid, when she came over, looked me up and down and thanked me for carrying her bags before handing me her carry on, making sure it never touched the floor. As a buff former competitive skier, she could easily carry her own bags, but instead she walked to Pippa. I won't lie; I would also have liked to walk to Pippa. Her and Sherry seemed to be having such a good time. I also thought Astrid and Pippa would like each other. At the very least, Kitsey would love Astrid if they were ever to meet.

After baggage claim, we loaded everyone into a cab, one of the minivan types, Jacus in a carseat and the twins in one person or another's lap. Mine, Isak was in mine. Maybe a cab ride wasn't unique, but it was the start of an authentic New York experience.

After four hours, mostly of watching us interact with other people, Theo decided to get wasted, as one does at three o'clock pm.

April 2020

The kids were satiated watching Hobie in the shop and Pippa playing her flute and Everett doing whatever it is he does—mostly nothing. It was hours ago that Boris took the bags to the Marriott suits, all but my overnight bag which I would take over later. It was packed at the door where I saw Astrid watching Pippa as she played Patty Cakes with Sherry, her blonde hair sticking up in seven ponytails from where she broke into my rubber band stach.

Astrid smiled as I leaned back against the door near her and waved over Boris, too, wanting him to look with us.

"Fucking cute kids," He said. "Your Redhead is good, Potter. Makes them mellow for once."

"Sherry did that to her hair on Pippa's watch," I said, long since given up on getting him to call her the right name. "I wouldn't say she's all that calming of a force."

Astrid hummed not bothering to look back at me, "Look at the man though, he looks about to put Jacus asleep."

"No, no. Wait for it. Will turn around in moment. Potter, look away." Boris said so, and I did. "There he comes. Shit eating grin, you see that, my wife?"

"I see it." She turned to me then. "Maybe Theo should leave and we can get him to take a nap."

I turned back. "Come out with us. We don't have to go to Little Poland. It could actually be fun."

"It's three pm," she stated back, her Astrid voice coming out.

"No. No, she cannot leave kids. Learned better than to trust friend of friend. You remember Miami."

"Okay," I said, "Then you watch the kids—" Astrid laughed— "would you like to come out drinking, Astrid?"

"With you? No." She hadn't even looked at me to say it. "Have fun at a bar at three fifteen in the afternoon."

"Little Poland bars are always, what is it Everett says? Poppin'?"

"Shut up about Everett," I said bitterly. Instead of dwelling, I dragged him by the wrist and took him out.

Outside waiting for a cab, he began talking again. He was in the mood to speak, and it had been so long between us that I was in the mood to listen. "You know. Am not being mean to Redhead and Everett—" He slurred through the name—Eevrat—like it meant nothing to him. Always my ally. "I do not trust most to look after my children. Even Gyuri is not allowed."

"Gyuri?" I asked amused, "The man who calls you his brother?"

"Yes. Am not his brother, but even so, cannot always trust brother. Bad influences you know."

"The man sings your praises!" I said, shocked. I would have thought that Boris' vanity alone would make him more than happy to see Gyuri. "He told me that you saved his life on first meeting."

"Is problem!" Boris said, "Not saving life. Do not look at me like that. No smile, Potter. Am happy he's alive. He likes to sing my praises too hard, will tell my children what I did to save him if prompted. Not good for young children."

"What did you do for him," I asked.

"Like I said Potter, not good for young children."

I looked at him again, "Oh, fuck you."

"Children not supposed to have such potty mouth, Potter."

He should have saved his chastisement for someone who cared. Beyond that, I have no clue where he learned the frase "potty mouth." Did he learn it from Astrid who spoke to her children in English as well as Swedish. My heart skipped a beat. Had she said it while washing out Jacus' mouth with soap? Certainly not. Despite first impressions, she would never do something like that to the kids. I might, if they were mine, but that's why I'm no parent.

"Where did you learn that phrase," I started to ask, but as I did, a cab pulled up, and when he pulled me inside, he pulled out a flask, and the next thing I knew, I was wasted.

I'm still drunk writing this, drunk and horny and unable to do anything about it but go to sleep as I am due to the pervasive complication that is whisky dick. It is as if my liver and all other organs are looking at me to say, "This is what thirty looks like." But then again, when I get up off the floor and get into bed, Boris will crawl across the bed and attach himself to my back sucking up my heat as if it belongs to him. That is what thirty is looking like.

Despite all else that I think of him, Theo could write. Alongside all that I think of him, he could also be pretentious. The text above was not the writing of a drunk man. Instead, it is what he wrote the next morning, readjusted, in nicer writing, and with better sentence flow. I know because he left the page he wrote that night with just a big "X" over top.