Money stayed tight. Dad glued his boots, stretched dinners, and once split his only sandwich after I caught him pretending he’d eaten.
Whenever I asked why he worked so much, he kissed my head. “Because you’re worth every sore muscle, Daddy’s Bug.”
Dad left college the next week.
I promised him a home, a vacation, and quiet Sundays.
Then cancer took him eight months after his diagnosis.
***
At Dad’s apartment, I dumped the grocery bag onto the kitchen table.
Mr. Lewis stayed by the door.
“Don’t explain anything for him,” I said.
Birthday cards spilled across the table.
Then cancer took him.
I opened one with a cartoon ladybug on the front. Mom had written, “I hope she has a wonderful fifth birthday. Tell her I think about her.”
There was no “I love you” and no request to call.
Every card was addressed to Dad, and every message spoke about me as if I belonged to someone else.
“You can stop,” Mr. Lewis said.
“No. I need the whole truth.”
Under the cards sat canceled tuition checks dated after Mom disappeared.
There was no “I love you.”
The first equaled nearly three months of our old rent. More followed, covering almost two years.
I remembered canned soup, my patched coat, and the night Dad turned a power outage into a camping game.
“He quit school and paid for hers?”
Mr. Lewis nodded. “He’d promised before you were born. He thought stability might bring her back.”
I stared at Dad’s signature, written by the hand that packed my lunches and filled out every school form.
“She took his money and built another family.”
I remembered canned soup
“He paid the tuition directly.”
“That doesn’t make it better.”
“No,” he said. “It doesn’t.”
His answer stopped me.
He wasn’t trying to polish the truth.
I searched the bag.
At the bottom was a wall calendar rolled into a tube.
“He paid the tuition directly.”
Several dates were circled in red.
They matched the postmarks on Mom’s cards and the dates of the tuition checks.
Beside my fifth birthday, Dad had written four words.
“Wait one more week.”
I touched the faded ink.
“He was waiting for her to call.”
Dad had written four words.
Mr. Lewis looked toward Dad’s empty chair. “He kept track of every contact.”
“Why didn’t he tell me?”
“I think the answer is in the letter.”
A thick envelope rested beneath the calendar.
My name was written across it.
I sat down before opening it.
“Why didn’t he tell me?”
“Daddy’s Bug,
“If you’re reading this, then I ran out of time, Simone.
Your mother contacted me six months after she left. She said she wasn’t ready to come home, but she wanted to finish school. I thought that if she had a degree and a stable life, she might return ready to be your mother.
She didn’t.”
I stopped reading.
“I ran out of time, Simone.”
My throat tightened.
Mr. Lewis pushed a glass of water toward me.
I ignored it.
“Years later, I asked whether she wanted you during school breaks. She declined. I asked about regular visits. She said her life was too unsettled.
When she remarried, she agreed to a court order giving me sole custody.”
My throat tightened.
“She sent cards sometimes, but she never asked to speak to you.
I told myself I was protecting your heart. Maybe I was protecting mine too. I couldn’t stand the thought of watching you beg someone to choose you.
You had a right to know when you were old enough.
I kept waiting for the right day.
Then I ran out of days.”
I lowered the letter.
