Five backpacks by the door.
Five children shouting “Dad!” from different rooms.
We were his kids.
And he was our dad.
The Daughter Who Left
At the cemetery, Michael leaned toward me.
“Christina. Susan came.”
I turned.
She stood alone beneath a red umbrella.
For two years, I had imagined seeing Susan again. I expected anger.
Instead, I felt sadness.
She was only twenty, but her eyes looked exhausted.
I had called her when Thomas died. I never expected her to come.
Yet there she was.
“He was still my father,” she said.
Mara stepped closer.
“That’s all you have to say?”
“He waited for you, Susan,” Michael said. “He sent cards. Called. Left messages.”
Michael’s voice cracked.
“He left that porch light on every single night.”
Pain crossed Susan’s face.
“I did what I thought I had to do.”
I remembered the night she left, one week after her eighteenth birthday.
