Sarah pushes open her father’s bedroom door and enters the room. It’s bright—much brighter than she expected given the news. His beige drapes are open wide, sunlight streaming in. He looks disconcertingly fit as he watches the news in his beige vinyl recliner. A slight yellowish cast to his skin is the only hint of new tumors in his liver. Millie lurks behind Sarah in the hall. She has enough sense—or whatever it is—to allow them time without her. But not for long. Sarah can feel her itching to push in.
“Hello,” her father says. He smiles and grabs the TV remote to lower the volume. His voice is gravely, older than his sixty-seven years. Another hint of what’s to come.
Sarah wills herself across the beige carpet in stocking feet. Millie insists no shoes in the house. The room is too warm and smells of sweaty clothes, slightly yeasty and fecal beneath the floral chemical scent of carpet deodorizing powder. Like being encased in a stuffy cocoon, every noise magnified—each clearing of her father’s throat, the smallest plastic rustle as he shifts in his chair, the rhythmic puffs of Sarah’s own short breaths.
“Hey,” she says softly, stopping short of the hand he offers. She can’t help herself. Even after eighteen years of knowing him, it’s still like greeting an acquaintance, not a father.
Sarah sets down her suitcase (the smallest one she owns—this is to be a speedy trip) and forces herself to kiss his cheek, still surprisingly fleshy and pink. She’s careful not to inhale, as if she might catch his cancer and be extinguished before life can get righted. Like him.
“How was your flight?”
“Uneventful—just the way I like it.” Sarah smooths the beige sateen bedspread and sits on the edge of his bed, powering herself through this—just a conversation right now. Tomorrow is Father’s Day, and then she can fly home. “Jon dropped me off at the airport before work. He sends his love. So do Joe and Missy.”
These last three statements aren’t true, but Sarah accepts that she’ll mislead him. No need to reveal that Jon moved out last month, or that Joe and Missy now split their time between them. Sarah, in fact, hasn’t seen her children for over a week. Her father might certainly understand this marriage implosion, this hiatus in parenting, given his own history. But, still, it won’t sit well. She knows this. He expects better of her despite his own lapses. She’d hoped to do better, too, given the low bar he set. No need to darken his remaining time—or her own vigilantly curated sense of self—with an accounting of her deficiencies. Sarah stands by her decision. To lie.
“Sorry to pull you away from Father’s Day with Jon,” he says.
“We’ll celebrate when I get back.” Another lie.
Millie breezes in with a charcuterie board artfully arranged with tempting clusters of cheeses, cured meats, dried fruits, crackers, jams and spreads. “You must be starved,” she says, thrusting it at Sarah. “Enjoy.” She breezes out.
Sarah sets the platter on the side table by her father’s chair.
He coughs and grimaces. “New tumors in my lungs.”
Sarah glances away, unable to keep her eyes on him.
He clears his throat, straining to make his voice stronger. “I wanted you to come … to talk.”
Millie pokes her head in again. “Sarah, I forgot to ask, are you thirsty?”
“No, but thanks.”
Millie lingers. Hovers. “Marty, you look tired. Maybe you should rest.”
He opens his mouth, no words, finally a sigh, relenting.
“I’ll come back tomorrow,” Sarah says, taking her cue, relieved. She reaches for her suitcase and follows Millie down the hall.
It never fails to surprise Sarah how tall Millie is. Energetic with salt-and-pepper hair cut in a practical bob. Her teal yoga pants and fitted white T-shirt hug her trim form. She conveys cheeriness and spunk, an unusual amount for someone in her sixties. Sarah is never certain if it’s inherent or cultivated, but it rarely lapses. So unlike her father’s first two wives—Sarah’s mom and Jeanine, who Sarah has only heard about but never met. Both were showier in terms of dress and bearing, preferring long hair, short skirts, high-heels, dangly earrings, a good sway of the hips, sultry sidelong glances. Neither was particularly active physically, maintaining their shapes through rigid dieting, and both were prone to periods of lethargy, often sleeping late and napping in the afternoons Most of these things are still true for Sarah’s mom, and are likely true for Jeanine, as well.
“You understand about not staying here,” Millie says as they scoot by the untouched guest bedroom. Her tone is low and intimate, meant to convey trust in Sarah as a cherished step-daughter and close confidant. Perhaps it’s genuine. “He needs quiet. No long visits, no unnecessary disruptions to routine.”
“Yes,” Sarah says.
Millie turns and squeezes Sarah’s hand. “Thanks for renting the car too … I’d drive you to the motel myself, but I can’t leave him alone. You understand.”
“I do.” Sarah does understand. She understands that Millie laid claim to her father well before she met him and will only allow the smallest opening between them—either by design or inadvertently because of her controlling tendencies. As always, it remains unclear which one. She’s devoted herself fully to him—for love, she insists—and she’ll be the one to help him die. She’ll also claim what he leaves behind: an eight-year-old black Mercedes SL550; a reasonably endowed 401K accumulated over his long career as a mid-level mechanical engineer; and this comfortable Craftsman-style house he grew up in on Barlow Street in Mathers, Pennsylvania, built by his grandfather in 1909, including its rooms of faded floral furniture that Millie herself bought in 2003 when she and Sarah’s father first moved in together, meant to impart a faux French farmhouse feel and the illusion of greater wealth and taste than they have.
“I’m sure it’s been hard,” Sarah says.
Millie’s frame sags momentarily. “One day at a time.” She straightens herself and pastes on a smile.
Perhaps Millie really does love Sarah’s father. There’s never anything concrete to suggest otherwise. Millie does everything an adoring wife would do—brings him a cocktail each afternoon at happy hour, cooks elaborate meals always in careful accordance with his dietary needs and restrictions, keeps an immaculate home and his clothes freshly laundered, makes sure he takes his medications morning and night, drives him to every doctor appointment and treatment session, rubs his back and feet whenever he complains of pain, listens intently to his every utterance. It’s impressive, in fact.
Perhaps Millie’s motives are pure, simply muddied by her practical nature, which comes off as businesslike and un-nurturing. Or maybe it’s her excellence at managing the long game of other people’s perceptions that suggests a conniving nature, never letting on that everything isn’t as it should be, ignoring and disregarding what doesn’t please her. Believe that things will work out and they will—that’s Millie’s M.O. None of which means, of course, that she’s orchestrated a cunning plan to acquire everything or that she doesn’t also love Sarah’s father. Perhaps it’s Sarah who fails to see correctly. As always, it remains unclear.
* * *
Sarah’s father was absent when she was swaddled and placed in her mother’s arms on a bitter February morning in 1978 at John F. Kennedy Memorial Hospital in Stratford, New Jersey. He was thirty minutes away in an advanced thermodynamics class at Rowan University, where he and Sarah’s mom both attended college.
They had married a year earlier—on impulse after only five months of ardent dating—and he remained with them during Sarah’s first year until the “inescapable end,” as Sarah’s mom liked to call their divorce. Of course, Sarah was too young to remember him. It took twenty-eight years for them to finally meet again. A meeting, it now occurs to Sarah as she nears the Days Inn outside Mathers, not unlike this evening spent in his beige bedroom. Same trepidation, not butterflies exactly, more like a small lead weight lodged in her gut that expands and grows heavier with time. Same longing for magical union. Same reluctance to go through with the visit, for how could any encounter so charged with high expectations possibly live up to reality?
Sarah couldn’t wait to sit face to face with him that night in 2006. Something she’d dreamt of since her earliest recollection. She even arrived thirty minutes early at the Melrose Inn in Hackettstown, New Jersey, where he lived then, planting herself at the farthest end of the bar, eyes glued to the entrance. Yet as his arrival time approached apprehension closed in around her. As if she’d caught the sudden scent of an animal predator. Just run. That’s what her instincts screamed. Run or lose your life—at least the familiar life you know, lacking as it is. Stay and the world is altered irretrievably and unpredictably. No going back intact.
Sarah finally bolted to the restroom and locked herself in a stall, hunkering down on the hard toilet seat, pants still pulled high and fastened, holding her breath to slow the rush of frantic thoughts. Decide next steps. Hide.
Why did she come, really? What was she hoping for? It’s not that Sarah wished for a handsome father or a tall one or anything like that. She never imagined sparkling personality traits either—intelligence, charm, humor, solemnity, soulfulness, sincerity, steadfastness. Nor a high level of success or wealth. Oddly, these things never factored into Sarah’s reveries, which instead focused on traits she carried that didn’t manifest in her mother or along her maternal line. Proclivities that must surely come from her father. Like her laser-sharp sensitivity to the moods and feelings of others, an almost obsessive need to be alone sometimes to the point of rudeness, an irrepressible fascination with visual art (color, texture, design), a pull toward sadness whether in music, books, people or her own thoughts, a bend toward darkness that often drove her into impulsive activity to quiet it. In her father Sarah hoped to finally discover why she was the way she was, bring her missing half into better focus. Feel complete. Loved.
Sarah crept out of the bathroom later, still hoping to escape before his arrival. She would drive to a friend’s cramped apartment in Camden and fly home to Denver the next morning. Too much rode on the outcome of this meeting to stay. She’d postpone it for another time. He’d understand.
But there he stood at the hostess desk, undeniably her father. Sarah had only seen a blurred snapshot he sent after she tracked him down, but something about the way he stood was unmistakable, lanky and slightly stooped, bony arms hanging at his sides, elbows slightly bent, short torso atop long legs. His build was hers, formed from the same genetic mold. Familiar like she’d seen him every day growing up, like she’d flung herself at him each evening when he arrived home from work, felt his warmth and love as he kissed her goodnight and tucked her comforter around her. He was hers. This stranger.
Sarah’s mind urged flight, yet fascination inched her ever closer, as if he were a singular bird, rarely seen and easily spooked. The time was here. Ready or not. It never occurred to her—not then or ever before—that she and her father might not share substantial characteristics beyond their obvious outward resemblance. Shared physical DNA and nothing else. Or that their meeting and subsequent relationship might fail to fully answer her most fundamental questions.
He flashed a smile. Instant recognition on his end too. They hugged stiffly. His suit jacket smelled slightly stale, a hint of old cologne. “Let’s sit, have a drink.” He motioned to a young server he seemed to know. “Food here is fantastic.” He fidgeted with his shirt collar, glanced around the restaurant, clearly unsettled as Sarah was.
Could you blame him? She had, after all, ambushed him. Called out of the blue after Googling his name, Martin Kittel, and conjuring the courage to dial his number. She was flying east in two weeks, she explained, for a conference (a lie—in fact, she was making a special trip just to meet him). He sounded distant and distracted, surprised to hear from her, but not entirely. Quietly resigned maybe. He had to know this would happen one day. By the call’s end his voice sounded more animated, as though he might possibly be pleased to finally meet her all grown up. Had that feeling since waned?
Sarah ordered merlot and pasta Bolognese, and her father ordered a scotch on the rocks and lobster thermidor. “Best dish here,” he told her. “Millie and I come at least once a month.”
Millie, he explained, was a CPA at the largest accounting firm in town. They lived together and planned to marry soon. At least that was his hope. She was the one. Finally. He was a mechanical engineer at Artemis Services Corp. where he’d worked for twelve years designing shipboard equipment for military and commercial vessels.
“You mentioned you’re a special education teacher?”
“Yes … at an elementary school outside Denver.” A job Sarah hated even then and already knew she’d leave. She omitted that part.
“You must love working with kids.”
“I do.” It wasn’t true. Sarah tolerated classroom tedium and bratty kids because her real passion—mixed-media textile tapestries made from discarded clothing, furniture fabric and rugs—seemed to lack promise as a feasible livelihood. She omitted that part, too.
What she offered up instead were highlights of all the years he’d missed—happy childhood milestones, like learning to whistle and winning an art competition in sixth grade; “museum days” when Sarah and her mom played hooky from school and work to explore art galleries and science exhibits; making the dean’s list her last two years of college; marrying Jon; the birth of their kids. Nothing about her first husband or their son, Marcus. Nothing about her mom’s predilection for emotionally unavailable men, often cheaters. Nothing about her own similar struggles, especially after she walked out of her first marriage—late twenties spent sleeping with strangers, too distracted and frantic for connection to notice the toxic mutual exploitation. Nothing about her lifetime of wondering who her father was or the empty places inside aching to be filled by his love.
Sarah’s father reeled off his highlights, too, including a few surprises. A dream of directing movies, or at least reviewing them professionally. A serious dream that even propelled him to minor in film studies in college.
“My dad insisted I do something practical, though.” he said finishing off his scotch and raising his empty glass. “Here’s to mechanical engineering.”
It’s one thing they shared—passions thwarted.
Additional surprise after a second scotch: he had another daughter, with Jeanine. Something Sarah, oddly, had never considered. A half-sister. Mila.
“I don’t see her as much as I’d like,” he said, “but we’re close enough.”
No walking away from that child.
“Mom said you and she met in a psychology class at Rowan.”
Her father shrugged. “Pretty standard script. You strike up a conversation and things take off.”
How easily it rolled out of him, like his short time spent with Sarah and her mom was nothing more than morning chit-chat with a neighbor. How different he might have seemed if she’d loved him growing up. This ordinary man, easy to overlook on the street, not particularly captivating in terms of dress or facial features, not someone you’d be inclined to strike up a conversation with on a plane, or really notice at all. His blandness might be endearing if he’d raised her—the comb-over hiding his beginning baldness, his breathy chuckle that never turned into a full laugh, rumpled khaki dress pants, the vanilla half-smile revealing nothing. Daddy’s quirks. Lovably goofy. Funny how deep knowing, years spent together, can alter perception. It’s all in how long and from which angles the eyes see and the heart loves.
“Sweet girl, your mother.” He stared off.
Did you ever wonder about us? About me?
“She didn’t want me around after the divorce. You could tell.”
You might have called, written.
“I met Jeanine, had a new baby—better to move on and not cause more pain.”
Sarah looked past him. It still stabbed like it always did, drawing fresh blood, ghastly scarlet. She ached for herself—but also for her mom, left so young with a child, alone. How easy he made it sound to simply walk away and never look back.
“Hey, we’re together now.” He flashed a smile. “To new beginnings.”
* * *
Sarah leaves the Days Inn the next morning to buy a Father’s Day card and perhaps a token doodad to bring that afternoon. She’s put it off to the last minute, still unsure after all these years what to give her father, especially what might be her parting gift.
She turns off the highway and heads into town. Morning sunshine bathes the streets. Streets where her father grew up, tree-lined with charming Victorian homes nestled among tidy ranches, Cape Cods and bungalows. At the center—a historic town square bordered on four sides by vintage red brick buildings beautifully renovated into chic shops and eateries: the Melt in Your Mouth ice cream parlor, the Dress Down clothing boutique, a 19th-century tavern called the Landis House, the Lyric Theatre, the Old Parlor Bookstore, an antique shop called Age Old, and the Decadence chocolate shop next door.
Sarah’s father moved back here after retirement, to his childhood home three blocks from the general store his family once owned—the very store his father wanted him to take over, now Kincaid Jewelers.
Sarah parks on the square, watching a young couple stroll along the flagstone sidewalks. Sparrows flit about in the dappled light for crumbs. This town is integral to Sarah’s paternal ancestry. Her roots run deep here, but it holds no rich resonance beyond its obvious charms. Just as she and her father don’t fully connect, neither can she find tribal alliance with his lineage. Her ancestors are nothing more than yellowing black-and-white photographs standing on his front-room mantel—two-dimensional, unsmiling, non-breathing ancestors. Her people.
Sarah climbs out of the car and rounds the corner to Village Pharmacy, silent inside except for the rustling of a white-haired shop clerk. She nods at Sarah but doesn’t smile.
Sarah moves toward the Father’s Day cards displayed up front, specifically the daughter-to-daddy cards—fathers in dreamy soft focus hugging precious girls, lifting them high into cloudless skies, snuggling close, deep in full-body embrace, laughing, frolicking, roughhousing. So many cards. Gushing with sweet sentiments penned for full-hearted girls to bestow upon daddies open to receive.
How can I ever begin to thank you for always being there when I need you?
No matter how old I am, you’ll always be my daddy.
You are the standard for all the men in my life.
I’m so grateful for our love.
Happy Father’s Day to _______. (Take your pick: The very best dad around … My favorite guy … My hero … The man who made me who I am.)
What does it feel like to offer Daddy such words without hesitation? Sarah has no idea. No card exists for inadequately fathered girls like her. Nothing encapsulates or commemorates Sarah’s experience of never gazing into her father’s eyes, nose to nose, never feeling him melt. Daddy’s little girl. Adored and treasured, curled in his lap, protected and applauded. A daddy to love her. In love with her.
Those things never happened for Sarah. Not with her real father. Not with her mom’s boyfriends, or her stepdad (married to her mom for six years), or even her mom’s dad, Grandpa Len, who took them in for four years after the divorce so Sarah’s mom could finish her nursing degree. Perhaps not with any man, including her own husbands.
To be fair, Sarah’s father has made good-faith efforts to connect since their meeting eighteen years ago:
The time he pulled up in his rented BMW after Joe was born with an armload of stuffed animals, a toy truck set, and a quilt his grandmother made in the 1920s (a family heirloom he gifted to Sarah).
The two dozen pink roses sent annually for Sarah’s birthday with a $200 check.
Dinners out for her, Jon and the kids during visits. Always the best restaurants.
Expensive bikes one year for Christmas. Another Christmas, expensive kayaks. Generous gifts. Always generous.
The Thanksgiving he watched movies for hours with Joe and Missy—sharing his favorites like “Dr. Strangelove,” “Rear Window” and “Rashomon.” Exclaiming over favorite scenes like a kid himself, patiently detailing the fine art of foreshadowing, camera angles and the important mood-setting role of movie music.
Phone calls to Sarah between visits, occasionally lengthy.
No doubt meeting her father has added missing information to Sarah’s story, helped complete her. How could it not? But it hasn’t filled in everything. Their relationship still feels like an early draft, yet to be fleshed out with precise details, fully realized characters, and a deeply resonant conclusion.
In truth nothing substantial has changed between them since their meeting at the Melrose Inn. Yes, Sarah has told him more about her life, including particulars of her first marriage and son Marcus, her decision to finally walk away from teaching, how she loves her mom but feels more like her protective older sister or best friend because, in truth, they grew up together.
He’s shared additional details too, like his infidelity that caused Jeannine to divorce him, and how he worries about money and house fires, sometimes waking drenched and terrified, either that his home is ablaze or his bank account is drained.
But for all their confessions, something remains missing between them. What looks good on paper—an inventory of her father’s attempts to connect—doesn’t tell the whole story. Didn’t Sarah’s mother warn her about his deficiencies, beg her not to meet him?
Indeed, she wasn’t wrong: no way to sidestep his frequent failings for long. All those times he didn’t call—sometimes letting weeks and even months go by. Times he sounded happy to hear from Sarah, but got off the phone within minutes. Times he arranged to visit but backed out last minute—so many times. The time he didn’t invite her to his wedding with Millie. The time he neglected to say he had cancer for over a year after his first bout.
No further mention of Sarah’s mom either. Nothing more about why he left and never reached out again. Why he lacked the curiosity or interest or courage or decency, whatever it was, to track Sarah down for himself. His daughter. There’s simply no way to shake the idea that he never wanted her back in his life, that she wouldn’t be here now had she not reached out first.
Sarah stares at the cards, feeling the clerk’s eyes on her. She finally grabs one from the bottom row with “Happy Father’s Day” written in gold script on a plain navy background. No picture, just words. Inside it reads, “Enjoy your special day.” Short and not too sweet. Perfect. She’ll write something additional to personalize it, something appropriate to the depth and shape of their relationship, this stilted dance that never moves beyond tame twirls, tepid bobbing and awkward weaving. “I’m grateful for the chance to know you these last few years.” Or maybe simply, “I’m happy I could spend today with you.”
He’ll thank her and set it aside, as always.
Sarah heads to the cash register, perusing the aisles for a gift she knows doesn’t exist.
* * *
Back in her motel room Sarah dashes to the bathroom and nosedives to the toilet, vomiting violently again and again. No hint at the card store of this explosive pressure lurking in her bowels. Is it the emotional upheaval of this visit? A sudden flu? Food poisoning? Dehydration? Something worse? Cancer?
Emptied out, dripping sweat, throat burning from stomach acid, Sarah collapses on the cool white floor tiles and weeps. Exhausted. How alone she feels. How much she doesn’t want to see her father again.
Later after her skin cools, Sarah struggles up to stare in the bathroom mirror, nose to nose with her reflection. Forty-six and she looks every bit her age, maybe older, creases at the corners of her eyes and down both sides of her mouth. Silver strands, like unruly weeds, running through thin, mouse-brown hair. Ordinary-looking, like her father.
Sarah read once that daughters with attentive, loving dads were endowed with more capacity to take risks and succeed in life. Something related to how men play with kids—a daredevil approach encouraging climbing, falling and exploring without significant limits. The result: dexterity to chance big things and live life boldly (a supposedly masculine inclination that perfectly counterbalances the softer, gentler, more intuitive and inner-focused feminine side that girls inherit from their moms). Not only do daughters of doting dads get better grades and make more money, but they’re also more emotionally resilient and pick partners who treat them well. Bottom line—good dads make for healthier, happier, more loving, well-balanced, secure and assertively self-assured women.
No way around it, Sarah missed out. That’s what the life she’s managed to cobble together shows. A lesser version than she aimed for:
Current career: part-time tutor and circulation desk assistant at her local library. A half-dozen fiber-art pieces to show for her spare time.
One divorce and another on the way—Jon doesn’t know yet but this isn’t just a temporary separation. Sarah’s mind is made up.
A boyfriend on the side for the last seven months. Liam, younger by six years. Sarah isn’t sure he’ll stay. Maybe she won’t.
Oldest son, Marcus, now twenty-two, who she rarely speaks to except for brief, stilted phone calls. They may never forge a greater connection. At least that’s what Sarah has come to believe.
Joe and Missy, who Sarah loves without question and has cherished raising. Yet there’s no denying the significant waning of maternal instincts that once powered her through their childhood (without much help from Jon, by the way). She’s contemplating giving him primary custody. His turn now to hunker down for the teen years.
A dilapidated warehouse Sarah bought five years ago to launch an arts center, complete with a gallery for local artists to display their work, including her own pieces and Liam’s photography. Sarah has yet to renovate it, even with Jon’s continual complaints about her inaction. Not even a preliminary sketch.
Feral, that’s what Sarah is. Like that cat in her neighborhood growing up—dirty-white bedraggled fur, slinking across yards, peeking from behind trees. Not truly wild—descended from domestic felines but raised by a stray mom—she came near people, pulled by her human-allying DNA. But without proper bonding early on, she simply couldn’t surrender fully to the call of her genes and ran away whenever someone came too close.
Sarah is like that cat where men are concerned. Without a true father-bond in childhood—an early attachment to men—she’s missed her developmental window. As a result, Sarah is forever guessing what men think and feel. Their approach to the world, how they love—it all remains a puzzle. Sarah’s neck thrusts forward, eyes forever surveying, hunting, hungry for but wary of male companionship that should be natural and fulfilling. She perpetually holds back, afraid—or perhaps unable—to fully engage and connect with male energy.
Afraid, too, to fulfill dreams. Unsure how to harness them in three-dimensional reality and give them shape without the outward momentum of a father’s encouragement. Even her inner “female” wisdom, handed down from her mom, is only partly utilized. Sarah rarely digs to her substratum for insights, terrified of discovering something abhorrent. For surely that’s why no father ever loved her.
Sarah stares intently into the mirror. Can she really blame her lack of progress and fulfillment on father deprivation? Yes. She decides yes, as always. It simply fits too well. No need for further exploration, no requirement to mitigate damage obviously beyond her control.
* * *
Millie ushers Sarah into the foyer, unaware of her earlier vomiting that would certainly preclude entry. Perhaps Sarah should worry more herself about infecting her father with some life-ending bug. But she feels fine now, whatever the cause, and abstains from mentioning it. Father’s Day is the goal. Celebrate and move on.
Sarah sits by his beige recliner, same as yesterday. He’s the same too—oddly fit, good color, metastasized tumors covertly enlarging inside him. Is he as terrified to die as she is?
“I’m leaving you a bit of money,” he murmurs.
Sarah leans closer, not sure she’s heard right, unsure how to respond. She expected nothing. Truly. It never occurred to her. But a thought slips out now before it can be censored. How much will she get? Her face reddens. It’s wrong to think … and yet … money could help …. with her divorce, the arts center.
“Millie gets most of it … you understand.”
“Yes.” Sarah understands. Millie almost certainly sanctioned this gift, perhaps even initiated it. Kindness or concern for the appearance of equity?
“My accountant will be in touch … when the time comes.” His voice trails off.
Should she leave, let him rest? What’s best? Sarah starts to rise. Honestly it will be a relief to let this go—this continual reaching for connection with her father, forever trying to decipher his intentions. What freedom to stop dodging letdowns, accept what they do and don’t have. To let him go.
“Wait.” He raises an arm. “I’m leaving Mila the same amount.” He pauses, smiles. His eyes implore her. “Please reach out. She needs a big sister.
“I will.” Yet another lie. Sarah and Mila have met twice, both times in this house. Each time Mila barely spoke to Sarah, barely made eye contact. Who knows why? A million reasons. Sarah no longer cares. She won’t try again.
“Please … I …” Her father’s voice has a far-off quality like someone speaking on TV, like a stranger talking to someone else, not Sarah. She braces herself.
“I wasn’t there for you.”
Sarah shakes her head, deflecting his words. Is he offering a rectification, a movie-trick happy ending? Once it might have filled her full, made up for everything. But today it smacks against her and falls away, not fully absorbable through the toughened hide she wears permanently.
“I should’ve done better,” he says quietly.
Something screams inside Sarah. Me too! But why? She wasn’t the one, after all, who left. He did that. He was the one, the grownup, who should have reached out first. Not her. Yet a thought comes now like a fist to her jaw. Sarah could have done better too since they met. And she could do better now. Have one true conversation. Bring a dying man peace. But her tongue refuses to perform. It can’t—or won’t—for him. It’s too late, right now, for what might still be.
He turns his head and coughs. Pain pinches his face. “I’m sorry.”
Sarah squirms. Tears burn her eyes. Why cry now? Because he’s dying? Because they’ve run out of time to get things right? Because she’s about to do what he’s always done—ignore the moment, deflect honest exchange? Because they’re the same?
“I love you.” His voice is nearly inaudible, but she hears.
He’s trying at the end to say what any loving father would say. So unnecessary. My god. He has to know their love isn’t the real kind. Sarah didn’t get what she needed from him to grow whole, but neither did he from her. A double tragedy. It rips at Sarah’s flesh, snapping bones. He has to know this proclamation of love is just words, not backed by anything substantial or grounded, shallow roots easily plucked from the soil and tossed. She doesn’t love him, not really, not without necessary, meaningful early years together. And he doesn’t love her either.
This is her true inheritance, the reason she never rewarded her father or any man—anyone, for that matter—with the fullness of her heart. It’s stunted like his. What they’ve shared is enough for him. More than enough. Surely, he knows this. His actions over time show the truth. And now this is enough for Sarah, too.
* * *
Sarah can barely bring herself to say goodbye after Father’s Day dinner. One quick hug at the front door, a kiss, lips barely touching her father’s cheek. That’s it. Perhaps she’ll never see him again.
Millie, by his side, smiles and hugs Sarah tight. “He grew to love you.” she whispers. “Hard for him to show, but he did.”
Sarah is stunned to her core. Could this be right? Could his earlier declaration of love be real? It lingers now around her—an aftertaste of possible truth. Has Sarah somehow misinterpreted what beats between them? Does he love her more than she can feel?
Millie squeezes Sarah’s arm. “I’ll call with any news.” And she will. She’ll call with regular updates on his health over the next year, including a lengthy call after he’s gone. She’ll thank Sarah for her support, weeping real tears. They’ll see each other one last time at his funeral. Millie will lay her head on Sarah’s shoulder and thank her again, sincerely, a deeply unifying moment. Only one more call after that, and then their relationship will end. Sarah can feel it now in Millie’s goodbye—what’s always confounded her, now perfectly clear. Millie loves her father in a way all her own, and cares for Sarah too, but there’s nothing between them without him.
As Sarah heads back to the Day’s Inn a memory breaks open, nearly running her off the road. Mrs. Raeburn, her next-door neighbor growing up, eventually enticed that feral cat to live in her house. Sarah almost forgot. She did forget; it didn’t seem extraordinary at the time. Not even to Mrs. Raeburn, who chalked it up to food and extreme patience.
But it barrels over Sarah now—something profound must have happened inside that cat’s brain, some invisible shift you’d be hard-pressed to observe with your eyes or pinpoint with scientific instruments. For one day, with no additional prompting beyond the usual verbal coaxing and Meow Mix, she ventured toward Mrs. Raeburn as though they were well acquainted, rubbed against her shins, purring, and that was that.
It wasn’t a perfect union. The cat never sat on Mrs. Raeburn’s lap, for instance, or allowed head rubs, and she continued to run from everyone else. But she did start curling up on Mrs. Raeburn’s faded velveteen sofa for long naps in the sun, and sat on the kitchen windowsill watching her bake apple pies, and darted about the house batting mouse toys that Mrs. Raeburn bought at the pet store. She even came running to her new name, Fran. Almost like a regular house cat. It’s as if her feline heart and mind somehow stretched and reshaped themselves enough for the tug of human connection to finally overtake and hold her.
Sarah pulls into the motel parking lot, mostly empty, nearly dark. She climbs the outside stairs to the second-floor balcony and heads to her room. Each step feels heavy. How do people stand still, courageously, long enough to trust like Fran? How do they love and then love again after crushing loss, certain there’s always more love? How do they sing dreams out loud, giving them flesh, gambling everything for life’s light? How can she? How—without guidance and backing? Without Daddy’s love, which has come only now, still too new to be real, with mere seconds left in the game.
Sarah sprawls across her bed on the cheap blue striped comforter and stares at the ceiling. If her father learned love, could she? She curls into a fetal ball. That’s all she can do now. Let the dust settle and ascertain what new shape her feral heart and brain might take, if they will. What nourishment is needed for indelible revision? Let the dust settle. That’s all Sarah can do now.
