Then June started reading.
I closed my eyes.#
“To my girls. You have a year today. I don’t know if you’ll ever read this, and I don’t know if I’ll still be doing this right by then, but I wanted to write it, anyway.”
Something cold ran straight down my spine.
I knew those words. He knew the rhythm of them and the man who had written them, only on a kitchen table on a hardware store, with three babies asleep in a single crib because he could not pay three.
I knew it because that man was meme!
I knew those words.
June was still reading.
“I am 27 years old. I’m scared all the time. I don’t know how to be a father, but I know I’m not going anywhere.”
I fell out of my chair, my knees hitting the ground, and the camera almost slipped out of my hand!
Someone by my side caught up with my elbow, helping me get back to my seat. I couldn’t look at them.
When she said, “Our father,” he meant me. He always meant me!
On stage, my daughter stopped reading, looked straight down the hallway, straight at the weeping man in row seven, and continued.
I fell off my chair!
June’s voice stabilized as she read the different entries.
“To my three daughters. I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to be what you need. But I’m gonna stay. I will never be the father you deserve, but I will be the one to appear.”
Ava continued where her sister left him, with her voice breaking.
“I promise you to have breakfast every morning, even if it’s burned. I promise you will never be asked where I am.”
Claire’s done.
“I love you more than I knew a person could love anything. Happy first birthday!”
Ava continued where her sister left off.
The auditorium blurred around me.
Then June walked up the stairs and knelt next to me. She slipped a court order framed in my hands.
“We submitted the petitions months ago,” he said. “They passed last week.”
I couldn’t read the words. My hands were too tight.
We found what our biological father left behind. You were never our uncle,” Ava told the microphone. “You were always our father.”
