They were both listening.
Brooke shrugged.
“I already do at school.”
Lily nodded.
“Me too.”
I laughed.
Then I cried in the school parking lot.
A lot.
The girls pretended not to notice.
Eric was not completely gone.
Sometimes I wished he had been.
For years, there were random signs of him.
A Christmas card from Nevada.
A birthday card mailed from Texas.
Once, a package arrived containing three stuffed bears and no note.
The girls were seven.
They played with the bears for a week.
Then Brooke asked,
“Who sent them?”
I could have lied.
Instead, I said,
“Your biological father.”
All three became quiet.
“Does he know where we live?” Lily asked.
“Yes.”
“Then why doesn’t he come here?”
There are questions children ask that have no answer capable of protecting them.
“I don’t know.”
That was the truth.
When the girls were thirteen, Eric finally called me.
I almost hung up when I heard his voice.
“Mason.”
I leaned against the kitchen counter.
“What do you want?”
“I’ve been thinking about the girls.”
“Congratulations.”
“Come on.”
“No. You don’t get ‘come on.’ You disappeared.”
“I wasn’t okay after Melissa died.”
“You think I was?”
Silence.
Then Eric said,
“I want to reconnect.”
I laughed.
I couldn’t help it.
“Reconnect?”
“They’re my daughters.”
That sentence did something ugly inside me.
I walked out onto the fire escape before the girls could hear.
“No,” I said.
“What do you mean, no?”
“You want to be their father? Show up.”
“I’m trying.”
“No. You’re making a phone call.”
“Mason—”
“Get on a plane. Get in a car. Walk here. I don’t care. But don’t call me from another state and tell me you’re ready to be a dad because you’re feeling guilty tonight.”
He became angry.
“You can’t keep my children from me.”
I almost shouted.
Instead, I lowered my voice.
“I’ve spent thirteen years making sure they never feel abandoned again. If you want to be part of their lives, you come here sober, stable, and prepared to stay.”
Eric never came.
I never received another phone call from him.
Raising the girls cost me things.
I don’t say that because I regret it.
But pretending otherwise would be a lie.
I never finished the business courses I once planned to take.
I turned down a management position in Columbus because it required relocating in the middle of Lily’s junior year.
I skipped vacations.
I sold my motorcycle when Brooke needed dental surgery.
