Three weeks after the birthday, my father called the house phone, a number he hadn’t used in over a year.
Mom answered first, then handed it to me without a word, her jaw tight.
I could tell she wanted to say something to him herself, the way her knuckles went white around the phone before she passed it over. She’d told me once, years earlier, about the year after he left, how she’d waited by that same phone some nights, certain he’d call and explain everything, certain the explanation would somehow make it make sense. He never had, not really, not until this call, three weeks too late by about fourteen years.
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