“Your mother wrote them during her last months.”
I looked toward Lauren.
“You knew?”
“How?”
“Dad contacted me.”
A bitter laugh escaped me.
“Of course he did.”
“Ingrid,” my father said quietly.
“No. You do not get to say my name like that. You left her. You left us.”
“I know.”
“You missed her funeral.”
His expression crumpled, but I kept going.
“You missed Lauren’s wedding. You missed Bennett’s birth. You disappeared, and now you think you can walk into my house and dig through the walls?”
“Then why did you come?”
His eyes dropped toward the tin.
“Because your mother made me promise I would give you these letters when you were ready.”
My anger sharpened.
“When I was ready? I was 19. Lauren was 23. We needed her then.”
“I was a coward,” he admitted.
The simplicity of the answer hurt more than any excuse might have.
“I told myself I was protecting you from more pain. The truth is, I could not face what I had done. Every year I waited, it became harder to come back.”
Lauren spoke quietly.
“He called me because he’s sick.”
I looked at her sharply.
My father lowered himself onto the edge of Bennett’s bed.
“Cancer,” he said. “It has spread.”
The room seemed to close around us.
I had imagined meeting him again countless times.
In some versions, I screamed.
In others, I slammed the door in his face.
I had never imagined him looking small enough to disappear.
“How long?” I asked.
Bennett’s arms tightened around my waist.
I looked down and saw confusion in his face.
“Is he my grandpa?” he asked.
For a moment, no one answered.
My father looked toward him with a tenderness that made my chest ache.
“Yes,” I finally said. “He is.”
Bennett studied him.
My father took an uneven breath.
“Because I made a terrible mistake.”
“Did you say sorry?”
“Bennett,” I murmured.
But my father nodded.
“Not properly.”
Bennett thought about this before asking, “Are you going to?”
My father looked at me.
“I am sorry, Ingrid. Not because I’m sick. Not because I’m afraid of dying alone. I’m sorry because I abandoned you when you needed a father. I cannot repair those years, but I needed you to hear the truth from me.”
My anger remained.
So did the grief.
But beneath both, I felt something unexpected.
Relief.
