By the third, he started blaming himself.
“Maybe I talk about your mother too much,” he said.
“You barely mention her on dates.”
“Maybe I am too old-fashioned.”
“You held a door open for her. That is not a crime.”
He gave me a tired smile, but my reassurance never seemed to reach him.
My father was heartbroken every single time.
“I don’t understand,” he’d whisper.
“They all seemed so happy.”
I hated watching him lose confidence.
Every rejection pulled him further back into the man he had become after Mom died.
He stopped singing again.
He checked his phone every few minutes.
He reread old messages as if the answer might be hidden between the lines.
The fourth woman vanished after telling him she wanted him to meet her sister.
The fifth disappeared after making weekend plans with him.
After the sixth woman vanished, I could not ignore it anymore.
Something was not right.
Six women could lose interest.
That was possible. But six women would not all disappear in the same manner after promising another date.
I asked my father whether anything unusual had happened during those evenings.
He looked confused.
“No. Why?”
“Did you argue with them?”
“Of course not.”
“Did you say anything that could have frightened them?”
His face tightened.
“What kind of man do you think I am?”
“That is not what I meant.”
He turned away from me and began rinsing a clean mug in the sink. I knew I had hurt him.
“I just want to understand,” I said.
“So do I.”
That night, I called my best friend, Rachel, and asked her for a favor.
Rachel and I had known each other since college.
She was honest to the point of being painful.
She could charm an entire room, but she could also detect a lie before most people had finished telling it.
If my father was doing something wrong, Rachel would notice.
“Go on one date with him.”
