My stomach clenched. The profile picture showed her and Dad smiling in front of a new house in a sunny suburb with white picket fences. They looked older, but happy, as if the past had never existed.
I didn’t answer for two days. Then she called. The same voice. The same warmth that once meant something. She said, « We missed you so much, darling. We want to reconnect. We were wrong. »
Wrong. That’s the word she chose. As if they had taken the wrong exit, not destroyed a little girl’s life.
I listened. She told me that they had moved to Arizona at the time, that « it was complicated, » that Dad had debts, that they had thought I would manage better on my own. « We knew you were strong, » she said, as if that made it noble.
Twelve years. No letter, no search, no effort — until now.
I asked her why she was contacting me. She hesitated, then admitted that Dad was sick — heart failure — and that he wanted to see me before “it was too late.”
That evening, I stayed on my balcony watching the lights of Denver twinkle in the night. Part of me wanted to see him, wanted to ask why they had mistaken abandonment for love. The other part wanted to let silence be the final answer.
I finally said yes. Not for them — to turn the page.
When I arrived in Phoenix, they were waiting for me at the airport, smaller than I remembered, older, more fragile. Mom cried. Dad tried to hug me, but it was like hugging a stranger. At dinner, he said, « We thought we were protecting you. »
I looked at him and replied, « You weren’t protecting me—you were testing me. And I succeeded. »
He didn’t contradict him. He just nodded, his eyes moist.
We talked for hours that evening, not about the past, but about the lost years. And when I left two days later, I understood that forgiving doesn’t mean letting people come back — it means freeing yourself from the expectation of apologies.
See more on the next page
Advertisement
