Frank had been around for as long as I could remember. He married my mother when I was four, and after she died, he was the one who stayed. As far as I was concerned, he was my father.
That was still how I saw him on the last day of his life. I was sitting beside his hospital bed, talking about the breakfasts he’d made when I was a kid. He had this old metal cutter that he used to turn apple pancakes into little stars. They were usually a little burnt around the edges, but I loved them anyway.
I was telling the nurse about it when Frank opened his eyes. He looked at me for a long moment, and instead of smiling, he started to cry. I moved closer and took his hand. He was too weak to say much, but after the nurse left us alone, he suddenly tightened his fingers around mine.
“Promise me that you won’t hate me once you know.”
I figured he was just out of it from the medication.
“Dad, you’re sick. You don’t need to worry about anything right now.”
But he then said that he had been lying to me my whole life. I stared at him, completely lost.
He said there was something about my childhood I’d never been told, a secret he’d sworn to take to his grave. But he was too weak to explain. Instead, he reached under the blanket, pulled out a folded piece of paper, and handed it to me.
There was an address written on it. “Just go there,” he told me. I didn’t want to leave his side, but he just kept repeating it.
And so I did.
CONTINUE READING…>>
