When I asked Caroline why he had kept all of this from me, her answer made more sense than anything else I’d heard that night. Frank didn’t want me growing up believing I had been responsible for saving him. He knew what it was like for a child to live with an adult’s grief, and he refused to hand that burden to me. All those years when he’d told me I had given him a reason to keep going, he had truly meant it.
I drove back to the hospital with Miley’s photograph beside me, wanting to tell him I understood.
But when I reached his room, Frank was already gone.
I took his hand and said, “You should have told me.” Then I thanked him anyway.
The nurse gave me his wallet. Inside were two pictures: Miley beside her star-shaped pancakes, and me at five years old, proudly holding one of Frank’s badly burned ones.
He had carried both of them with him all those years. He hadn’t replaced Miley, nor had he forgotten her; he had simply found a way to love me without pretending she never existed.
When I got home, my daughter asked if grandpa was coming back.
“No, darling.”
Later, we made apple pancakes using Frank’s old star cutter.
“Why did Grandpa always make them like stars?”
CONTINUE READING…>>
