to raise you!”
“Turning to that script again, aren’t we? You know I’m not a little child anymore, right?”
He kept quiet.
I asked about the missing money again.
More silence; this time, I knew what it meant.
Dad’s voice got louder.
“That was cruel, even for you, Dad. You made me think she abandoned me.”
For once, Dad didn’t argue or defend himself.
When I told him I needed space, he ended the call.
That’s how I knew Anna wasn’t lying.
“That was cruel.”
Anna and I spent the next few weeks doing something neither of us knew how to do.
Starting over.
We didn’t pretend the missing years hadn’t happened.
We didn’t pretend.
She told me stories from when I was too young to remember.
I told her about college, jobs, bad roommates, and the time I flooded my first apartment because I thought one plumbing video qualified
