reached for my phone.
Dorothy grabbed my wrist.
“No light.”
Footsteps.
Slow.
Coming through the stockroom.
Rachel whispered, “Samuel.”
Then a man’s voice answered from the darkness.
“No, sweetheart.”
Rachel froze.
The voice belonged to someone older.
Rougher.
Dorothy trembled beside me.
I heard her whisper one word.
“Edward.”
My father’s name.
Impossible.
My father had been d/e/@/d for fourteen years.
A flashlight clicked on.
An elderly man stood beyond the office door.
White hair.
Thin face.
Cane.
But I knew those eyes.
I had seen them every morning of my childhood.
“Dad?”
He smiled sadly.
“Hello, Tommy.”
My knees nearly gave out.
Calvin swore.
Dorothy closed her eyes.
Rachel stared.
My father walked into the office.
“You look old,” he said.
I almost laughed from the absurdity of it.
“You’re supposed to be d/e/@/d.”
“So were half the people in this family, apparently.”
Even Dorothy
