On the wall above her bed was a framed photograph. Me and Lily. She was maybe eighteen months old, sitting on the gas tank of my Harley. I was holding her with both hands, grinning so big you could see every tooth. She was wearing a little bandana I’d tied around her head. Both of us squinting in the sun.
I hadn’t seen that photo in two years.
“She knows about you,” David said from behind me. “She calls you her first daddy. I told her she has two daddies. One who loved her first and one who loves her now. I never told her you left. I never told her you didn’t want her. Because I know that’s not what happened.”
I put my hand on the wall to keep myself standing.
He walked to a dresser and opened the top drawer. Handed me a shoebox.
Inside were letters. Dozens of them. All addressed to Lily, from me. Every letter I’d written that came back unopened.
“I requested them from the agency,” he said. “They were sitting in a file. I’ve been saving them for when she’s old enough to read.”
I sat down on my daughter’s purple bed with my own letters in my lap and I broke apart. Not quiet tears. The kind of crying that comes from somewhere so deep you didn’t know it existed. The kind that sounds like an animal.
David left the room and closed the door. Gave me privacy to fall apart surrounded by purple walls and Lily’s drawings and the photo of us on my Harley.
When I came out, Lily was at the kitchen table eating pancakes. Syrup on her chin.
