I stared at him.
“I could never hate you.”
“Promise you’ll hear me out before you hate me.”
His hand felt cold against my skin.
“I’ve lied to you your entire life.”
I forced a smile. “Dad, you’re exhausted. Let me get the nurse.”
“My mind is clear.” He tightened his grip. “Everything you believe about your childhood, about who I am… is incomplete.”
My heart began pounding.
“What are you talking about?”
“I’ve lied to you your entire life.”
“I need you to discover the truth before I die, even though I was begged to take it to my grave.”
Questions crowded into my mind.
Was my biological father alive?
Had Frank hidden letters from me?
Was there another family somewhere?
Another version of him I had never known?
Was there another family somewhere?
Frank reached beneath the blanket with trembling fingers and pulled out a folded scrap of paper.
He pressed it into my palm.
“Go there. Now.”
“I can’t leave you.”
“You have to.” Tears slid into the gray stubble along his jaw. “Please, Rosalie.”
He had not called me Rosalie since I was a child.
“I can’t leave you.”
I bent over him.
“Tell me yourself.”
His eyes closed.
“Some truths need another voice.”
Those were the final words he ever said to me.
A nurse entered when the monitor began chirping.
She checked his pulse and adjusted his oxygen.
“He is still with us,” she said. “But he may not wake again.”
“Some truths need another voice.”
***
I stood in the hallway and unfolded the paper.
An address had been written in Frank’s shaky handwriting.
The house was less than 20 minutes from the home where he had raised me.
I nearly threw the paper away.
Whatever waited at that address could not matter more than the man dying behind me.
Then I remembered the fear in his eyes.
I nearly threw the paper away.
Not fear of death.
Fear that I would never understand him.
***
I drove through nearly empty streets, gripping the steering wheel until my fingers ached.
By the time I reached the address, I had imagined every possible betrayal.
A secret wife.
A stranger who would tell me Frank had never wanted me.
I had imagined every possible betrayal.
An elderly woman stood on the other side.
She had silver hair, pale blue eyes, and one hand pressed against her mouth.
She stared at me as if she had been waiting for a ghost.
“Rosalie,” she whispered.
I screamed. Not loudly, but sharply enough that she stepped back.
“Who are you?”
An elderly woman stood on the other side.
“My name is Caroline.”
“How do you know me?”
She looked toward the dark street behind me.
“Frank called last month. He could barely speak. He said you might come one day.”
“Might?”
“He hoped he would find the courage to send you.”
“He said you might come one day.”
She opened the door wider.
“I think you should come inside.”
Every instinct told me to return to the hospital.
Instead, I followed her.
“Tell me what Frank lied about.”
Caroline did not answer immediately.
She opened a drawer beside the stove.
“Tell me what Frank lied about.”
Inside was a collection of metal cookie cutters.
Hearts.
Flowers.
Animals.
Apples.
And one small star.
I stopped breathing. It was identical to the cutter Frank had used every Sunday of my childhood.
Inside was a collection of metal cookie cutters.
“Where did you get that?”
Caroline lifted it carefully.
“It belonged to Frank.”
“No. His is at my house.”
“He had two, dear,” she said.
A photograph rested beneath the cutters.
Caroline picked it up and handed it to me.
A little girl stood beside a kitchen table, smiling over a plate of star-shaped apple pancakes.
“It belonged to Frank.”
She looked about five years old.
Frank stood behind her.
He was younger. Thinner. And happy in a way I had never seen.
“Who is she?”
Caroline’s voice shook.
“Her name was Miley.”
The room seemed to narrow around that name.
“Her name was Miley.”
“Frank was married before he met your mother,” Caroline revealed. “Miley was his daughter.”
I gripped the photograph by its edges.
“Where is she?”
Caroline’s eyes lowered.
“She died when she was five.”
The words landed softly, which made them hurt more.
“She died when she was five.”
“There was an accident at a lake. It happened quickly. Frank blamed himself even though there was nothing he could have done.”
I sat down because my legs would no longer hold me.
“Why didn’t he tell me?”
“After Miley died, his marriage collapsed,” Caroline said. “He stopped speaking to people. He stopped answering my calls. We were best friends. He packed away every photograph, every toy, every reminder that he had ever been a father.”
“Why didn’t he tell me?”
My eyes returned to the little star cutter.
“The pancakes.”
“He made them for Miley.”
Caroline sat across from me.
“Then one morning, after he married your mother, you climbed into his lap and fell asleep against his chest. When you woke up, you asked whether he knew how to make pancakes shaped like stars.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“He made them for Miley.”
“You were four.”
Caroline placed the cutter on the table.
“He called me that afternoon. He was crying so hard I could barely understand him. He said he had made the pancakes. He said he had spoken Miley’s name aloud for the first time in years and had not fallen apart.”
My fingers closed around the edge of the table.
“He did not give you something that belonged to his daughter,” Caroline added. “You gave him a way to remember her without believing the memory would kill him.”
