{"id":55850,"date":"2026-10-29T15:02:37","date_gmt":"2026-10-29T08:02:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/readingdairy.com\/?p=55850"},"modified":"2026-10-29T15:02:37","modified_gmt":"2026-10-29T08:02:37","slug":"i-was-supposed-to-spend-28-days-working-on-an-oil-rig-in-the-gulf-but-when-i-returned-home-two-weeks-early-what-i-discovered-at-10-p-m-left-me-speechless-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/readingdairy.com\/?p=55850","title":{"rendered":"After Working Offshore, I Decided to Surprise My Family by Coming Home Two Weeks Early. But What I Found That Night Was Something I Never Expected."},"content":{"rendered":"

PART 1<\/strong><\/p>\n

Twenty-eight days on. Twenty-eight days off.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the life of an offshore rig worker.<\/p>\n

It pays well. It paid for our house outside Lafayette, Louisiana. It paid for my wife\u2019s SUV and my son\u2019s speech therapy and the swing set I built in the backyard with my own hands.<\/p>\n

My son, Finn, is eight.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s small for his age and shy with strangers, but with me he never stops talking. Every night I\u2019m offshore, we FaceTime at seven. He tells me about school, about his lizard, about the fort he\u2019s building under the porch.<\/p>\n

For the last month, the calls kept getting shorter.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s tired,\u201d my wife, Brandi, would say, holding the phone. \u201cHe\u2019s already in bed.\u201d<\/p>\n

At 7 p.m.?<\/p>\n

\u201cKids grow, Wade. He\u2019s fine. Stop worrying.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then a hurricane warning shut down the platform. They flew us out by helicopter two weeks early.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t call ahead.<\/p>\n

I wanted to surprise my boy.<\/p>\n

I pulled into the driveway at 9:58 p.m. There was a pickup truck I didn\u2019t recognize parked in my spot. Lifted. Mud on the tires.<\/p>\n

The front door was unlocked.<\/p>\n

The TV was blaring a football game. Two boys I\u2019d never seen before, maybe ten and twelve, were sprawled on my couch eating chips.<\/p>\n

A grown man was asleep in my recliner. Boots on. Beer in his hand.<\/p>\n

And in the kitchen, standing on a chair so he could reach the stove, was my son.<\/p>\n

He was stirring a pot of boxed macaroni. His school uniform was stained. His hair hadn\u2019t been cut in weeks.<\/p>\n

His left forearm was wrapped in silver duct tape from wrist to elbow.<\/p>\n

\u201cFinn.\u201d<\/p>\n

He spun around so fast he almost fell off the chair.<\/p>\n

For one second his face lit up.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Then it filled with fear.<\/p>\n

\u201cDad, you\u2019re not supposed to be home.\u201d<\/p>\n

I lifted him off the chair and held him. He was so light. Lighter than when I left.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat happened to your arm, buddy?\u201d<\/p>\n

He looked over my shoulder at the man in the recliner.<\/p>\n

\u201cI got burned,\u201d he whispered. \u201cIt\u2019s okay. I put tape on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWho burned you?\u201d<\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t answer.<\/p>\n

He just said, very fast, \u201cDon\u2019t be mad, Dad. Dwight says if dinner\u2019s late, I sleep in the shed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The shed.<\/p>\n

The one with no windows and no light that I\u2019d built to keep the lawnmower out of the rain.<\/p>\n

The man in the recliner woke up.<\/p>\n

He looked at me, then at Finn in my arms, and stood up slowly. Big guy. Neck tattoo. No shirt.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou must be Wade,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m Dwight. Brandi\u2019s friend.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere\u2019s my wife?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCasino in Coushatta. Girls\u2019 night.\u201d He smirked. \u201cSomebody\u2019s gotta watch the kids while she relaxes. Your boy needs discipline, man. Little guy\u2019s soft. Cries at everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

His kids laughed from the couch.<\/p>\n

\u201cCries like a baby,\u201d the older one said. \u201cDad made him sleep in the shed Tuesday.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dwight shrugged.<\/p>\n

\u201cBuilds character. My old man did worse to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

I set Finn down behind me.<\/p>\n

Every part of me wanted to put Dwight through the wall.<\/p>\n

But Finn was shaking. And I\u2019d learned on the rig that the loudest man is rarely the one in control.<\/p>\n

\u201cOkay,\u201d I said quietly. \u201cThanks for watching him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dwight grinned. He thought I was weak.<\/p>\n

Brandi came home at 1 a.m. smelling like cigarettes and perfume. She saw me at the kitchen table and froze.<\/p>\n

\u201cWade. You\u2019re early.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWho is Dwight?\u201d<\/p>\n

She lifted her chin.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomeone who\u2019s actually here. You\u2019re gone half the year. You don\u2019t get to come home and judge me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then she looked at Finn\u2019s arm and rolled her eyes.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe grabbed the pan handle. He\u2019s clumsy. Your son\u2019s always been clumsy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The next morning, while Brandi slept, I went into my old office closet looking for a bandage.<\/p>\n

I found my old phone instead. The one I\u2019d left behind when I got a new one for work. No SIM card. It couldn\u2019t call or text anyone.<\/p>\n

It was still charged.<\/p>\n

On the screen was one note in the Notes app. Titled: FOR DAD.<\/p>\n

Twenty-six entries. All written to me. None of them ever sent. Because that phone couldn\u2019t send anything.<\/p>\n

The first one said:<\/p>\n

Day 1. Hi Dad. I\u2019m writing you every night like you said. I\u2019m ok.<\/p>\n

I scrolled to the last one. Written two nights before I came home.<\/p>\n

I read it standing in that closet.<\/p>\n

And my hands started to shake.<\/p>\n

PART 2<\/strong><\/p>\n

Day 26. Dad, Dwight pressed my arm on the stove because the noodles burned. A man taped a paper to our door. Mom cried. Dwight said the bank is taking our house and it\u2019s your fault for not sending enough money. Mom said I can\u2019t tell you, because then you\u2019ll find out where the money went. Please come home. I\u2019m not ok.<\/p>\n

I read it four times.<\/p>\n

Then I slid down onto the closet floor and cried for the first time since my father\u2019s funeral.<\/p>\n

He had been writing to me every night. To a phone that couldn\u2019t send a single word.<\/p>\n

Twenty-six nights of telling me the truth, while on the other end of every FaceTime call I was being told, \u201cHe\u2019s fine, he\u2019s already asleep.\u201d<\/p>\n

I scrolled back through the drafts.<\/p>\n

Day 9. Dwight\u2019s boys took my lizard. They said it ran away.<\/p>\n

Day 14. I slept in the shed. It was dark. I counted to 1,000.<\/p>\n

Day 19. Mom said if I tell you anything, you\u2019ll stop sending money and we\u2019ll lose the house.<\/p>\n

Day 22. I miss you. I put your hoodie on my pillow.<\/p>\n

I took a screenshot of every one.<\/p>\n

Then I went looking for the paper from the door.<\/p>\n

It was folded inside Brandi\u2019s purse on the kitchen counter: a notice of default from our mortgage company. Four months behind.<\/p>\n

Four months. I had sent the mortgage money every single month.<\/p>\n

Underneath it was a stack of casino markers from Coushatta. Thirty-one thousand dollars.<\/p>\n

And a cashier\u2019s check made out to Dwight Pruitt. Eight thousand dollars. Memo: \u201ctruck payment.\u201d<\/p>\n

My home was being gambled away one girls\u2019 night at a time, and the man snoring in my recliner was being paid out of my son\u2019s mortgage.<\/p>\n

I called the Lafayette Parish Sheriff\u2019s Office from the driveway.<\/p>\n

Then I called my mother-in-law, Gloria, in Tulsa.<\/p>\n

She broke down on the phone.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe asked me for money twice this summer,\u201d she said. \u201cShe told me you\u2019d been laid off. Wade, I had no idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two deputies pulled up at 9 a.m.<\/p>\n

Dwight was passed out in my recliner again. He woke up with a flashlight in his face.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is this?\u201d he slurred. \u201cWade, man, come on.\u201d<\/p>\n

One deputy took a single look at Finn\u2019s arm and gently peeled back the duct tape.<\/p>\n

Underneath was a second-degree burn. Blistered. Infected around the edges. Shaped exactly like the rim of a pan.<\/p>\n

The deputy\u2019s jaw tightened.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho did this, son?\u201d<\/p>\n

Finn looked up at me.<\/p>\n

I knelt beside him.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can tell the truth now, buddy. I\u2019m home. I\u2019m not going anywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

He pointed at Dwight.<\/p>\n

They arrested Dwight in my living room, in front of his own kids.<\/p>\n

Brandi came downstairs in her robe, already screaming.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re ruining my life! You\u2019re never here! You don\u2019t get to\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

The other deputy held up her purse, the default notice and the casino markers sticking out of the top.<\/p>\n

\u201cMa\u2019am, you\u2019re going to want to stop talking and call a lawyer.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Dwight was charged with felony child abuse.<\/p>\n

Brandi was charged with child neglect and failure to report. The court granted me emergency custody that same afternoon. My lawyer and I brought the mortgage current in nine days. The house stayed ours.<\/p>\n

Gloria drove down from Tulsa the next day with a new lizard for Finn in a shoebox with holes poked in the lid.<\/p>\n

She testified on my side, too.<\/p>\n

I quit the rig.<\/p>\n

I took a job at a refinery twenty minutes from home. Day shift. Home by five.<\/p>\n

The pay is less. My boy is worth more.<\/p>\n

Finn\u2019s arm healed with a scar shaped like a crescent moon. He says it looks cool. He tells people a shark bit him.<\/p>\n

The first night it was just the two of us in the house, he climbed into my bed with his new lizard and my old phone.<\/p>\n

\u201cCan I still write to you?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t have to anymore, buddy. I\u2019m right here.\u201d<\/p>\n

He thought about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to,\u201d he said. \u201cSo you never miss a day again.\u201d<\/p>\n

So now, every night before bed, Finn types a message on that old phone. I read them in the morning over cereal.<\/p>\n

Last night\u2019s said:<\/p>\n

Day 61. Dad made pancakes. Lizard is named Rig. I\u2019m ok. For real this time.<\/p>\n

PART 3<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nobody tells you what comes after the arrest.<\/p>\n

I thought the hard part was over when the deputies walked Dwight out of my living room. It wasn\u2019t. It was only the part that looked like a movie.<\/p>\n

The real part started the next morning, in a pediatric burn clinic in Lafayette, where a nurse named Ms. Odom cleaned my son\u2019s arm while he stared at the ceiling and counted out loud.<\/p>\n

\u201cFour hundred twelve. Four hundred thirteen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBuddy, you can stop counting,\u201d I told him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not scared,\u201d he said. \u201cI just like numbers when it hurts.\u201d<\/p>\n

I had to step into the hallway.<\/p>\n

The doctor told me the burn would scar but the infection was caught in time. Another week under that duct tape, she said, and we\u2019d have been having a different conversation. She was kind about it. She was also required to write everything down, and she did, in a chart that would later go into a courtroom.<\/p>\n

Two days after that, Finn did his interview at the Children\u2019s Advocacy Center. I wasn\u2019t allowed in the room. I sat on a couch under a painting of a cartoon whale, holding a paper cup of coffee I never drank, while a woman named Ms. Vance talked with my son behind a closed door for fifty minutes.<\/p>\n

When it was over, she came out and sat beside me.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s very brave,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd he\u2019s very worried about you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAbout me?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe asked if you were mad at him. Three times.\u201d<\/p>\n

I looked at the whale until my eyes stopped burning.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not mad at him,\u201d I said. \u201cI\u2019m mad at me.\u201d<\/p>\n

She didn\u2019t tell me I shouldn\u2019t be. She just said, \u201cThen let\u2019s make sure he hears the first part more than the second.\u201d<\/p>\n

I went home and called the speech therapist who had worked with Finn for two years. I\u2019d stopped the sessions in the spring because Brandi said he didn\u2019t need them anymore. She\u2019d said it so smoothly that I\u2019d believed her, because believing her was easier than driving home from a rig in the middle of the Gulf.<\/p>\n

Her name was Ms. Tran. She cried when I told her what had happened. Then she said, \u201cBring him Thursday. Don\u2019t worry about the bill.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI can pay it,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know. Bring him anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

The criminal case moved slowly. The prosecutor, a tired, careful woman named Ms. Delacroix, warned me early.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople want a clean story,\u201d she said. \u201cDefense attorneys love to muddy it. Everything we have is going to be examined, including the notes on your old phone.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe notes are real.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe you. But a judge needs more than my belief.\u201d<\/p>\n

So we did it the right way. A forensic examiner at the Sheriff\u2019s Office imaged the phone. He pulled the metadata on all twenty-six entries and confirmed each had been created and edited on the nights written, in the order written, in the same account, on a device with no SIM and no way to send anything. He also noted something I hadn\u2019t seen.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe last entry has three edits,\u201d he said. \u201cHe started it, stopped, came back, and rewrote it. Looks like he deleted a few lines.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCan you recover what he deleted?\u201d<\/p>\n

He shook his head. \u201cNot from this. Sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n

I sat in the parking lot afterward and thought about what an eight-year-old had decided not to tell me, even in a message he knew I\u2019d never get.<\/p>\n

Dwight\u2019s lawyer came at us hard. He tried to say Finn was coached. He tried to say the burn was an accident. He tried to say Brandi was the real problem and Dwight was \u201cjust a houseguest.\u201d<\/p>\n

That last argument was the one that sank him, because it was the one Brandi\u2019s lawyer couldn\u2019t live with. Within a week, the two defendants stopped pretending to be on the same side.<\/p>\n

Brandi\u2019s lawyer called mine.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy client wants to cooperate,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith what?\u201d my lawyer asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

I didn\u2019t sit across from Brandi until the custody hearing.<\/p>\n

She\u2019d lost weight. Her hair was pulled back, no makeup, a cheap gray blazer someone had probably told her to wear. She looked younger and older at the same time. She looked at me once when I came in, and then she looked at the table.<\/p>\n

The judge, a gray-haired woman with reading glasses on a chain, went through the file slowly. The deputy\u2019s report. The burn clinic\u2019s records. The phone. The mortgage notice. The casino markers. The cashier\u2019s check.<\/p>\n

Then she looked over her glasses at Brandi.<\/p>\n

\u201cMrs. Hollis, do you dispute that your son was left in the care of Mr. Pruitt while you were out of the home?\u201d<\/p>\n

Brandi\u2019s lawyer leaned toward her. She didn\u2019t wait for him.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, Your Honor.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you dispute that he was made to sleep in an outbuilding?\u201d<\/p>\n

A long pause.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t know about that until after,\u201d she said. Then she shook her head. \u201cNo. That\u2019s not true. I knew about it Tuesday. I told myself it was one night.\u201d<\/p>\n

The room went quiet.<\/p>\n

I had spent a month hating her. I\u2019d rehearsed what I would say to her a hundred times in the truck, on the road, at the refinery interview, in the shower. In none of those rehearsals had she said something honest.<\/p>\n

The judge granted me full temporary custody and ordered an evaluation for Brandi, including gambling treatment. Any contact with Finn would be supervised until the court said otherwise.<\/p>\n

In the hallway afterward, Brandi caught my sleeve.<\/p>\n

I looked at her hand until she let go.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not asking you to forgive me,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cGood.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI just wanted you to know I read the notes. My lawyer gave me copies.\u201d Her voice broke. \u201cDay 22. The hoodie. I read that one a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

I wanted to say something cruel. I had plenty ready.<\/p>\n

Instead I said, \u201cHe was saying goodbye to me every night, Brandi. In a language only I could read. And you made it so he had to.\u201d<\/p>\n

She nodded, tears running down, and let the deputy walk her away.<\/p>\n

I got into my truck and sat with both hands on the wheel for a long time.<\/p>\n

FINAL PART<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dwight took a plea.<\/p>\n

I wish I could say it came with a speech or a confession. It didn\u2019t. It came with a signature and a sentence: nine years on the felony child abuse count, with the other charges folded in. His own sons were placed with their mother\u2019s sister in Opelousas. The older boy, the one who\u2019d said Dad made him sleep in the shed Tuesday<\/em>, wrote Finn a letter through the caseworker.<\/p>\n

It was a single page, written in pencil, with the erasures still visible.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sorry about your lizard. It didn\u2019t run away. My dad let it out the back door. I knew and I didn\u2019t say. I should have said.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

I let Finn decide whether he wanted to read it.<\/p>\n

He held it for two days. Then he took it out to the porch and read it by himself.<\/p>\n

When he came back in, he said, \u201cHe\u2019s a kid too, Dad.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, buddy. He is.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not mad at him anymore. Is that okay?\u201d<\/p>\n

I knelt down.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s okay to be mad. It\u2019s okay to not be. Either way is okay.\u201d<\/p>\n

He thought about it and nodded. Then he asked if we could have pancakes, even though it was dinnertime.<\/p>\n

We had pancakes for dinner. We did that a lot that fall.<\/p>\n

\n

Brandi did the work.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll say that plainly, because it matters, and because I promised myself I wouldn\u2019t tell this story just to make her the villain. She entered an inpatient program in Baton Rouge. She sold her SUV, the one my paychecks had bought, and put the money toward the mortgage arrears her gambling had created. She gave a full statement about the missing money, which the lender\u2019s attorneys used to restructure the loan so we kept the house. She attended every court-ordered session. She attended some that weren\u2019t.<\/p>\n

She wrote Finn a letter every week. I read each one before he did. Not one of them asked him for anything. Most were about small things: a bird at the window of the treatment center, a book she was reading, a joke she thought he\u2019d like.<\/p>\n

For the first four months, he wouldn\u2019t open them.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t push.<\/p>\n

In February, he walked into the kitchen holding one and said, \u201cCan you read this one to me? I want to know if it\u2019s mean first.\u201d<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t mean. It said she was sorry, that none of it was his fault, and that she wasn\u2019t asking him to feel anything he didn\u2019t feel.<\/p>\n

He listened to the whole thing.<\/p>\n

Then he said, \u201cOkay,\u201d and went back to his room.<\/p>\n

The first supervised visit was in April, in a family room at the courthouse, with a caseworker and a box of board games. I stood outside the glass.<\/p>\n

Finn walked in and stopped three feet from his mother. Neither of them moved.<\/p>\n

Then he said something I couldn\u2019t hear.<\/p>\n

Brandi put both hands over her mouth.<\/p>\n

The caseworker told me later what he\u2019d said.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if I\u2019m ready to hug you. But I brought Rig. You can say hi to him.<\/em><\/p>\n

He\u2019d carried the lizard in a shoebox with holes in the lid. They sat on the floor for forty minutes, a woman who\u2019d done unforgivable things and a boy who was learning, slowly, how to decide for himself what forgiveness looked like.<\/p>\n

It was the most generous thing I\u2019ve ever watched anyone do.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if Brandi and I will ever be friends. I don\u2019t know if she\u2019ll ever have the house again, or Finn the way she did. The judge will decide that, one review at a time. What I know is that my son gets to set the pace, and everyone around him has agreed to follow it.<\/p>\n

\n

I\u2019m still at the refinery. Day shift. Home by five.<\/p>\n

The swing set is still in the backyard. The fort is still under the porch. I helped Finn rebuild it last spring, this time with a real door and a window and a latch on the inside that only opens from the inside.<\/p>\n

He picked that. I didn\u2019t ask why.<\/p>\n

On the night of Day 365, I found him sitting on the back steps with my old phone, typing slowly with his thumbs. The scar on his arm showed in the porch light, a pale crescent moon.<\/p>\n

I sat down beside him.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t have to keep writing, you know,\u201d I said. \u201cYou can stop whenever you want.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI know.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThen why do you?\u201d<\/p>\n

He was quiet for a while.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause the first twenty-six were for you to find,\u201d he said. \u201cThese ones are just for me. I like having a place to put the day.\u201d<\/p>\n

I put my arm around his shoulders. He leaned into me the way he used to when he was small enough to fall asleep in the truck.<\/p>\n

\u201cCan I read it?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

He turned the screen toward me.<\/p>\n

Day 365. Dad picked me up from school and was early. He\u2019s always early now. I\u2019m taller than the doorknob on the shed. I don\u2019t think about the shed much anymore. Rig is fat. Mom\u2019s visit was good. I laughed at something she said and then felt weird, but then it was okay. I\u2019m learning that you can feel two things. Dad says that\u2019s normal. I\u2019m ok. I\u2019m better than ok.<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019m home.<\/em><\/p>\n

I read it twice.<\/p>\n

Then I did something I\u2019d done only once before in my adult life, on a closet floor in Louisiana with a dead phone in my hand.<\/p>\n

I cried. But this time my son put his hand on my back and said, \u201cIt\u2019s okay, Dad. You can write one too.\u201d<\/p>\n

So I did.<\/p>\n

I took the phone and typed my first entry in the same note. Underneath twenty-six messages that had never been sent, and three hundred and thirty-nine that had.<\/p>\n

Day 1 (for real this time). I\u2019m here. I\u2019m not leaving. I love you.<\/em><\/p>\n

I handed the phone back.<\/p>\n

Finn read it, nodded once, and said, \u201cSend.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt can\u2019t send, buddy. There\u2019s no SIM.\u201d<\/p>\n

He smiled, the lopsided one I\u2019d missed through every call from every rig.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it got there.\u201d<\/p>\n

THE END.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PART 1 Twenty-eight days on. Twenty-eight days off. That\u2019s the life of an offshore rig worker. It pays well. It paid for our house outside Lafayette, Louisiana. It paid for … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37275,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-family","category-inspiration","category-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/readingdairy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/readingdairy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/readingdairy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readingdairy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readingdairy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55850"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/readingdairy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55852,"href":"https:\/\/readingdairy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55850\/revisions\/55852"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readingdairy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/readingdairy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readingdairy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readingdairy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}