I walked down the sidewalk toward that little white house. Every step felt like walking through deep water. I passed the Mitchells’ oak tree. I passed the storm drain where I lost my red ball.
Maddie came down the ramp to meet me. She was crying already. Her face was crumpled up the way it used to crumple when she was little and knew she was in trouble.
“Mom, I can explain.”
“Get in the car, Maddie.”
“Mom, please…”
“I said get in the car.” My voice was shaking. “Right now.”
“No.”
I stopped walking.
In fourteen years, my daughter had never once said no to me like that. Not when she was two. Not when she was twelve. Never.
“Excuse me?”
“No,” she said again. She was crying hard now, but she planted her feet on that sidewalk and lifted her chin. She looked so much like me at fourteen that it scared me. “I’m not getting in the car. Not until you listen.”
“You lied to me, Madison. For three months. Every single Thursday.”
“I know.”
“You told me you were at the library.”
“I know.”
“Do you have any idea what I’ve been thinking? Do you have any idea what goes through a mother’s head when she finds out her fourteen-year-old daughter is sneaking off somewhere in the dark?”
“I know, Mom. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” She wiped her face with her sleeve. “But you have to listen to him. Please. Just once.”
“I don’t have to do anything.”
“He’s not who you think he is.”
“Maddie, you don’t know anything about who he is.”
“I know more than you do!” she shouted.
Her voice echoed off the houses. Somewhere down the street, a dog started barking. A curtain moved in the window of the house across the street.
Maddie took a shaky breath.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean to yell. But I do know, Mom. I know things you don’t. And it’s not fair. It’s not fair that you don’t know.”
I opened my mouth to answer her. I didn’t know what I was going to say.
That’s when the screen door creaked open behind her.
My father came back out onto the porch.
He was moving slowly. So slowly. He had his cane in his right hand, and he was holding something tucked against his chest with his bad left arm. He came to the top of the ramp and stopped there. He held on to the railing.
He looked at me.
For a long time, neither of us said anything.
Sixteen years. Sixteen years of silence. Sixteen years of returned letters and deleted voicemails and a little girl who didn’t know his name.
Up close, he looked even older. His face was lined and gray. There was a droop at the left side of his mouth. His eyes, which used to be such a bright, clear blue, looked tired and a little cloudy.
But they were still his eyes.
“Hello, Bug,” he said.
His voice was rougher than I remembered. Slower. Some of the words came out a little slurred, like his mouth wasn’t quite working right.
For a second, just one second, I was seven years old again, lying in my bed while he did the voice of the parrot.
Then I wasn’t.
“Don’t call me that,” I said.
He nodded slowly. Like he’d expected it.
“Okay,” he said. “Erin.”
“What are you doing with my daughter?”
“Mom…” Maddie started.
“I’m asking him.”
My father looked down at Maddie. Then back at me.
“She reads to me,” he said simply.
Adrian Hawthorne is a celebrated author and dedicated archivist who finds inspiration in the hidden stories of the past. Educated at Oxford, he now works at the National Archives, where preserving history fuels his evocative writing. Balancing archival precision with creative storytelling, Adrian founded the Hawthorne Institute of Literary Arts to mentor emerging writers and honor the timeless art of narrative.