The question was fair.
I had spent twenty-two years answering what everyone else needed.
I looked around the apartment.
At the kitchen table where I had written letters.
At the scratches on the wall marking the girls’ height.
At the green sweater still folded inside the hall cupboard.
“I wondered whether you might have coffee with me.”
“After twelve years?”
“Yes.”
“That is a long time.”
“I know.”
“Why now?”
I smiled through tears I had not realized were falling.
“Because my daughters reminded me that showing up late is not the same as never showing up.”
Seraphine did not answer immediately.
Then she said:
“Saturday. Ten o’clock. The bakery.”
“I’ll be there.”
“You had better be.”
“I will.”
After the call ended, I remained on the futon beneath the two framed pieces of paper.
One represented the man who left.
The other represented the daughters who stayed.
For twenty-two years, I had feared they might one day choose their real father over me.
I had never understood that being real had nothing to do with who gave them his blood.
Their father was the man who warmed the bottles.
Burned the breakfasts.
Braided their hair badly.
Sat beside the fevers.
Endured the slammed doors.
And never made them wonder where he had gone.
Callan had left them on my porch with one sentence.
The girls gave me another sentence twenty-two years later.
You were always our dad.
