“Bennett,” I asked softly, “where’s Aunt Lauren?”
He stared at the floor.
“I… I don’t know.”
That was impossible.
She would never leave him alone.
I crouched in front of him and gently placed my hands on his shoulders.
“When did you last see her?”
His lower lip shook.
“I don’t know.”
“Did she go outside?”
He shook his head.
“Did someone come to the house?”
His eyes darted toward the hallway again.
Then I noticed something.
A faint strip of light was shining from under Bennett’s bedroom door.
I knew I’d turned everything off before leaving.
Bennett was careful about lights because Lauren had convinced him that every bulb left on was costing me a fortune.
And there was another sound.
So faint I almost missed it.
Not footsteps.
Not the television.
A low whisper.
Followed by the scrape of something heavy being dragged across the floor.
Every muscle in my body went rigid.
Bennett grabbed my sleeve.
His tiny fingers were shaking.
“Mom… please.”
“They said you’d be angry if you found out.”
My heart began pounding.
They.
Not she.
Not he.
They.
I stepped closer to the door.
Bennett followed me for one step, then stopped.
The whispering suddenly stopped.
The room fell completely silent.
I wrapped my hand around the doorknob, pushed the door open just a few inches… and froze.
The first thing I saw was Lauren.
She was crouched beside Bennett’s bed with one hand pressed to her mouth.
The second thing I saw was a man I had not seen in eight years.
My father.
For one stunned second, none of us moved.
He looked older than I remembered. His dark hair had gone almost completely gray, and his shoulders seemed narrower beneath his brown coat. A cardboard box sat open at his feet. Beside it, Lauren had dragged Bennett’s toy chest away from the wall.
That must have been the scraping sound.
“Dad?” I whispered.
My father slowly stood.
“Ingrid.”
Hearing my name in his voice made something inside me tighten. He had said it that way when I was a child, usually before apologizing for another broken promise.
I pushed the door wider.
“What are you doing here?”
Lauren rose quickly. “Before you get angry, let me explain.”
“You told Bennett not to let anyone in?”
“No,” she replied. “Dad did.”
My father looked ashamed. “I thought we would be gone before you got home.”
Bennett appeared behind me and wrapped both arms around my waist.
“I didn’t tell her,” he said nervously. “She came early.”
I placed one hand over his.
“You did nothing wrong.”
Then I looked at Lauren.
“Why were you hiding in my son’s bedroom?”
She glanced at the open box. “We were looking for something.”
I stared at her. “You brought him into my house without telling me, then searched through Bennett’s room?”
“We weren’t searching through his things,” Lauren insisted. “We were checking behind the toy chest.”
“For what?”
My father bent down and lifted a loose strip of wooden trim from the wall.
Behind it was a narrow opening.
Inside, wrapped in an old kitchen towel, was a small metal tin.
I recognized it immediately.
My mother’s recipe box.
The sight of it stole the next question from my mouth.
My mother had died when I was 19. She had been sick for nearly a year, but my father disappeared before the end. He said he could not handle watching her get worse.
Lauren and I stayed. We took turns feeding her, washing her hair, and sitting beside her when the pain became unbearable.
After the funeral, my father called twice.
Then he vanished from our lives.
I had spent years convincing myself I did not care.
“What is that doing here?” I asked.
My father held the tin carefully.
“What is that doing here?” I asked.
Lauren glanced at the opening behind the toy chest. “Dad said Mom hid it in this room before you bought the house.”
I looked at him. “You knew it was here all this time?”
What I did not know was why they were standing in Bennett’s room with something my mother had hidden almost 20 years ago.
My father opened the tin.
There were no recipes inside.
There were letters.
Dozens of them.
Each envelope had a date, and every one was addressed to either Lauren or me.
My knees felt weak.
“What is this?”
My father swallowed. “Your mother wrote them during her last months.”
I looked at Lauren. “You knew?”
“Not until last week.”
“How?”
“Dad contacted me.”
I let out a bitter laugh. “Of course he did.”
“Ingrid,” my father said softly.
“No. You do not get to say my name like that. You left her. You left us.”
“I know.”
“You missed her funeral.”
His face crumpled, but I continued.
“You missed Lauren’s wedding. You missed Bennett’s birth. You disappeared, and now you think you can walk into my house and dig through the walls?”
“I didn’t come here expecting forgiveness.”
“Then why did you come?”
He looked down at the tin.
“Because your mother made me promise I would give you these letters when you were ready.”
My anger sharpened.
“When I was ready? I was 19. Lauren was 23. We needed her then.”
“I was a coward,” he admitted.
The answer was so simple that it hurt more than an excuse would have.
“I told myself I was protecting you from more pain. The truth is, I could not face what I had done. Every year I waited, it became harder to come back.”
Lauren wiped her eyes.
“He called me because he’s sick.”
I looked at her sharply.
My father lowered himself onto the edge of Bennett’s bed.
“Cancer,” he said. “It has spread.”
The room seemed to shrink.
I had imagined seeing him again many times. In some versions, I screamed. In others, I shut the door in his face. I never imagined him looking small enough to disappear.