He came in without speaking.
My father is sixty-eight. He’s a retired electrician, tall and a little stooped now, with big hands covered in old scars from forty years of wires and fuse boxes. He wears the same tan canvas jacket every fall. My mother used to say he was the quietest man in three counties and she’d married him to have someone to talk at.
Ezoic
He stopped in the doorway of the living room.
His eyes went to the hole by the fireplace. Then the one by the hallway. Then, slowly, down to the floor.
To the mirror.
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
“I know,” I said quietly.
He walked over and crouched down beside it. His knees cracked. He stayed there for a long time.
My father had barely said a word through eight months of proceedings.
Ezoic
He’d helped when I needed him. He’d driven me to the courthouse when I was too upset to drive. He’d let me sleep in my old bedroom for the first two months, after I couldn’t stand being in the same house as Brian anymore. He made me grilled cheese sandwiches at eleven at night and sat with me at the kitchen table while I cried, and he never once said, I told you so, even though he’d never really liked Brian.
