I needed him to know that I understood. That knowing the truth hadn’t shrunk one ounce of my love for him — if anything, it had only made it larger.
I ran from the parking lot straight up to his floor. The nurse was already standing outside his door, and one look at her face stopped me cold.
“I’m so sorry, ma’am. Your father—”
I pushed past her anyway.
Frank lay exactly as I’d left him. Except the room had gone completely silent. No hiss of oxygen. No uneven breath to count.
I took his hand and pressed it to my cheek.
“You should have told me,” I whispered into his cold fingers. “You should have let me thank you, Dad.”
The nurse set a small plastic bag down beside me. “These were his personal things.”
Inside: his watch, his keys, and the worn brown wallet he’d carried for as long as I could remember.
