A dozen questions crowded in at once. Was my real father alive somewhere? Had he hidden letters from me? Was there another family, another version of Frank I’d never been allowed to meet?
His hand shook as he pulled a folded scrap of paper from beneath the blanket and pressed it into my palm.
“Go there. Tonight.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“You have to.” Tears slid into the gray stubble along his jaw. “Please, Rosalie.”
He hadn’t called me Rosalie since I was small.
I bent down close to his face. “Just tell me yourself.”
His eyes drifted shut. “Some truths need a different voice than mine.”
Those were the last words he ever said to me.
The monitor began to chirp, and a nurse hurried in to check his pulse and adjust the oxygen. “He’s still with us,” she said quietly. “But he may not wake again.”
