Mom had written, “I hope she has a wonderful fifth birthday. Tell her I think about her.”
There was no “I love you.”
No request to hear my voice.
Every envelope had been mailed to Dad, and every message referred to me as though I were someone else’s child.
“You can stop,” Mr. Lewis said.
Beneath the cards were canceled tuition checks dated after Mom disappeared.
The first was worth nearly three months of our old rent.
More followed, covering almost two years of schooling.
I remembered canned soup, my patched winter coat, and the evening Dad transformed a power outage into an indoor camping adventure.
Mr. Lewis nodded. “He’d promised before you were born. He thought stability might bring her back.”
I stared at Dad’s signature.
That same hand had packed my lunches and completed every school form.
“She took his money and built another family.”
“He paid the tuition directly.”
