Chapter 4: The Story She Believed
Emma had been four years old when her father left. That was the story. She had grown up with it the way other children grew up with fairy tales, except this one had no ending, only a hole in the middle where a father should have been.
The story went like this: Thomas Carter was a journalist. He traveled a lot. He was restless. One day, he packed a bag, and he left, and he never came back. He did not call. He did not write. He did not send birthday cards. He was gone, and Grace had raised Emma alone, and that was that.
Emma had asked about him, of course. Every child asks. When she was seven, she had asked her mother where her father was, and Grace had said, "He went away, sweetheart. Sometimes people go away." When she was twelve, she had asked again, and Grace had said, "He made his choices, Emma. We made ours." When she was sixteen, angry and hurting and full of questions, she had shouted, "Did he ever love us?" and Grace had cried, and had said, "He loved you more than you will ever know," and Emma had not understood, and had not asked again.
She had filled in the gaps herself. She had imagined him as a selfish man, a man who had chosen his work over his family. She had imagined him living somewhere far away, maybe in another country, maybe with another family, maybe not thinking about her at all. She had told herself that it did not matter. She had told herself that she was fine. She had told herself that other girls had fathers and she had her mother, and that was enough. She had told herself that missing someone she barely remembered was foolish. She had told herself that anger was easier than grief, and she had been angry for a long time. She had told herself that a girl did not need a father to be whole.
But the truth was, she had needed one. She had needed one on the first day of school, when the other children had fathers who carried their backpacks. She had needed one at the father-daughter dance, when she had stayed home. She had needed one when she had graduated, when she had gotten her first job, when she had cried over her first broken heart. She had needed one, and she had learned to live without one, and she had called that strength.
Now, sitting in her small bedroom, listening to the rain on the window, Emma thought about all of it, and she felt something she had not felt in years: anger. Not the hot, sudden anger of a teenager, but the slow, deep anger of a woman who had built her life on a story that might not be true.
She thought about Hawk, and the way he had looked at her when he said there was a lot she did not know. She thought about her mother, and the way Grace had gone pale when Emma told her about the watcher. She thought about the way they had both said, "It is time," as if they had been waiting for this moment for twenty-two years.
She got up and went to the closet. In the back, behind the winter coats, there was a box. It was an old box, cardboard, taped shut, with her father's name written on it in her mother's handwriting. Emma had known about the box for years. She had never opened it. She had told herself it was her mother's business, and that some doors were better left closed.
She remembered the father-daughter dance in eighth grade. Every girl had a father, except her. She had stayed home that night, and her mother had made popcorn, and they had watched a movie, and Grace had pretended it was a special occasion, and Emma had pretended not to mind. She remembered graduation day, when the other students hugged their fathers and posed for photographs, and Emma had stood with her mother, smiling, and feeling, underneath the smile, a hollow place that nothing seemed to fill.
She remembered college, and the long phone calls home, and the way her mother always asked about her classes and her friends and never once mentioned her father. She remembered coming home after graduation, and the way the house had felt smaller and warmer, and the way her mother had cried when she saw her, and the way Emma had known, without being told, that her mother had been lonely too.
She remembered the box in the closet. She had known about it for years. She had seen it once, when she was sixteen, and she had asked her mother what was in it, and Grace had said, "Your father's things," and had closed the closet door, and Emma had never asked again. She had told herself it was her mother's business. She had told herself that some doors were better left closed. But she had always wondered. She had always wondered what was inside.
Tonight, she opened it.
Inside were photographs. Her father, young and smiling, holding a baby Emma in his arms. Her father and mother, on their wedding day, laughing. Her father at a typewriter, cigarette in his mouth, papers everywhere. And at the bottom of the box, a small notebook, leather-bound, with pages full of her father's handwriting. Names. Dates. Places. Things Emma did not understand.
She picked up the notebook and held it to her chest, and she cried, the way she had not cried since she was a child. She cried for the father she had never known. She cried for the story she had believed. She cried for the years she had spent being angry at a man who might not have deserved it.
When she finally went to sleep, the notebook was on her pillow beside her, and the rain was still falling, and somewhere outside, a motorcycle sat under a streetlight, keeping watch, and Emma dreamed of a man she had never met, a man with kind eyes and a notebook full of secrets, a man who had loved her more than she would ever know.